Wearing the Moneybelt

So today I ship out of comfy Phan Rang to Van Hung commune by way of Nha Trang to start my ISP. I move in with a homestay for 16 days, do some (a lot of) interviewing, and hang out on the very beach that inspired Jacques Cousteau to pursue marine biology.

I have my passport and money tucked into this stupid Rick Steves belt, and it actually making me feel more prepared. Ok then.

Electricity is a given, but wifi is less certain, so this blog may be sparse. However, if I'm lucky, I can borrow a camera from MCD.

Wish me luck.

To the No Reservations Crew:

http://www.priceoftravel.com/201/the-best-vietnamese-banh-mi-sandwich-in-the-world/

I'll add that to the list of things to do while spending the first two weeks post-SIT in Hue and Hoi An, eating great food and getting some tailor made clothes.

Grandma Bao makes the best banh bao, by the way. Mushrooms, caramelized onions and such a sauce - the new favorite.

Phan Rage

I had a blog post written in a Word document, but I forgot to put it on my USB drive. So forget about it. It has something to do with Top Gear, productivity and the fear responsibility of actually being in charge of my own passport for the first time in months.

All the pictures below come from my good friend Izzy, whose superior Powershot is still kicking it. All credit to her:

Ha Noi - we really liked it here. Four partial days is not a way to see this city; I'll come back.

Style is very important.

A shot from the infamous Bia Hoi Ha Noi. Fresh beer, i.e. kegged pilsner, comes at about $0.25 USD for 400 mL. WIth salty peanuts, ginger chicken and pomelo salad, I mean come on, wow. It just keeps coming.

Rice paddies outside a H'mong village. Places still look like this, apparently. Thank God.

Inside out H'mong village homestay, preparing for lunch. Very nice rice wine here, which is consumed from a large clay pot through bamboo straws. The women and children can drink, too. The fresh forest vegetables were delicious.

Ha Long Bay, oh joy. It's not that I don't like fog (I do - remember the Great Britain post earlier in the blog?), but that I don't like tourism. At least, not the kind of tourism they do here. You'll see what I mean when you see...

The caves. Supposedly a UNESCO World Heritage site, but more like a poorly-done Disney ride. No sense of the mystic. The best part of Ha Long Bay were the haircuts/dyes and the second ride on the Immodium Express (just kidding about the last one.

Remember that train ride I was whining about? This was the impromptu 'cultural exchange' (an SIT-approved euphemism for imbibing in alcohol). Because honestly, when you're on that train for 36 hours, what else is there to do? 

On top of the Red Rock in Nui Chua National Park - the campsite that night were hammocks in trees next to a gorgeous mountain stream. Showers were Dr. Bronner style and intensely refreshing. Pictures of the waterfalls to come once Eliza uploads her photos and I can steal those...

The inlet near the Raglai village.

Cham pottery - notable for being made without a pottery wheel.

Happy Easter!

Quail eggs - an essential part of any banh bao.

Hello Readership,

• I will post some photos tonight if it kills me. 
• Last night we had dinner at a goat meat restuarant with our field lecturer. We had some excellent goat curry, the best spring rolls I've yet had, and banana rice wine. 
• The ISP officially begins today with the departure of Meg and Adam, who are currently 1 hour into their 36 hour train ride back to Ha Noi. I'm leaving the nest as well, moving from this gorgeous beachfront resort to a more fitting backpacker mini-hotel. Hopefully, with a few more emails and hour Googling, I'll be about ready to make the 200 km trek north to Van Phong Bay in Van Ninh district, Khanh Hoa province. There, I'll spend two weeks working with MCD, a Vietnamese NGO (www.mcdvietnam.org), interviewing a number of shrimp farming households about intensification of shrimp production, how they might do it, and why. The project needs to be done by May 16th for a presentation with Oxfam, so I have to get it out of the way fast. After that, I think I'll try surfing.c
• I'll be practicing the art of making banh bao all summer. Deliciousness assured. 

All my best.

Winning!

Doing a literature review by the beach. Funny how the deadline (tomorrow) doesn't really stress me out. At all.

