Ao Nang, Krabi

After Phuket I took a bus to Ao Nang beach in Krabi. This was quite a pleasant place, with more perfect beaches and good pubs and restaurants. Here I went on a longboat ride around some of the islands, and a kayaking trip to the "Garden of Eden". You kayak up a river and then into a low rock tunnel. It gets completely dark in the tunnel, so you have to kayak blindly for a while. Then, you emerge into a lush river lagoon with no other exit. We also kayaked to a cave containing petroglyphs from 2000 B.C.

I also went to the Cobra Show, involving several hissing Black Cobras, and the biggest King Cobra I'd ever seen! (bigger than the previous biggest one I'd seen in Penang)

Koh Phi Phi

Koh Phi Phi is another beautiful island with gorgeous sandy beaches and clear blue-green waters near Phuket. I took a day cruise out to that and neighboring islands. Visited Phi Phi Don, Phi Phi Lei, Viking Cave, Monkey Beach.

Thai Cultural Program - A One Man Show

I went to a One Man Show tonight. Not that there was only one performer; there were in fact a couple dozen performers. But there was only one person in the audience -- me! Let me explain. It was a Thai cultural music and dance program at the Phuket Cultural Center and Orchid Farm. This was some distance away from the part of the island I was staying at, so you had to take a motorbike or taxi. I had come here earlier on a Sunday, only to find that was the only day they *didn't* have a performance. So I came here again on another day (making sure it was not a Sunday). However when I arrived the place was again deserted and the theater was empty. Finally a woman came by and explained that they canceled that evening's show because there were no attendees! Bummer. This is the second time I made the trip all the way out here, only to be denied again. She must have seen the disappointed look on my sulking face, because I saw her make a few phone calls and after a few minutes she informed me that the show was on again. They would put on the whole show just for me, a one-man audience! One by one the performers came on stage and performed a traditional Thai music and dance number. I began to feel a little guilty that they had to perform just for me and hoped they weren't resentful, but I really appreciated the effort. The dancers are supposed to make eye contact with the audience members, but since there was only one person they all had to look at me! After each item, I applauded as loud as I could to make up for the lack of audience. In the end I have to say I really enjoyed my first one-man show!

Oh, and the orchids were pretty good too.

Fantasea

This is not your typical dinner show, but a high production values extravaganza comparable to one of the big Las Vegas shows, featuring live animals (elephants, goats, even chickens!), aerial acrobats suspended from the ceiling, and stage magicians. There is a theme park built around it with the usual carnival games, rides, and vendor booths. They also had a huge and magnificent white tiger. I was so captivated by the beauty and raw power of this animal that I just stayed and watched it for more than half an hour. For some reason my camera flash always reflected in his right eye as orange light, and in his left eye as green light!

Butterfly Garden

Many places in Thailand and Malaysia have Butterfly Gardens which house hundreds of beautiful species of butterflies (often including rare ones) and provide an opportunity to see them up close. These are generally worthwhile to visit. I had missed a chance to see one earlier in Malaysia, so I went to one in Phuket. I actually wanted to go to the Cultural Show but it was closed, so I went here instead. I rented a motorbike and rode into town, to the Butterfly Farm.

Oh, Phuket (Revisited)

This is my second time in Phuket. The first time we zipped right through from the airport to the clipper ship in the marina with no time to spare. So I came back here to do it right.

Phuket is a hotbed of decadence. If Pattaya is Sodom, then Phuket is Gomorrah. A friend described it as "too touristy and overrun by Eurotrash". This is certainly true, but there are still lots of good things about Phuket. For example, there are beautiful islands you can visit just off the coast of Phuket, such as Koh Phi Phi.

Phuket of course will always be remembered as one of the major sites hit by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. It sustained heavy damage and widespread flooding, but there aren't many signs of that now. It's been rebuilt so that the obvious signs of the tsunami are gone. But the legacy of the tsunami remains with the many "Tsunami Evacuation Route" signs all over town. And of course the memories of the tsunami linger in the minds of the locals here who lived through it. I talked to some of them. One of them described lots of gold jewelry floating in the streets, due to the tsunami hitting the jewelry shops and washing their inventory out.

