SAIGON II

The train from Hoi An to Saigon took about 20 hours. For four of those hours I was in the rear cabin with the staff drinking cheap Vietnamese whiskey and singing karaoke ("A Whiter Shade of Pale", "As Tears Go By"- we couldn't figure out how to move past the A's). The train itself was an old Soviet behemoth, all boxy metal and wooden benches. I watched the countryside go by, slept quite a bit, smoked cigarettes out the window, read Uncle Ho's biography, and felt pretty weird the whole time.


Saigon has been nice to return to, but it's driving me crazy.


I'm not homesick, but I miss my friends quite a bit.

HOI AN II

The streets by the river are completely flooded and the sky's been gray and wet but I went for a swim today in the South China Sea and it was perfect until the tide went in too far and took away my shoes and glasses but luckily I made it back to the shore in time so then I went and got some noodles and now I'm watching a Queen Latifah movie in my hotel room.

HOI AN

so my 6-day motorcycle trip through the central highlands is over now and i'm sitting in a HUGE hotel room with two kingsize beds and it's fucking pouring rain outside.


hoi an is a beautiful old town, "old" being relative in vietnam because most places were completely destroyed by bombs only 40 years ago. hoi an wasn't one of those places. it has all these gorgeous frenchy and chinesey buildings, most of them hundreds of years old, and because of this and its seaside charm it's a crazy tourist magnet.


after 6 days in the jungle or in towns where i was the only honky, i'm shocked to see so many broad, pasty people in one place. kind of a letdown. everything's more expensive and all the townpeople are trying to sell shit constantly, especially kids on the street with ceramic buffalo whistles and junk.



earlier today i went to a blacksmith's house and saw how he makes farming tools from bombshell fragments and flare casings. then he invited long and i into his house. his whole family sat around and we talked for about an hour. people have been like that everywhere in the highlands- warm, genuinely hospitable, happy to show me how to process rice, how to harvest wheat, how to pick black pepper, how to dry coffee, how to get raw latex from rubber trees, how to weave silk on a loom, how to make bricks. the people in the rainforests and rice fields are really amazing.


so.


i'm eating new and delicious stuff every day.


i drank goat's blood rice wine the other night.



i'm hungry. love, nicholas.

KON TUM

the keyboard hêre is all vietnamesey, so typing's difficult...

i decided to skip nha trang and head up to Hoi An through all of the central highlands... lots of ethnic minority villages, M'Nông and Ê Đê êspecially...

everything is young hêre, big families with lots of babies and kids running around, puppies and baby calves and water buffalo. the kids love to shout "HELLO!" at me everywhere i go, êspecially when walking through neighborhoods.


i met the greatest living elephant hunter in his seventh wife's house. his mother-in-law was 20 years younger than him. more later....


tropically yours,
nicholas

DA LAT

everything is too beautiful and amazing to try to describe on the internet.


people in vietnam are the friendliest, most open people i've ever met.


da lat is in the central highlands, up in the jungly mountains. it's wet here, not as sticky-warm as in saigon. there are old french-style chateaus and shit everywhere and THE MOST AMAZING BUILDING I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY WHOLE LIFE. it looks like it belongs in barcelona.
check other people's pictures of it on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=crazy+house+dalat

i'm going on a motorcycle trek tomorrow through the mountains, north to nha trang (the beach). it'll be a 3-day journey, so no internet.


i love all the msgs i've been getting from my friends and i want more! tell me what you're up to!