Yeah. Vietnam -> Singapore -> Malaysia.

Johor Bahru was an exciting first taste of the foodie goods soon to become our 5+ daily meals. Also an introduction to Malaysia’s overly friendly hotel staff. What a tiring day.

I’ve decided that ngọc phan is the best of the relatively cheap hotels I’ve ever stayed in.

It isn’t that the place is particularly well set up, indeed there aren’t any rooms with a single double bed for example, “forcing” Lili and I to sleep in seperate beds for the duration.

No, the reason I’ve come to like this hotel so much is the friendly, personal attitude of the owners. It’s a husband, wife (and possibly sister/in law) setup, and they’re always really cheerful, friendly and, in the case of the husband in particular, talkative. When we come down for the include breakfast in the morning and poke our heads around the corner, somebody sees us, laughs and wishes us a good morning, and suddenly food starts appearing.

But there’s more to it: several other people staying at the hotel have had some unfortunate upsets. The other day a family staying there managed to lose a bag, seemingly leaving it in a taxi when they got to the airport after checking out. They called the hotel to double check that they hadn’t left it there, apparently they hadn’t. But the hotel owner started calling around to the taxi company trying to find their bags. He looked sick with worry and kept expressing how terrible it was. Sadly I don’t think the bag ever showed up.

This morning another guest had managed to lose his passport at some stage, and again the owner was on the phone trying to set things right.

Touch wood we won’t have any such problems, but check this out: one of our missions was to buy a wifi router for Lili’s mum. We could’ve done that in Hanoi when we get back, but instead I ended up finding a shop online that sold the router I wanted. The website was all in Vietnamese and not even Google could translate it with any success.

I wrote down the model number, address, shop name and phone number. I asked the owner if he could help me make a phone call - I wanted to see if the router was in stock, confirm the price from the site, and see if he could give me some advise on getting there by taxi to buy it.

By the end of the phone call however, he had negotiated a discount, and COD delivery to the hotel for that day. Then later, played translator for us while we tested the hardware there in the hotel lobby.

I really can’t express how much this simplified the whole process, and saved us a fortune in travel etc. He laughed later, “Anything I can help, you just ask- new towels, laundry, linksys- just ask!”

For a couple of days I pondered how to thank him properly, and eventually decided we should just buy a selection of fresh fruit from the market - some things we had seen them eating, and whatever else looked good.

So this morning, before checkig out, we went and bought a pomello(sp?), a pineapple and some bananas, and after doing the check out thing, we gave him the present and said thank you for helping us so much. He called his wife over to accept the gift with him. There was much laughing and mock dismay. “It is just my duty!” “No no, you went above and beyond your duty!”

It was a really nice way to conclude our stay.

We’re leaving today, and I’ll be glad to be out of this city.

Quite simply, the traffic here is insane.

There are other things I’m not to keen on- such as the huge amount of Bali-style Aussie tourists here for a cheap holiday, but that’s sort of what you buy in to when you stay in the backpacker area of a city.

No, it’s the traffic. I’m shellshocked. PTSD. The only way to go anywhere on foot here is to step off the crowded footpaths, past the algae filled gutters and out into the road.

From there it’s a matter of blind faith that you’re going to make it to refuge of the next unoccupied piece of footpath without getting fucked up by some 13 year old on a motorbike, or some angry looking man talking on his cellphone while looking not where he’s going, but at whatever mercentile activities are happening on the side of the street.

After a while of this you get numb to the fact that you’re risking, to a small degree life, and to a much greater degree limb, and just get on with it. Until you get to one of those intersections that just seem to be six directions of car, truck and bike traffic operating according to some archaic survival of the fittest set of “rules” that make no allowances for pedestrians unless they’re willing to just step infront of the largest vehicles and simply hold up their hand to say “Wait for me.”

Yeah, those intersections can waste half an hour of your time as you stand, staring incredulously on the side of the road suffering some form of emotional breakdown akin to, I imagine, the last moments of a condemned person as they finally realise that there are no more options. Only death.

Sure. Okay, maybe it seems like I’m over dramatising this a little. On the other hand I’ve witnessed several inter-bike collisions, and watched a blind man get smashed into right in front of me. (He just grimaced horribly. Didn’t even yelp..)

And just when you think you’ve made it to safe ground, and are letting your frazzled nerves be felt through the numbness, someone _will_ ride their motorbike right up onto the footpath and try to kill you, in order to park, or just circumnavigate a particularly busy piece of road.

When you move on again, finally having figured out the directions of traffic, vectors of danger, and found a relatively safe place to cross, a handful of people will decide to ride across on coming traffic to take a corner on the wrong side of the street, 100 meters down from you, in the fraction of a second between furtive glances in all directions.

Oh, and the bike probably has a 6 foot spear of steel rebar sticking out the front.

I’m ready to leave now.

Walking, walking, walking.

We left our hotel and headed in the general direction of richie-ville via a market we’d been to last time. At the market we drank incredibly disappointing coffee - I’m certain it was made from a 3-in-1 coffee mix sachet - and walked around watching the processes of butchery, fish-mongery and whatever that trade is where you try and sell bootleg DVDs to westerners.

After the market diversion we kept heading in the direction of Versaceland.

Although there was more of the luxury brand stuff around than we remembered, the area definitely felt similar to last time we were in HCMC. After wasting a little time, we swung back around past Saigon river and stopped at this awesome cafe to make up for the earlier folly. This place had an extensive menu of different blends of coffee, which you could get served in whichever format you like - with milk and ice, in my case. This place felt right, since there weren’t any other whiteys in there, but plenty of young Vietnamese men.

