Toronto, I'm home!

I wake up at 4am and decide to get ready to leave.

My route home is a bit laborious. Three flights. Bangkok to Tokyo; Tokyo to Vancouver; and Vancouver to Toronto. I have to get my luggage in Vancouver and re-check it. I am tired but I get to see the magic of human flight three times because I have requested only window seats.

I will be glad to get rid of my luggage which has gotten heavier and heavier as my trip has progressed.

I have this paranoid fear, much like I did coming back from my summer vacation from Guatemala last year, that I have forgotten how to cook. When I try hard to think about cooking, I come up blank.

My second flight from Tokyo to Vancouver is the most turbulent plane trip I've ever experienced. I manage to fall asleep, but I miss my meal, and have a dream of the plane crashing. Not reassuring. I feel nervous and think of dying and death - I figure my blog will be my final sentiments, publicly viewable, if I meet my fate in wreckage on the bottom of the ocean. I think I'm deluded, but I feel a bit resolved about dying if it were to happen. It's been a short but good life. Yeah, I’m deluded.

We don't crash on this flight, and if I make it through the last flight, I'll be home.

I wonder how my plants have fared without me. I am excited to see them and see how they've changed while I've been gone. I know they’ve taken the time to secretly grow in interesting ways in my absence.

Uh…weird, but I can’t remember my phone number anymore. Good thing I don’t have to call myself.

I am in Pearson airport and Danny picks me up.

Toronto, I’m home.

Last Day of Vacation!

For my last day in Bangkok, (and the last full day of my vacation), I decide to do something simple but active. I sign up for a bicycle tour of Bangkok with Co Van Kessel Bike tours. This company was founded by a Dutchman who's been living in Bangkok for 20 years and who wanted to provide tourists with a different way of seeing the city and surrounding outskirts.

I and eight other tourists have signed up for today's 7am to 12pm bike tour. I am the first one there (way too early) and the other tourists slowly trickle in bit by bit. The first couple is from Holland. The second couple arrives....also from Holland...then four more people come....from Holland as well. Besides these guys, I have met so many Dutch people on vacation. I am not surprised that the Dutch have chosen this particular tour, because they are a bicycling nation, and this company is founded by one of their own...but still, Holland must be empty!

After fitting our bikes, we ride into the heart of Bangkok's China town. It is hectic even at 7am on Saturday morning. Everyone is really polite when the 11 of us (9 tourists + 2 guides) take over the narrow and busy pathways and sidewalks in single file. No one is upset and a lot of people smile and wave. One of the Dutch exclaim that this is so different from Holland...there, if a cyclist is on the sidewalk, even if there's plenty of room (way more room than here) and even if he's not even near any pedestrian, there will be animosity towards him for violating pedestrian space. All the Dutch remark about how relaxed the Thai people are about traffic and other things. Pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, tuk tuks, taxis, cars and trucks all just putter through somehow. No one gets angry or upset about gridlock and everyone lets everyone else through. There isn't such a set rule for space use. It all interflows. Thai blood pressure must be pretty low.

The bike tour then takes us to the outskirts where we can see people doing some agricultural work. The entire tour requires three longboat ferries as well. Here are some sights along the way.

Temples.

Homes almost falling in.

Giant lizard.

Tones of fish fighting for bread.

A great day overall.

I decide to stick around Khaosan Rd and try to use up all my Thai Bhat on trinkets. While looking at t-shirts in the evening, it begins to drizzle a bit, but then suddenly it begins to thunder and rain big sobbing heavy drops and it gets very windy. T-shirt stands are being knocked over and giant umbrellas become airborne and get carried into Bangkok traffic. I and another customer are taking refuge under a small overhang while vendors are getting soaked as they try to cover up their wares and retrieve their flying umbrellas. The sky must be holding onto buckets because I soon find my flip flops under water, then my ankles. I am standing in Bangkok's overflowed sewers. I see disposable plastic and styrofoam containers float by along with cigarette butts, garbage and several large cockroaches; I don't want to think of what else might be in the flood liquid.

I'm trying to wring out my dress.

I begin to think about taking refuge back at my hotel so I put my labtop and Nick's camera into plastic bags and make a run for it. I get even more soaked. While passing by some scurrying vendors, I think that perhaps in this horrible weather some of the jewlery sellers may be willing to give me a good deal. Two necklaces later I am proven correct. 350 Bhat left...perfect...enough for a two hour massage. A good way to end off Thailand and my vacation.