Lucas and Winston

Before I jump on that train with new shoes and a bottle of Baileys for the incredible synergy of Irish cream and Vietnamese slow drip coffee, I have one final post:


Fresh ramps in Saratoga - another win for upstate New York in the spring:

Lucas sent me this photo this morning - last year, after being shown the secret gathering spot by Chef Ben, we gathered a bunch to eat and sell. I'm glad somebody in Saratoga is getting ramp stank breath. They are delicious. Hmmp.

And secondly, to any Skidmore students: I was planning on taking African American Experience next year because I wanted to try taking a course solely for the professor teaching it. Sadly, I've just discovered over the interwebs that Professor Grady-Willis is taking a year of absence. As such, if there is another course out there (preferably 300-level, or cultural diversity requirement) that seems a worthy replacement, please email me or comment below. As of now, the only course I know for sure that I'll be taking is the one credit capstone prep...

Arsenal v. Liverpool

The day started in Ha Long Bay with three Immodium and ended in Hanoi with a vodka, Kahlua and Baileys menthe (Dirty Girl) at our favorite bar, The Dragonfly. I really thought I was done with the stomach issues.

Ha Long Bay was hardly worth it, sorry to say. The bay was surreal, and as we got to sail out on our private junk, it was pretty relaxing. The scenery is incredible; this time of year, fog covers all the islands, making it seem like a mystical journey through a Zelda universe. Other than the actual journeying, though, it was lame. We went to the UNSECO World Heritage site to see the caves, and it was like walking though a Disney ride - colored lights everywhere, kids yelling, loud tourists with flashy cameras. It wasn't what I expected, and it really wasn't my scene. Neither was the beach we went to. That, too, was covered in tourists (though mostly domestic), and serene and moody it was not. I would have preferred another full day in Ha Noi, because this city is awesome, and I don't know when I will be able to make it back here.

Anyway, that's all in the past. I'm going to the fabric market tomorrow to pick up some Vietnamese silk lining for my custom Khmer trousers, and maybe some dope leather shoes as well. After that, it's on to a sleeper train for 36+ hours, 6 people to a cabin, and our final excursion before the ISP begins. So much work to catch up on before then, and so little time. But, like the belly troubles and long days spent traveling, it's all part of the new normal.

Here's to the spring peepers, Cheese-its and NBC comedies that I'm missing. It should be quiet on this end for maybe a week - Nui Chua is unlikely to have Wifi. Enjoy the break! Read some important things instead.

Love you all.

Skidmore

Weak sauce but it is 7 in the morning in Viet Nam. Hi SU!

Work on the Junk

I'm sorry that it has been quiet here as of late. My ISP proposal is due in 10 days, and crazier than that is the fact that the project starts in 10 days. So we're trying to work overtime here, but it is difficult to type on a netbook when all of Ha Long bay is floating alongside me in a dreamy fog...

In other news, I will be working with this NGO: http://mcdvietnam.org/
They are helping me to arrange homestays, contacts, permission letters and translation, and I will be helping them to jumpstart their projects with shrimp farmers (they already work with lobster farmers).

I still don't have a working camera, but my friends have some great photos that I promise will get up here at some point. They don't upload them as often as I uploaded mine, so it may be a few days more. In the place of more recent photos, I offer some cool ones gleaned from their Picasa accounts:

Hanoise

Weather in Hanoi is like the spring we missed by going straight from a New England winter to a Mekong Delta summer. It is damp here, and the raw garlic in vinegar found on street food tables serves to ward off sicknesses. I've had a cold myself for the past week, so here's hoping it works. I've stopped taking Malarone because there is no risk of malaria and I'm sick of feeling dizzy and dreaming about impossible surgeries - that stuff is not fun.

I'm sitting downstairs in my hotel with a finger of Laphroaig, having spent the day mainlining Northern Vietnamese culture. The internet is slow, enough for me to learn that Mr. Boner has finally let the President get back to making progress. It would have been interesting to have the government shutdown, but I think the satisfaction of having it be the 'Republican's fault' wouldn't really be worth the hit to the economy. I'm talking up my ass - I don't know enough about these things and I'm literally as far away from the US as I can geographically be, but it feels righteous to (attempt to) be a good global citizen.

