As Ice Cream Drips

So today in Saigon, I decided to move on to Cambodia. I left the homestay somewhat late this afternoon, went to downtown-area, and at the first travel agency I could find, I booked a ticket with Mekong Express to Phnom Penh.



"Why Mekong Express?" you might ask. Well, because someone on the internet said it was good.

I think I need not explain more.

Anyway, so I'm here again at a Baskin Robbins in Ho Chi Minh City again. There seem to be an extraordinary number of these places here; I searched on Google and I think there were ten results, and tonight I'm eating at one which doesn't even show up in those results.

Soo...I'm eating enough ice cream for two people. By myself. In Saigon. Before heading to Phnom Penh.

Oh, and I'm staying one more night in Saigon, as my bus leaves tomorrow afternoon. I don't want to speak badly of my previous host, as he was kind and helpful, and would doubtless have continued to be a great host to me if I'd stayed longer, but I really need to keep moving, keep close to where I want to see things, and his place unfortunately wasn't close to the majority of the interesting things in Saigon. It took a 30-60 minute bus ride to get to the city center, at which point you could get to most of the places by foot pretty easily. I'm now staying basically in the city center, at about double the price...but that's not really the point. I'm heading out tomorrow at 1 PM.

My ice cream continues to melt as I type, but it gives me motivation to type fast, and the cool of the ice cream shop and the ice cream itself hurries me on. I got Gold Medal Ribbon again tonight, as well as mint chocolate chip and strawberry cheese cake.

Story time: I met this guy today, who I hopefully will meet again on my way back through Vietnam. I hope I'll have plenty of time/money to dedicate to traveling with him as my guide. He had the ingenious idea sometime in the last several years to have his customers write down their experience and unless he left out the bad ones, I'm eager to have him guide me at least through some of southern Vietnam on my way back. He seems like a great guy, and I'd love to see the things he offers to show.

There's one of those capsule hotels here in Saigon, which I considered (although the capsules didn't look all that attractive, despite their $7 price), but did not ultimately choose. I searched on TripAdvisor for a bit for a hotel to stay the night at, turned up empty at a couple places, a few others I decided to turn down because of the price, and then I ended up going to a similar place, whose real-world price was higher by several dollars than that shown online.

This seems to be a trend, at least in my experience; I'll see a good or great price online, and going to the place in person will get me a few dollars markup on that price. To me, this makes absolutely no sense. Are there things offered to walk-in customers which aren't offered to online bookers? I don't know. Anna's Hotel charged me noticably more than TripAdvisor's options offered. Airbnb, though, has only gotten me worse prices because of their fees; that said, I haven't tried emailing the host separately from Airbnb and asking for a price, so I don't know if that'd be better or worse.

I've read up a little on how to wash clothes by hand and I'll probably try it within the next week or so. It seems easy enough, and hopefully it'll work well and my clothes can dry overnight. Maybe when I get good enough, I'll just wash my clothes at the same time as I take my shower and never really have dirty clothes. I hope I can manage that.

If you were to travel to Vietnam in the next few months or within the next year, my recommendation would be to get a motorcycle license both in your state and for international riding. There are a couple other things I've thought of previously, but they completely escape me right now.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, and it's kind of funny, so here goes. While I was in Hoi An, every now and then, as I was walking or biking places, I'd hear this sound, which most closely resembles the ice cream trucks that run around Minneapolis back home. The tunes aren't the tunes we hear at home, maybe they're based on more familiar Vietnamese music or something.

What's making music and going down the street in Hoi An? A garbage truck. Yep, that's how they do it. At home we basically have our garbage/recycling out at a given time, and it's taken whenever the truck comes by.

In Vietnam (or at least in Hoi An), the trucks drive around town playing music, and those tasked with taking out the garbage (I saw a few young Vietnamese kids holding garbage bags on the street as I was biking by once) stand with garbage next to the curb. The truck drives by and picks everything up.

On the back of the truck, which is slightly smaller than back home, but shaped largely the same, there are two or three, maybe four guys, all of whom are working to sort all the things they pick up.

And that, my friends, is how garbage works in Hoi An.

Just realized something. In much the same way that I think women and girls ought to take initiative in relationships and show their interest clearly, with words, because it's hard, I and other foreigners really ought to try to speak Vietnamese, not necessarily because we intend to gain any level of fluency, but because then we're both trying, and it's hard for both of us. It's difficult for them to speak English (even those with pretty good fluency have pretty bad accents), and it's difficult for me to speak Vietnamese. I could say how and why it's so difficult, but the same is true of English. It's foreign and unfamiliar and different, and even pronouncing simple words can seem as difficult as growing a new limb.

The fact is that they'll only get better if they practice, but how much would you practice if it seemed like you only failed? Probably not a whole lot. The amount of determination the Vietnamese have to learn English is impressive...or at least the evidence of said determination is impressive.

I am well, my stay at Quang's place was too short and not as happy as it could have been, and Saigon will hopefully be a return visit, like so many places before it. I wonder if I should return to the places I've seen and loved or go on to places I have neither seen nor loved yet, if for nothing but the possibility of loving them. It'd be sad not to see Anna and Hung again, as well as all the others I've seen on this trip. I would justify not seeing them again by saying I might never again, but it does no good to give up before I've even tried.

That said, I may or may not return to Vietnam. This not because it hasn't been fun (it's enormously fun and worth it), but rather because I hope to see somewhere else, maybe even make a living out of travel and teaching English.

Tomorrow I head out to Cambodia. With any luck, I'll have pictures of Angkor Wat and myself firing an RPG (separate locations, fortunately) within the week. Thanks for reading!

Edit: After I left Baskin Robbins tonight, I was offered marijuana again. Classy, Saigon.


!Noah!