Tongariro National Park sits pretty much in the middle of the north island, and is home to three pretty impressive mountains. Mts. Tongariro and Ngauruhoe are classic jagged peaks, topped with the requisite snow, while Mt. Ruapehu is an almost perfect cone. You may recongize it as Mt. Doom from a certain mythical land of Mordor. One of the absolute “must-do” activities in New Zealand is the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a one day, almost 20 kilometer trek around the side of Mt. Ngauruhoe and up across the saddle between Mt. Tongariro and Mt Ruapehu, bringing you within a hundred meters or so of each summit before a steep descent on the other side. Given good conditions it’s definitely possible to summit either of the mountains creating the saddle, even for amateurs like me. Good conditions were not to be had however…

The day started well enough – a big breakfast at 5ish, arrival at the bus stop at 6 (the track is not a loop), a blazing red sunrise, and arrival at the trailhead sometime around 7:30. The conditions were perfect – sunny, warm, and just a bit of cloud starting to come over the top of Mt. Tongariro. We started fast, and quickly covered the first few kilometers of trail meandering through alpine bush. The whole time the imposing cone of Mt. Doom loomed ahead, and I couldn’t wait to get up there and try for the summit. The clouds were starting to obscure the top of Mt Tongariro though, and I put my camera away sure that if I waited a few minutes for the clouds to pass I’d be able to snap all the shots I wanted.

By the time we reached the “Devil’s Staircase” it was clear that the 10% POP from the morning was now 100%. Additionally, everything was fogged out by cloud, and the wind was picking up. The busdriver/guide had told us rather sternly that no one should try for a summit that was covered by clouds, should it happen. By now the upper two-thirds of the mountains were hidden by the thickening blanket of cloud.

The gruelling hour or so steep climb was finished, but there was no view on top to make it all worthwhile. Visibility may have optimistically been 10m, and it had become soggy (we were walking through a cloud) and windy. We snapped a few pictures at our “summit” for the day, and though it wasn’t a real one, it didn’t really matter. As far as I could tell, all directions led down from where I was, despite the fact that the real cloud-obscured summits were less than 1000m away. The first kilometer of the trek down was treacherous scree, but it soon leveled out into this bizarre, barren landscape. Not really knowing what the moon looks like, the best adjective I can find to describe these volcanic plains is lunar. There was nothing alive up there, weird gray and black sands were piled into dunes and drifts running in all directions, and the surface was scattered with boulders and craters. A couple of kilometers into this moonscape and we were greeted by the glowing green of Emerald Lake, one of Tongariro’s volcanic craters. This was the suggested picnic spot for lunch, but after spending an eternity huddled behind a boulder out of the wind trying in vain to get my frozen fingers to open a granola bar we trekked on. Lunch would wait until the Crossing was complete.

Descending brought better weather, improved visibility, functioning digits, and eventually, life. Scattered patches of battered groundcover quickly turned to the grassy plains which dominate the upper habitable regions of the mountains. Some kilometers later and evidence of shrubs and flowering plants, and then the treeline. I had only ever seen pictures of treelines before, and while they seemed rather distinct they did nothing to prepare me for the real thing. Within a span of no more than 5 meters the terrain had shifted from scraggly shrubs to dense forest, complete with birds, insect swarms, and all the other elements of a thriving community. I never imagined such a sharp distinction between plant communities could exist. It was just so surreal…

The last few kilometers through the rainforest were classic New Zealand – gigantic tree ferns and dense underbrush lined the pathway as the enormous trees of the podocarp forest towered overhead. Several waterfalls over mossy boulders later and we emerged in the carpark at the other end of the trail. I still can hardly believe that weather and terrain can change so much in the span of 20 kilometers. Great day.

Sitting in the middle of a huge region of volcanic activity, geothermal hot springs, geysers, and bubbling mud pools, Rotorua was a great chance to relax and soak in the surroundings – literally. We arrived fairly late and immediately pulled into a campsite right next to a hotspring. At first I thought it was pretty crazy that a “natural wonder” or whatever could be privately owned, but I quickly came to realize the true extent of the geothermal activity in this part of New Zealand. Hotsprings are everywhere, and new ones keep popping up unexpectedly, many of them in inconvenient locations (roads, school fields, backyards, etc). Anyway, within minutes of arriving we were soaking in a 40C spring-fed hot tub, and it was awesome despite the mild stink of sulfur.