Songkran -- The Mother Of All Water Battles

Songkran (derived from the Sanskrit word "sankranti") is the Thai New Year (by the Thai Lunar Calendar) Festival. It last 3 or 4 days and is the biggest festival in Thailand. Activities include a Miss Songkran beauty pageant, sand temple building contests, parades and processions from the temples. But by far the biggest activity is the water fights. Everyone throws water on everyone else. If you are outside during this time you will get wet. And I don't mean a little wet. I mean totally drenched. And this is totally expected. The only way to avoid getting soaked is to stay indoors for 3 days. I cut my trip to Vietnam short (only spent 2 weeks there) because I wanted to return to Thailand in time for Songkran. I did, and had so much fun!

Lessons learned from Songkran:

1. On the tuktuk ride from the airport to my hotel I got splashed with water 4 times. This is well below the national average.
   
2. Nothing, not a squirt gun, a supersoaker, or any other high tech water weapon can beat the good old fashioned bucket.
   
3. It's the only time when you can pour a bucket of water over someone's head, and they will smile and thank you
   
4. Ammo (water) can be enhanced by placing a huge block of ice in your supply barrel, or with food coloring
   
5. Keep essentials (money, cell phone) in a waterproof pouch; then you're good to go.
   

Notes On The Vietnamese Language

Vietnamese was the hardest for me to learn even a few words than any of the other SE Asian languages. There were also several other factors that made it even harder. One was the extreme difficulty in pronunciation. Vietnamese has many sounds that are utterly unpronounceable by the Occidental tongue. So learning a word from a phrase book is of no use, since you still don't know how to pronounce it properly. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that pronunciation changes markedly from city to city. Another difficulty was the fact that it bears no linguistic connection to the Thai or Lao languages, so I could not use my knowledge of those to gain any leverage. It does bear a distant connection to Chinese, but they long ago abandoned the Chinese system of writing, in favor of an incredibly retarded transliteration system devised by incompetent French linguists. In fact it took me more than a week to get over my anger at the French linguists before I could settle down and start learning some Vietnamese words. To date, no competent linguist has looked at the Vietnamese language and devised a better transliteration system (this is something I could do, but I don't have the time). This last item was by far the biggest barrier to learning Vietnamese.

Vietnamese has a number of unique features that I have not seen in any other language. One is the use of titles in place of personal pronouns in many cases. For example, to say "I love you" you would not use the pronouns "I" and "you", but replace them with titles. So you would say "Anh yeu em" (man speaking to woman). This means something like "Mister loves Miss". If she returns your affection she would say "Em yeu anh" ("Miss loves Mister").

Here are some more Vietnamese phrases I learned:

gam an	thank you
sin jao	hello
dam biet	goodbye
khong go zee	you're welcome
sin loy	sorry

Halong Bay - Natural Perfection Ruined

Halong Bay is a serene fantasy-like seascape of stunning limestone karsts and stone structures in bizarre unfamiliar shapes, jutting vertically out of the water, rising high above it and shrouded in dreamy misty fog. Unfortunately, the natural beauty is rapidly becoming spoiled by overtourism. The bay is crowded with hundreds of noisy tour boats and thousands of tourists, destroying the inherent peacefulness of the place. Never once during our cruise were we alone -- we were always surrounded by at least a dozen other boats in view. The promotional pictures and postcards always show a single junk boat with the Chinese-style sails in an otherwise empty bay. Such a picture would be impossible to take today, as it would always contain a plethora of boats within the frame. It turns out the Chinese-style junk boat sails are also fake. While beautiful, they are fake -- just for show. None of the boat actually uses the sails for propulsion; they have large diesel engines instead. The bay is also becoming extremely polluted, with all the boats dumping all their raw sewage right there in the marina. The signature shot of Halong bay is a pair of stone structures called "The Fighting Cocks", vaguely resembling two roosters facing each other. However we were not even able to approach it closely as there was a major boat traffic jam all around it (and even one boat collision).

In spite of this, it was still impressive and enjoyable. There is a massive cave, a little floating village (complete with a local bank branch), and a kayak-able sea tunnel. My cabin onboard was fairly luxurious -- better than many of the hotel rooms I had been staying in. All in all, it was a worthwhile trip. It's just a shame that such a beautiful natural wonder is being spoiled by over-exploitation.

Staying At The Hanoi Hilton

Hanoi is a bit cooler than the other places I've been to in Vietnam. By "cooler" I mean under 80F, maybe as low as 75F. But under 80F is not considered "cool" by the Vietnamese; they consider it freezing. As soon as the temperature drops below 80F, they don thick sweaters and snow jackets.

