China Trip: February 2009

More pictures from Vietnam

Over a MILLION Vietnam Dong!! One US Dollar is 17,000 Vietnamese Dong

My "last picture" as I told the guy who rented me the bike... He thought about this for a minute and then asked what I meant. I told him that the odds were good I wouldn't live much longer... He gave me a new helmet

So I actually drove by this person, stopped got my camera, took some pictures (that didn't come out) as she biked by me, then drove after her to take these two shots:

I'm sure she was scared out of her mind at this crazy white guy on a motor-bike with a camera snapping away, swerving all over the road... but she's transporting a huge piece of ice on her bike! How cool is that!

So a few hours after this I had my first (and luckily my last) accident on the bike. I laid it down when I was in some dirt. I wasn't prepared for how powerful the little guy was, but luckily the most damage was to my pride. I got a pretty good gash on my right arm, which has just about healed up... So the first day of biking got me to Cat Tien, a national park in southern Vietnam. If anyone goes to Vietnam, I would highly recommend you NOT go here. It's just not all that cool, but for some odd reason they do have bears in cages. I couldn't get closer, but trust me, it was a bear:

I decided to check out the local "hospital" to get some anti-bacteria stuff for my arm... Nobody was there...

My bed that night. I did make reservations (who would have thought?) so they were nice enough to rent me a sweet hammock. Now, I'm not a professional, but I know a few knots from my climbing days. In fact I trusted my life to knots, but I could NOT get this thing to stay up! I'm ashamed to admit it, but I tried everything. The self tightening knots didn't work at all, I just kept sliding down the pole they told me to tie it to. I sucked up my pride and went to ask someone in the office. They looked at me like I was stupid and showed me the exact same knot I was using. I slept on the ground.

There's a lot of them (for me at least) so I'll have to do this in increments...

Early morning markets:

Happy New Years!!

These characters would show up randomly all over the country while I was there (I'm going out on a limb and say that they weren't the same people...). They'd be accompanied by a group of people beating drums and singing, it was pretty cool.