Then we set our sights on lunch at some remote place further north of where we were. The guidebook said it was good, so we set off, going up a fairly major street lined with funky clothes shops. We stopped at a shoe shop and Lili actually managed to find a pair of discounted genuine doc martins that fit her. Of all the places to find shoes.

Anyway, we made it eventually, after I lead us through several wrong turns. The food was indeed awesome. Fantastic Vietnamese pancake/crepe things full of pork, prawns and beansprouts, plus we had some spring rolls that were good too.

Eventually we rolled back to our hotel, calling the day a success.

Hey guys. You know I can see you, right?

Yeah, mum, dad, 60.241.126.*** and the rest. I know you’re checking this site, so why aren’t you leaving comments? Nevermind, hope people are enjoying my ramblings.

I haven’t been taking as many photos this trip, as you might’ve noticed. The reasons for that aren’t quite legion, but I won’t go into them here, instead I’ve challenged myself to put up 50 photos taken with the 50mm prime lens Lili’s letting me use. And I’m going to try and do it as quickly as I can without sacrificing attention to detail too much.

It’s off to a slow start but click the 50 x 50 link at the top right to keep up.

I also updated my About page.

In case anyone hadn’t worked it out yet, I’m also doing my best to show people where we’re posting from on the Maps page.

Also, anyone who isn’t already should really be keeping a regular eye on pikelet and pie which has been Lili’s food blog since forever. I don’t just mean travel food. This is what we eat, seriously, next time someone asks me why the fuck I’m so skinny and am I eating right? I should just point them at that site. It will blow your mind like woah.

As you were.

We decided to keep things fairly relaxed today, since Lili’s been feeling a bit under the weather for the last day or so (and I’ve been flirting with some kind of cold or flu since before we left Australia..) and to that end we started our day with a long sit in a cafe, drinking Vietnamese style coffee and surfing the net.

After a while being in such close proximity to our fellow tourists started to get right on my nerves and we packed up and left.

Our hotel has very decent shower facilities, so I had a very decent shower, and thus refreshed we went out exploring.

Exploring is probably too strong of a word, because really we were mostly retracing steps we made those years ago when we stayed in HCMC last. Same market, same cafes, same park, same same same.
We stopped for lunch at a place serving Bun Bo Hue- a style of noodle soup (from Hue! who knew?) but decided to just order some spring rolls and a plate of noodles.

Sadly, everything came out garnished with peanuts. I wasn’t really phased, and ate a few springrolls that seemed to not be touching any actual peanuts. Then ordered some soup, which came out sans peanuts. Despite my gung-ho approach to the springrolls, I haven’t felt like I’ve had even a mild allergic reaction.

We walked around more. Drank sickeningly sweet mango smoothies and came back to the hotel to rest.

For New Years Eve we went out with Pauline and met up with Ella and Ros for dinner. After eating we went on a brief tour of Westerner bars around the old quarter, my favourite being Mao’s Red Lounge, for its comfortable seats and occasionally cool music. Naturally we weren’t the only people attracted to the place and so over the course of a couple of drinks the place filled up with loud folk, and the music volume raised accordingly and we moved on in search of a venue for easier conversation. After checking out The Funky Buddah (and, possibly having an LSD flashback, I’m not sure… oooh laser lights..) and being set upon immediately by a gang of aggressive bartenders, we finally opted for Roots, a reggae themed place that wasn’t _too_ offensive.

Sadly, us kids were flagging by this time, and after another round of drinks we basically went our separate ways. Lili and I were home before midnight.

I feel obliged to acknowledge that Pauline was the only one of us with the drive and party spirit required to do New Year’s properly. How can my generation be such a bunch of failures?

Happy New Year!

There’s a small lake within walking distance of Pauline’s place. We walked to it, and then around it.

I was heckled more or less constantly by young guys who wanted to acknowledge that my haircut was “Numba 1! *thumbs up*” which was fun for a while, then tiring, but it’s nice to draw some positive attention. I’m amused that I am more of a curiosity to the youngin’s here than they are to me.

Anyway, we finally found a place that served local style coffee and sat down. Its as good as I remember it. Rich and almost chocolaty in combination with the sua (milk, from a tin.. aka condensed).

Thus invigorated I felt up to taking some photos:

Later, on our way back, we stopped for lunch at a place doing Bun Cha - grilled pork in a sort of papaya seasoned broth with noodles on the side, to be submerged and eaten with the pork.

Pauline took us out to dinner again, and then we slept.

We woke early and finished packing our stuff, then hoisted our bags onto our backs and retraced the steps we made in getting to our hotel.

The MRT was busier than I expected for pre-dawn. Mostly kids, apparently a team of street hockey playing girls were seeing a friend or two off at the airport. Or something.

Anyway, we made it okay and managed to get breakfast in a Chinese restaurant. You can never tell when a Chinese place is going to turn out to be good. I’m sure there’s some function involving tackiness of decor and inverse apathy of staff or something. In any case, the food was a-okay and we made it onto our plane for the relatively short flight to Hanoi.

The inflight entertainment was actually on demand this time. I watched the new X-Files movie. Lili’s system was broken. Hah.

Hanoi airport is amusing after Singapore. Hell it makes Brisbane international terminal look like a bustling hub. It took about an hour for Lili’s bag to come out and then we braved the horde and got a taxi to the Sheraton near where Pauline lives.

After warm welcomes we had a fairly sedate afternoon with a brief tour of the surrounds, and explanation of the house/gate/etc and finally some dinner.