I am in bed at 1am which has me a bit worried that I may oversleep and miss my alarm clock. The minibus taking me to the airport is supposed to arrive at 5am.

I'm waking up every hour and looking at my watch.

Goodbye Motherland.

There's a big downpour in the afternoon which I use as my excuse to catch up on a weeks worth of blogging. Ensconced, I type away until it's time for dinner.

Under great protest by all the participants, I take Minh, Cuong, his wife and my father out for dinner.

We sit down and are given each a bunch of little dishes of stuff and in the centre there is a sizzling miniwok filled with oil and fish and dill. This just keeps on getting filled with more fish and as the night goes on. My father sits to the left of me smoking and drinking beer with his meal. Minh and Cuong have some beer too. Cuong's wife has water and I have a lemon shake. The fish is delicious and (thank Darwin) boneless.

It's then that I notice that everyone has this bowl of pink grey paste except for me. I ask for one too and Minh just says no, and then a bowl of plain fish sauce is placed in front of me instead. I protest and say that I want what everyone else has. She then reluctantly agrees and gets the waiter to get me some of the pink paste. It turns out to be a type of shrimp paste that has a very strong odour and taste. They were all afraid that I wouldn't like it, because many non-Vietnamese don't. I like it quite a bit and Cuong comments that I can eat like a Vietnamese...I find this comment funny.

Then Cuong says that our father's family makes the paste. My dad comes from a small sea side community in the middle of Vietnam. His father was a fisherman and he comes from a long line of them. He said that his town is very beautiful and no tourists go there because it's small. He says that I should visit sometime.

Cuong mentions that his dad has always talked about me, and never let him forget that he had a sister somewhere.

Tomorrow I leave for a 9am flight to Bangkok. My vacation is almost over.

Day 3 at Halong Bay - Biking, More Family

I wake for the sunrise. I am the only one up and about. I walk the small beach and find a lot of smoky green sea glass which I find kind of lovely. Sure, the glass is a sign of human contamination but the weathering of the glass by the elements is poetic. I collect a bunch of it, but decide to leave it behind in the end, along with a few shells.

I settle down to continue reading “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” I think there is something very essential about the understanding of evolution and its mechanisms, definitely revolutionary for the planet. Once you understand that all living things are connected in lines of descent it makes it less acceptable to contaminate, exploit, destroy, commodify, and carve up the planet at its joints. You can go further and connect that grain of sand to yourself - to the magic of stardust origins.

The probability that any particular individual on the planet is living right now is so small. For example...me...everything had to go right for me to be here. All my ancestors had to pair up exactly like they did and survive to create each successive generation in exactly the way they did. Any change in variables would have resulted in a termination of an ancestor long before my time, and there would be no me. There are also so many other variables, that if not actualized in the exact way they played out, I (or you) wouldn't be here. We are all almost impossibilities, living and sharing lives together in this point in time on this Earth. My mind wobbles. This brings to mind a line from a foreign film watched on an airplane.... "Ingratitude is a flaw of intelligence." I hope that I never think myself so wise as to be ungrateful for my life or yours or that of the trees and birds around me. Better yet, I hope that wisdom is the eventual goal of intelligence and with enough wisdom (which for me involves gratitude and compassion along with intelligence) we can think and intuit ourselves out of this mess we've created.

After breakfast, I close my book and go to pack my bags. Time to say goodbye to the island and do the last activities of the tour. We head to Cat Ba Island and Theu is our guide today and points out or route on Cat Ba. From the low point to the high point we will be biking one part of Cat Ba.

Before the bike ride, however, we get a chance to look around the town a bit. At the market I spot all manner of seafood including these prehistoric huge horseshoe crabs in tanks. Incredible…I thought I’d only ever see them in nature specials. Somehow it’s strange to see these majestic creatures reduced to common seafood in an aquarium.

I get the same feeling when I see a jar filled with various wondrous sea creatures, as if they were so much assorted chocolates in a box. I have a particular fondness for sea horses so it’s sad to see these delicate creatures suspended in a jar. There are so many of us on this planet, nothing potentially edible seems to escape our notice. We will munch our way into extinctions, ours and theirs.

For some reason, I find it more difficult to think about wild creatures being caught and slaughtered for food than I do about domestic animals raised for the same purpose. It’s almost counterintuitive…it would seem better to have lived a free life before dying as a meal than living your whole life in captivity and then meeting the same fate, yet I think I relate to the free animal more…the domesticate is less relatable.