I won't be able to write everything I should about our river excursion, but I'll get out the basics: His Excellency Tana is the head of the River Guard, an organization he modeled after teh US Coast Guard, and his mission is to protect the rare river dolphins while bringing rural villages out of poverty. He is incredibly charismatic, good-hearted and smart, and he has really changed the lives of many people living along the river. Our first evening was spent in the fledgling eco-tourism town that he is working with. I say fledgling because it isn't open to the public yet - we only get in because Andrew (our professor) and His Excellency are tight. So the village cooked us a calf.

The 'God-Made Waterfalls' are only accessible by boat, and as we were in with the River Guard, we got to go swim in them. Incredible, so beautiful and fun, deep pools and water massages - wow. Really, so much swimming in general. We are far enough up the river that the water is completely clean and pure, and downright beautiful. We've been jumping off rocks, pole-vaulting into pools, and swimming with river dolphins. A mother and her calf came within 15 meters of us - outrageous. I've used up all my superlatives.

Chillin at a guard station with the kids of subsistence farmers, a water buffalo and her calf. Meg is the giant.

Another ecotourism venture: they build these platforms over the river, which has a cobblestone bottom, and tourists come to get a water massage, float around against the strong current, and picnic on the platforms. Families operate the platforms, which are deconstructed before each wet season and rebuilt when the water lowers again. As a side note, the tourists were exclusively domestic.

His Excellency likes music. And since the Khmer New Year is next week, he threw a party for his staff. So we partied with 300 Khmer, eating fantastic food, watching traditional dances, getting floral necklaces, and performing some American songs in exchange for Khmer songs. I sang John Mayer tunes on this stage, and we even repped the Downlow. This is in Cambodia, yo...

The Jah Rastafari bus  -  7 hours of bliss. MUCH better than other buses we've had. No AC, but the windows open, and that's all we need.

Meg, His most excellent Excellency, me and 'The Fat One'.

More photos to come, sure, and there are videos of us singing.I will post a link once my friend puts them up. As a halfway point token, here's the Picasa link with all of these photos in one place:

https://picasaweb.google.com/102280088994956631325/GordonGoesEast?authkey=Gv1sRgCKOZ2ovhnP2xwAE#

Peace

Slambodia

Leaving Phnom Pehn today and flying to Hanoi tonight. I've been either busy or sickly these past few days, but I'll put some pictures up soon. Our Mekong River Excursion was insane, you won't even believe it. Unfortunately my Powershot has a lens error and won't shut down, so I don't know if I will be able to post any more of my photos, but I can link to the blogs of my friends and keep you all visually entertained.

World and local news (both here and at home) is putting knots in my back. Anybody have a summer job for me?

Teaser (until I get better internet):

Bourdain Moment

If you want to buy Cambodian rice wine, walk up to a tuk tuk driver, ask him, "Do you know where to get rice wine?" and then hop in. A $3 ride will get you a 2 km trek to the suburbs, help with finding, tasting, ordering and purchasing the drink ($0.50/L), some good conversation and an invitation to shoot automatic weapons. We had to decline on the shooting as it cost $40/magazine, but we know where to find him if we change our minds.

Rocks and Boats

Cambodia is turning out to be wicked awesome. They even have the only dark beer I've seen in Southeast Asia - the Angkor Stout. If it looks like a stout, smells like a stout and tastes like a stout, and it isn't another variation on a pilsner, then it is a damn good stout.

Working hard on my ISP (not quite...). I will probably be in Ninh Thuan province, investigating what shrimp farmers think about intensifying their shrimping practices, and seeing if their constructs of progress/profit/risk management match up with the available science on the sustainability of shrimping. My hypothesis is that they won't, and that we don't need to be pushing input- and capital-intensive methods of food production on households that can't risk losing their investments. This article sounds encouraging. One has to be mad delicate in talking about these things, though, because it can sound pretty insulting for a Westerner to tell a poor farmer that he shouldn't follow in his neighbor's footsteps, buy a bunch of pesticides and get rich quick. The consequences that invariably come out of intensive farming methods are often a few years down the line, and therefore just far away enough to not be of worry or consideration - that is the problem.

Other than that, doing some sightseeing at the Angkor temples, learning, almost sinking, shrimping, eating prahoc, and more. Photos here:

A floating house anchor.

Standing on top of a floating croc cage, a la Steve-O.

The Mono-Troll in her cave with the watersnake pet.

Hi Mom, hi Dad.