Downtown Rotorua boasts a huge, and more importantly free, geothermal park, and this is where we spent a good chunk of the next day. Crazily bubbling mud pits, boiling geysers shooting into the air, and big steaming craters were everywhere, and so was the rotten egg stench of the sulfur. Especially neat was the preponderance of South American flora – New Zealand and South America were joined some huge number of millions of years ago, and shared many species back in those days. After the continents separated and drifted apart, South America remained tropical while New Zealand shifted to the more temperate south. This led to the extinction of much of the tropical plants throughout most of New Zealand, but some remain in the geothermal areas. I actually don’t know if most people would find this interesting…

We spent the afternoon walking a gentle10km track through a redwood grove, admiring the gargantuan proportions of the trees. That night we drove up to a lookout between Blue Lake and Green Lake (the craters of two volcanoes, so named because the mineral compositions of each volcano impart a distinct colour to the water above), and decided to cook dinner while enjoying this view before finding a roadside campground (there were no camping signs at the lookout). Anyway, while we were cooking dinner another campervan pulled in - the evening ritual for most campervan tourists is to cruise the highways for a picnic area or enlarged shoulder on which to make camp. These guys saw us, decided that we must be camping there, and thought that if we were, they might as well do so as well. Though we had every intention of moving to a legal spot, once these strangers pulled in, we decided that if they were willing to take the risk, so were we. Some sociologist should do an experiment… We woke up without a ticket under the wiper, so it worked out fine.

The next couple days were spent doing more of the same, with the highlight definitely being the Waikite Valley boiling river. We got to an enormous hotspring, Te Manaroa, the largest single source of boiling water in New Zealand (a couple hundred litres per second), crossing over a big steaming canyon on the way. This canyon has been carved by a literal boiling river flowing from the continually spewing geyser – the water emerges at 98C, and 2 kilometers downstream the river is still 60C. Some of this water is also piped into a thermal resort next door, and they have an elaborate system of waterfalls, fountains, and pipes to bring the water down to a more tolerable 45 degrees before it is fed into their series of pools.

A night in a picnic area next to a popular trout stream, and we were off to Taupo and Tongariro National Park – home of some badass mountains including a certain “Mt. Doom”.

I suspected it would be strange getting back to the developed world, but it still hit me harder than lao-lao. Getting off the plane at Auckland airport made me feel like I was entering some strange new land where the environment is respected, and I guess that’s exactly what I was doing. The bio-security at the airport here surpassed the most rigorous screening I’ve ever experienced at an airport (getting into Cuba wasn’t much easier though), as every speck of mud or bit of organic material needed to be accounted for. Luckily for me all the mud on my stuff was from Bangkok, and sadly I was able to answer honestly that I had not been in a forest in the last 30 days (I don’t really know why overgrown jungle temples at Ankgor or Vietnamese forest trails don’t count as being in the forest). Getting in then wasn’t a problem, it was just tedious.

The bus into downtown Auckland was a breeze, though I did attempt to haggle the fare before remembering where I was (Fifteen dollars?!? Come on. I’ll give you 10). Speaking of which, NZ is expensive. Really expensive. Even after factoring in the weak dollar (1 NZD = 0.75 CDN roughly), everything costs more here than back in Canada. 10 bucks for lunch is considered dirt cheap. So it goes I guess.

Auckland pretty much seemed to be a modern, progressive, but very boring city. It’s got its malls, buses, crowds, bars, and rugby venue. I didn’t do much here of note (lots of time spent figuring out campervan details) until the second night, when we got out to a Blues vs. Highlanders Super-14 rugby league game. The homeside Blues won in a 26-6 romp, but I was mostly stoked about watching great rugby in New Zealand. Nothing could have seemed more authentically Kiwi.

The next morning was definitely the most exciting so far – picking up a campervan. We got a modified mid-90s Toyota Lucida for 32 NZD/day, and this is a van designed for the hobo backpacker. Equipped with a sink that drains onto the road, a little gas stove, and a hard-to-assemble bed, this little van has quickly become home. What hasn’t happened so quickly though is getting used to driving on the left (WRONG!) side of the road. Actually the road thing wasn’t such a big deal – what’s been hard is getting used to where stuff is in the van. The shifter, signaling lever, wiper thingy, and whatever else is backwards. I’m constantly cleaning my windshield instead of signaling, switching from reverse to park instead of drive (yes, even this is backwards), or turning on my lights instead of wipers. Thankfully the roads here are marked for tourists, as driving around is really the only way to see the country. Arrows are forever reminding drivers to stick to the left side of the road, and roundabouts are very clearly signed. Anyway, I had to learn fast, because we were on our way to Tutukaka.