There are so many domestic animals (billions) that have been bred to be ideal as food animals (if you take a look at the history of animal domestication, you can see that some animals really are meant more for domestication than others - we could never viably domesticate tigers for example - ironically, if we did, they probably wouldn’t be on the extinction list.) I think ideally, as a meat eater, I wouldn’t want to eat any wild game or fish (unless their numbers were huge), there is so little wild left. If I’m already implicated in the slaughtering of animals in my food consumption, I’d rather eat ethically raised domesticated animals where possible and practical.

After visiting the market, we visit Hospital Cave. I thought I heard the name wrong when it was first mentioned, but indeed, its name is correct. During the American-Vietnamese war, one of the numerous caves in Cat Ba was turned into a hospital. People carried in tones of cement, steel, and equipment to excavate and build a fully functioning hospital in a cave. It took 3 years to build and it's pretty cool. Being inside it is a little eerie when I imagine the dark dank rooms full of medical equipment and sick and dying people.

Hospital Cave.

Theu says that when the Americans were trying to attack and go through Halong Bay, they found the way very difficult because of the thousands of islands. Several of the taller points on some of the islands, like the one I climbed yesterday, had lookout points on top to spot the American invaders.

This day is hotter than the last two. I put on sunscreen because the sun’s strong enough to burn. My two adventure companions, the French guys, are beginning to look a bit lobstery.

This Vietnamese woman isn't taking any chances with the sun.

The ride is not very long, perhaps only 1.5 hours at most, but the road is good and the ride was fun we had a nice view the whole way, sometimes with coastline. Several little hills add challenge and interest to the ride. I have to do more bike vacations.

At the end of our ride we end up at this small and incredibly welcomingly breezy restaurant. After lunch and picking up yet another cat, (when will I break down and get my own?) I relax with more of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.”

After lunch, we take a high-speed boat back to our minibus. Roman really is a lobster now.

We’re on a 3 hour bus ride back to Hanoi. Bye bye Halong Bay. I would recommend Ocean Tours for anyone wanting to see Halong Bay. They were very organized, had good English speaking guides (not perfect English, but helpful, enthusiastic and nice.) The adventure activity package is also perfect for someone who wants to move their blood a bit, but not necessarily feel like they’re completing a marathon. Lots of time to relax as well as to play.

When I get back to Hanoi and drop off my stuff at Minh's, Cuong picks me up for dinner at his place. So besides my dad, bro, his wife and the little squealer, there are also three others. The woman is my cousin; she's there with her husband and son. Just more and more relatives are coming out of the woodwork. They also tell me that I have relatives in Saigon who have invited me to stay with them whenever I want to visit.

After dinner a couple of friends of Cuong's come to see the baby to celebrate its reaching the one month mark. I encourage Cuong to show me some talent and he busts out his guitar and sings an Elvis song. After a few lines the baby begins to cry (in criticism) but Cuong finishes out the song exclaiming that she was in fact singing with him.

My father then shows me three black and white photos. Two I recognise from my mom's collection of my baby photos, but one I have never seen before. It's one of me and my father. Before this trip, I had never known what my father looked like because my mom got rid of all his photos when she left him. It's weird to see me with him as a kid - visual proof that I was here with him. On the back is written stuff in Vietnamese and dated shortly before my mom left Vietnam with me. My father says he was very sad that day and wrote a poem on the back of the photo. I think it basically says that he is really sad that I'm leaving and will miss me a lot and that I should grow up to be a good person and take care of my mom.

He said that when I was not yet even two years old, he taught me Vietnamese poetry and I was able to recite this very long and complicated famous poem. He said that when I was learning to walk, I would always try to get up and walk on my own and break free of his arms if he tried to help. He also said that I was really smart. It doesn't feel like he's talking about me, instead it's like he's talking about this other person who existed in the past. I'm not sure if I can even believe the memory of an old man who has probably recreated and embellished the past in fond ways. I'll have to verify these facts with my mom...but then again, when questioned about my childhood, she always says she can't remember. She doesn't remember how long she was in labour, what time of the day I was born, how I behaved as a child. She doesn't really like talking about the past.

This is all kinda strange still.



Time to go back to Minh's place for some shut eye.

Day 2 at Halong Bay - Trekking

I wake up with one foot outside my bugnet and my index toe is throbbing a bit. I scratch it and see that I've been bitten by something right where the nail meets the flesh. Stinging, itchy and annoying.