They actually have a Hilton hotel in Hanoi, and I stayed there one night just for fun so that I could say "I stayed at the Hanoi Hilton (and escaped!)".

Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliputians

All SE Asians are small but the tiniest of all are the Vietnamese, and you really notice it here. Probably because everything here is downsized for the Vietnamese body size (much more so than the other SE Asian countries): houses, doors, furniture, vehicles, utensils, everything. Shower heads are often at chest height. See the table and chairs in the photo on the left? The table is at knee height and the plastic chairs are the type we buy for small children. But it's not a children's playset. It's found in every restaurant and is perfectly sized for the Vietnamese adult. There are no decent bicycles anywhere in Vietnam. In fact there is only one type of bicycle here -- a girl's frame single-speed cruiser with a basket in front, like the old Schwinn bikes from the 1950s. Even with the seat raised to maximum height, my knees were hitting my chest. Even so, I must have been pedalling unbelievably fast by vietnamese standards, because I always drew amazed looks, and motorbike riders would turn around and marvel that I was going nearly as fast as them.

In general the whole country is appears to be constructed for an eight-year-old American child, which is the same size as a Vietnamese adult. I am not tall by any means -- just average height -- but I positively *tower* over everyone here. I now know what Gulliver must have felt like during part of his travels.

Maria's Birthday Party

Maria turned 23 today (though here they call that 24), so Stefan and I took her out for her birthday. Stefan is a nice fellow from Sweden whom I befriended here in Mui Ne. Maria is a girl who works at Gecko, out favorite bar/restaurant in Mui Ne, owned by a Frenchman. Her real Vietnamese name is Thanh, but like a lot of young Vietnamese girls these days, she's adopted an English nickname. She mentioned yesterday that her birthday is today and that she really, really wanted a birthday cake. Stefan and I discussed it and we decided it would be fun for the three of us to go out and celebrate Maria's birthday.

There's not much in Mui Ne, so we hopped in a taxi to the next bigger town. First stop was the bakery, and Maria picked out the biggest cake they had. We had them write her name and age on the cake. By then it was lunch time. I love goat meat, so I picked the restaurant -- a place called Lao De (Goat Soup), and we ordered the Lao De and also BBQ goat. We went to an outdoor fair and took some birthday photos. Then we went to the mall to buy some small gifts for Maria. Stefan bought her a pair of earrings, and I bought her a book and a balloon and a photo frame. Finally we went to the Karaoke place. They give you a private room and your own karaoke machine. We alternated between singing Vietnamese and English songs, and ate some of the cake. All in all it was a fun day, and Maria was thrilled and very, very happy. Of course Stefan and I paid for everything. Maria makes about $68/month in her job. We probably spent about that much in total today, so she'd never be able to afford something like this on her own.

A Tale of Two Coconuts

I arrived yesterday in Mui Ne, a nice beach town about 4 hours from Saigon. Today I hiked to the "Fairy Stream". The stream is only a few inches deep, so you can walk in the stream itself. The water is a deep red-brown, from the color of the soil, and intricately carved limestone structures. I didn't see any actual Fairies, but I felt sure they must live in these structures. There did seem to be something magical about the place.

Like many other places, there are kids nearby who run up to you and try to be your "guide" where no guide is necessary. They will walk with you for a while, and then expect to get paid for their "services". I usually dismiss them but this time I allowed a couple of kids (brother and sister) to "guide" me because they were cute and funny, and I played with them along the way.

As we were walking I heard a loud "THUD"! A coconut had just fallen a few feet to my right. I looked up -- there were coconut trees all around me, and there was a strong wind. If that coconut had fallen on my head it would surely be fatal. I recalled Newton's Laws and started to mentally calculate the speed of a falling coconut when I heard another "THUD" -- a coconut had just fallen a few feet to my left. I screamed and ran. My kid guides giggled and ran after me. We ran like that all the way to the "waterfall". I put that it quotes because it's really an abuse of the term to call it a "waterfall". It actually should be called "a little stream of water pouring over a few rocks".

When I returned back I paid my kid guides for their "services". I found they weren't that concerned with the amount, but the sister was adamant that she should not get less than her brother.

While the stream may have been fancifully named, I felt it was an enchanting experience nevertheless.