Tutukaka is a small town north of Auckland, its claim to fame being the Poor Knights Islands. These islands, resembling a dead knight lying on his back with hands crossed over his chest, are an ecological reserve, both on terrestrially and in the ocean for a 1.8km radius or something. In simple words, this means it’s an awesome place to dive. The late, great Jacques Cousteau labeled this place as one of the best dive sites in the world, and it didn’t disappoint.

I got in the water the next morning, and the first dive was a tour of a dense kelp forest giving way to a vertical wall dropping off to some crazy depth. In the kelp forest were vast schools
of little fish (mostly demoiselles), some big snapper and scorpionfish, and the highlight – a rare (even in these waters) long-tailed stingray. This guy had to have been 5 feet in diameter, and swam within a few feet of my gaping mouth. Just unreal.

My second dive blew the first away, bringing me through a huge (30m) limestone arch and into a little cave. We were actually able to surface in the cave, pop out our regulators, and breath some of the air trapped in the top – all this with our depth guages still reading 7 meters. Dropping back down, the blue of the ocean was especially pronounced from the dark cave mouth and as we hung there admiring the view a group of short-tailed rays swam past. Though slightly smaller and less intimidating than the long-tail, I still could hardly believe my luck to be diving with rays. We saw plenty of great nudibranchs and kelp fishes afterwards, but my mind never left the cave. There was actually a CBC dive crew there filming a special about the Poor Knights. I’m intrigued….

After a rainout at Hot Water Beach, we were off to Rotorua and the hot springs. Hopefully the next post will have more photos than this one.

While I will never pretend to be a seasoned traveler by this point, after five months of backpacking through Africa and Southeast Asia, I feel like I have at least a couple thoughts worth sharing about traveling. Some may also be blindingly obvious, but I learned a lot of things in short order that seemed painfully apparent only after the fact. I meant to post this a few months ago, but better late than never.

One way tickets only.
This is important. You may save a bit of money by booking all your flights up front, but any long trip is an exercise in change, and you never know where you’ll end up, and when. As I discovered, time budgets are far more oppressive than money budgets – you can pinch pennies, but you can’t squeeze the days.

Travel alone, at least once.
Trust me. It can be boring at times, but the freedom to do exactly what you want, whenever you want, is unparalleled. Not to mention, without idle conversation to keep you perpetually distracted, you can really soak in your surroundings. Or drift through them, lost in your own thoughts. It’s safe, really. And you won’t die of loneliness, because…

When everyone’s a stranger, everyone’s a friend.
The social aspect of travel has been one of the biggest eye-openers for me. Going solo demands that you become something of an extrovert, and more often than not, people will be willing to open up if you try. Conversation blooms easily on the strength of mutual experience, and you meet an impossible number of different people, many with interesting stories to tell. At times, it’s surreal; you become soul-mates for a few hours, knowing full-well you’ll likely never see each other again. You may not even bother trading names. In the downtime, the depth of the relationships you develop contrasts with their transient nature, and it can tend to underline just how alone you are once they’re gone. But ultimately there’s no sense in regretting it – after all, you never know who you’ll meet tomorrow.

I’m worried that the inability to strike up conversations with random strangers may be the hardest aspect of readjusting to ‘real life’ after my six months on the road. Following a daily routine in the city, it’s all too easy to live strictly within your comfort zone; when traveling, you’re never completely comfortable, so something as simple as a shared language becomes a bond with those you meet. I’m hoping that until now, part of the problem has been on my end, since it takes two to create a pact of polite social solitude – but I suspect that I’ll just end up being ‘that guy’ on the subway, trying to chat up random strangers who secretly fear that I’m either hitting on them, or am generally off-kilter. We’ll see.