At 9:30am me and the two French guys, Roman and Sat (who are the only others doing the adventure package) take a boat to the island that we will do our trekking on. The view from our boat.

On the island we rent bikes to ride to the base of the mountain we will climb. The ride makes me very happy and the view is gorgeous.

Scenes!

We ride into this small village of fifty houses that is near the base of the mountain. They grow lots of rice here as you can see.

We leave our bikes at a small restaurant in the village and we see our guide stop to smoke something out of a bong. It's tobacco. I ask if I can try.

I begin coughing. This stuff is strong! Roman then tries even though he gave up cigarettes two months ago. He begins coughing too and agrees that the stuff is potent.

I ask him if the tobacco gave him cravings to return to smoking, but he says he doesn’t regret giving it up cause he has a lot more energy now and is saving tones of money.

We walk the rest of the way to the base of the mountain. Our guide leads us up. It is very slippery and surprisingly very steep and lined with vicious looking spiky rocks. I wouldn't want to land on any of those. We all begin talking about how going downhill will be a lot more dangerous and difficult. On the way up we pass by a group of sixteen Spanish people. They look really tired. I'm not that tired but I'm getting really hot and big drops of sweat are dripping down my face and off the point of my chin. Roman looks like he went for a swim in his own sweat. The steepness and slipperiness forces me to use my hands to climb and I soon find myself breathing very heavily and my heart is beating hard. I am lugging 2L of water and some money, and I now kick myself for not having brought any energy restoring snacks with me.

We pass by a group of tourists coming down and a few of them are using climbing sticks to help with the descent. I push the perilous thought of descent away from my mind since I still have the ascent ahead of me. I tell myself, I will be fine going down; of course I can do it. I believe it. Nearing exhaustion we reach the peak!...and it was worth it for the view. Bellisimo! Our guide Huong, isn't even sweating. He has drank about 30mL of his water...while my bottle is nearly empty. He says that he can easily run up and down the mountain without any problems. He comes from a hillside tribe near Sapa and has been climbing mountains since he was a child. I ask him if he thinks most tourists are out of shape, he laughs and says "yes."

A Spanish guy who arrived to the top with us takes off his tee-shirt and wrings out about a litre of liquid from it. I asked him if he had poured water over himself to cool down. He says nope, it's just his sweat.

Our guide tells us to be very careful going down and shows us a cellphone photo of a tourist who gashed his knee open when he slipped and fell on one of those large jagged rocks.

Our guide leads and I'm next followed by Roman and Sat. At one point the guide tells me to step lightly and he hops from jagged rock to jagged rock to show me how easy it is; I keep in mind that he's part man part billy goat. But in the end it just requires a bit of faith in your legs, a fast response in your muscles, and a gentle springy stepping action. The faith is the hard part for me, especially with my creeky knees (I left my ibuprofen at the beach by accident), but I begin to try and go faster. Descending isn't as hard as I had thought and even the pain in my knees doesn't stop me from being limber like it usually would. I feel a greater faith in my legs. I slip around on a few muddy parts but never fall and soon begin to draw away from Sat and Roman who are having a more difficult time descending. Huong goes back to make sure they're okay. He comes back to me at one point and tells me "You are much better than they are." My pride is appropriately stroked and I try to go even faster. Oops...I nearly fall, but recover in time. As the Christain bible says, pride cometh before the fall...almost.

Base...I live! No injuries.

The bike ride back to the boat as very relaxing and a nice change for the body after all the climbing.

We then take the boat to Monkey island where the monkeys are more tame (due to human contact) and easier to see. It turns out they are disappointingly easy to see at the beach. They hang around the tourists who are sunning themselves and swimming. I feel like we're in a human and monkey zoo. The monkeys just come up to you without fear. They get fed all the time by tourists. Even I was going to bring bananas but couldn't find any. Now I'm glad I can't feed them. Roman is dissappointed too and says he wants to find some monkeys on the more forested areas of the island. We take a quick trek away from the beach and ascend into greenery. On the way we see only one monkey, but it is really fat and sitting on a bamboo ladder. He doesn't budge as we get closer and I worry about him biting us since we were warned that they do that sometime...be he remains unruffled and just blinks a few times. He must see his fair share of tourists along this route.

Back to the beach. I swim. I feel great.

I will sleep well tonight.