Travel with a friend, at least once.
I would be hard-pressed to say it’s better or worse than traveling alone, but rather completely different. A companion to chat with definitely takes some of the boredom out of the inevitable downtime while traveling, and having someone to share the special experiences with can make them even better. That, and sharing accommodation means you get way better rooms for way cheaper, and sharing dinners means twice as many delicious new flavours for the same dollar. Just make sure you’re ready for it – I’ve heard horror stories of travel ruining friendships and relationships – since you’ll definitely be spending a lot of time together.

When packing, in the battle between clothes and books, let books win.
I’ve read more this trip than at any other time in my life, and I’m savouring it, because I fear I won’t be able to keep it up once I fall back into my mundane routine. Underwear is the sole exception to this rule (and its not like it takes up much space, anyway).

Never turn down an invitation.
It’s a lot harder to regret things you’ve done than things you missed out on. (Unless you get AIDS, or something. That’s not what I mean, though)

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Unless you’re on the strictest of whistle-stop trips, sticking religiously to a travel plan just doesn’t work. If, for example, you have to spend an extra day or two in Tad Lo in Southern Laos to catch the party celebrating the annual buffalo sacrifice in a nearby village, do it. Chances are, you’ll never get that opportunity again in your life, and it’s almost always worth giving up time you would have spent at elsewhere at some static attraction – you can always go back there some other time. Similarly, if you know you’ve got a good thing going, sometimes it’s worth it to stick around instead of perpetually hoping that the next place you go to will be better.

Obey your wanderlust.
I tried to cram way too much into my African tour – I could certainly have spent a month or more in every country, but I ended up bombing through five countries in just over two months. That said, there’s a real thrill that comes with crossing a border into a new country. I found myself riding on a wave of childlike glee for the first few days in a new place, reveling in discovering the different foods, languages, traditions, architecture, money, and all the other things that give a culture its flavour.

Keep a journal.
You may think these blog updates are for you, but they’re really for me. Hence the mind-numbing detail that likely goes way beyond your passing interest in my whereabouts. Perish the thought that I ever find myself in a monotonous life without anything to drive me, but if I do, at least I’ll have these memories to look back on. Photos can also work as a trigger, but I don’t document even half of the interesting things that fill my days, and after an academic career of writing nothing but essays, I actually genuinely enjoy writing prose for once.

My final day in Hanoi was spent at a leisurely pace with some people who I’d met sitting in front of the Backpacker’s Hostel after their night train, waiting for it to open. I saw the Temple of Literature, since I’d heard it is something to see, but it didn’t hold much allure after an entire winter of temple-gazing. After happy hour at Backpacker’s – happy hours are big in Asia – we went to an Irish pub to drink expensive pints before wandering farther afield to a streetside Bia Hoi (cheap, local draught, 3000 dong a glass) joint. We’d accumulated quite a crowd of us by that point, and it was with minor regret that I cut out early to catch a few hours of sleep before my flight to Bangkok.

Having missed the excitement of flaming buses careening into M16-wielding soldiers, the streets of Bangkok were much as I remembered them. I did very little my first day, read ‘On the Road’ by Kerouac, and tried to get to bed early, but had an atrocious time of it in my sweaty little Soi Rambuttri cell – I’d forgotten just how much of a dump my guesthouse was.

The next day I grabbed a taxi to Siam Square. The Siam Center is a mega-mall in the Western vein, and distracted me only until I could find the entrance to the BTS Skytrain that would carry me north to the Jatujak Weekend Market (JJ Market to the locals). I had known that the JJ market was huge, but I was unprepared for just how huge. While I couldn’t get a solid fix on how large it really is, it must span several city blocks, with thousands upon thousands of stalls crammed together with claustrophobic density, selling everything under the sun. I spent almost five hours of constant walking, bemusedly trying to take it all in, and I would be shocked if I saw even a quarter of what the market has to offer. Early on in my wanderings (before I realized that there was any method to the market’s mad layout, or had a real grasp of its unbelievable immensity) I came across a little stall that had some incense chimneys; a wooden tube sits over the incense, and the smoke is breathed out of the mouth of an elaborately sculpted animal coiled around it. It struck me as being absolutely perfect for the cottage, and I made a mental note to come back.

I promptly forgot all the landmarks I had set for myself to remember it by, and lost myself utterly in the market for a few hours, at which point I was just about ready to leave. By this time I had seen one of the maps of the market, and so figured that my chimney must be somewhere in either the housewares or handicrafts section. After a few more, increasingly frustrating, hours I still hadn’t rediscovered it – nor, amazingly, anyone else selling the same thing – and decided, with some finality, that I hated everything. I had basically resigned myself to leaving empty-handed, but on my way out through the market I caught the scent and managed to stumble upon the stall, just as they were packing up. Given how quickly the woman accepted my bid, I probably overpaid, but at that point I was mostly just thrilled at having found the only thing in the whole market that I’d really coveted.

So yeah, the plan had been to spend the day accumulating cheesy knick-knacks and gew-gaws at the market as gifts for all you folks back at home, but between being completely overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the JJ, my general hatred of shopping, and my mad lust for incense chimneys, I didn’t actually come away with anything else. My other excuses are that there is no room in my backpack anyway, and that I’m not big on knick-knack collecting, anyway. (It’s true! I only got a handful of things from Africa, and only one wood carving for myself).

My flight was out of Bangkok at 7:45 am, so after a sweaty, sleepless night of anticipation, I caught a minibus to the airport at 4:00 in the morning, and that was the end of Asia.

Again, my reflections on Cambodia and Vietnam will come soon. I will jump ahead to Bangkok though to try to give a bit of a first hand account of the red shirt riots and Buddhist new year.

Accommodation in Vietnam was slightly more pricey than elsewhere, but at least you get what you pay for – in ‘Nam, rooms came with air conditioning, minifridges, internet, and cable TV. I must admit it was nice to be able to watch BBC world news again and catch up a bit on global happenings, and lo and behold the biggest news story when we arrived in Hanoi was the spate of protests by red-shirt wearing Thais. I was planning on flying back to Bangkok the next day, and now I was REALLY excited.

A little bit about Thai politics (because all I know are the vague details) – there are two main factions, easily represented by the colours red and yellow. The red candidate won in the last election (sometime before 2006), governed rather poorly (abysmally in the eyes of the yellows), and with the backing of the military the yellow candidate took over power in a 2006 coup. Since then the red leader has been in exile, and he had a definite hand in the current protests - basically the reds expressing anger over the coup and demanding elections. I’m pretty sure the yellows are more of an urban party and the reds rural, but support for each exists in both places. When I arrived, the red shirts had been protesting for a couple weeks, and the rallies were getting bigger each day. The day before I got there, 30 buses were taken over by the reds, many of which were burned, and 2 protesters were shot dead in the street near Khao San Rd (I saw the bloodstains on the pavement). Khao San Rd itself was being patrolled by tanks, and the streets were virtually empty, save for the soldiers and the reds. I arrived on the second day of Buddhist new year, and after the bloodshed the day before protest organizers decided to pause their protest until after the week long new years celebrations were over. The army responded by withdrawing to the monuments and Grand Palace, and there were no tanks on Khao San when I arrived.

Arriving at the airport, my initial impression was that something crazy was going on – troops, machine guns, and tanks were quite prominent. Anti-government protesters (reds) had shut down the airport last December and it was clear that the army would not let this happen again. When I was last here, there was a cheap bus to the core of Bangkok – this time the ticketing station was closed and taxi drivers claimed that the bus was canceled due to the protests. Taxi drivers lying about desired destinations being closed, full, or canceled is one of the most common scams in SE Asia, so I talked to one of the soldiers at the airport. He pulled out a newspaper detailing the riots of the previous day – the front page graphic was a map of Bangkok with little flame graphics marking where intense rioting had occurred. Though riots apparently occurred throughout the city, a great many of them were concentrated around Khao San Rd, the tourist heart of Bangkok. The soldier confirmed that the bus was canceled until further notice and I found a little Taiwanese girl to share a cab with.

The girl wanted to get dropped off in the trendy and upmarket Silom district, where she was staying for 45 dollars a night (I ended up paying 5). Exploring post-riot Bangkok was at the top of my list, so I decided I would walk the 10km to Khao San rather than take a tuktuk. Here is where Bangkok got really weird – the tuktuks that normally harass tourists every 30 seconds were pretty much gone, and I was able to walk in peace. I later found out that the tuktuks were being used to blockade several government buildings. In addition to the lack of tuktuks every storefront was shuttered and there was no business of any kind, besides selling beer, mud, or waterguns.

“Waterguns?” you ask? See – Buddhist new year is absolutely incredible. it’s a week long water fight throughout all of Bangkok (throughout the Buddhist world actually – apparently it’s even better in northern Thailand, though I can’t imagine how), and everyone participates. This is not an Andy hyperbole – men in suits, tourists, kids, shopkeepers, police, even soldiers on this day - all were gladly getting soaked, and almost all were fighting back with their own waterguns. It’s also a bit of a mud fight, as many people fill buckets with water and this dried clay stuff to make a creamy mud which is then smeared on people’s faces. I forget where it’s from exactly, but the mud is supposed to be from some holy Buddhist site – spraying or mudding someone is to wish them the best of luck for the new year. It’s simply the most incredible, unbelievable, best city-wide street party imaginable. Absolutely no one dared wear red to the party though.

I guess Bangkok seemed deserted for most of my trek because its population had gathered at several new year’s hot spots. One of them was Khao San Rd, and it gave this place a completely different vibe from when I was there 2 months ago. It was no longer a tourist street, but a street dominated by partying Thais with some tourists mixed in. As soon as I arrived near Khao San I began getting wet – by the time I found a guesthouse (I took the very first one I saw) I was soaked, along with all my stuff. I hung the contents of my pack to dry, hid my passport, threw my camera in a drybag, and went out to join the party. A decently sized watergun cost me around five bucks, and then I lost myself for several hours in the endless streams of people wandering up and down the streets of the area. And we were all merciless with out waterguns – those with nice clothes and fresh makeup were favourite targets of most (and the victims took everything with a smile as they ran away), and taxis would slow down to allow people to soak their passengers. Around and around I went, blasting anyone and everyone, when I suddenly turned a corner and came upon the Independence Monument – surrounded by thousands of soldiers with riot gear, M16s, humvee-mounted machine guns, water cannons, the whole crowd-control shebang.

The day before, this was the site of the most intense rioting in the city. The outlines of two city buses were burned into the asphalt, and the eerie reddish-brown stains of day old blood were also noticeable. Today it felt more like a public relations exercise for the army, as soldiers chatted with members of the press and allowed foreigners to take their pictures. Several women were even walking around with towels soaked in cold water for the troops, bringing them some relief from the 44C day. The soldiers seemed proud of restoring order, Bangkok residents seemed quite grateful to the troops (actively cheering them as they drove by), and tourists seemed dumbfounded by the presence of so many soldiers near their vacation spot. I chatted with a couple of the friendlier soldiers, snapped some pictures, did an interview with a Reuters journalist (he really wanted to write a story about how Bangkok was in a state of shock after the previous day’s events – it really didn’t seem like it was), and then headed away from Khao San to see what I could find. As I was walking away a pickup truck flying a big red flag drove by the soldiers, and several protesters in the back yelled obscenities – the scene got pretty tense for a few seconds, but relaxed again once the truck was out of sight.

Just down the road I was welcomed into a group of Thais (kidnapped by them might be more appropriate) and I spent the rest of my afternoon partying with an extended family of about 20 people. They had a BBQ set up at the side of the road, kegs, and several hoses. And did these guys take New Years seriously – they were quite disappointed if a single car or motorbike got by them without getting soaked. They weren’t disappointed often though, and they really knew how to have a good time. I was offered huge amounts of food and drink (they would not let me decline anything), and by the time I left I was stuffed with kebabs, mangoes, and beer. As I drunkenly stumbled back past the Independence Monument, I was amazed at how much more casual the scene had become in a couple hours. There was no longer a dry soldier in sight, and most of them had traded their M16s for waterguns and were busy blasting away at passing motorists (and me).

The mood in Bangkok this day was a weirdly jovial and embarrassed, celebratory and shameful. The waterfights of the new year certainly helped improve the atmosphere, but I still heard from virtually every adult I talked to some mix of, “we’re so sorry, I can’t believe this happened, are you scared of Thailand, will you come back, please remember how friendly Thais are, does this happen where you are from, please don’t leave because of this, oh please, please come back again.” I heard this refrain from the soldiers, my guesthouse owner, the family I drank with, people in the bars I stopped at. It’s amazing how aware the locals are of the huge impact tourism plays in the Thai economy. And as I promised everyone I talked to, I will tell everyone who will listen: Thailand is at least as safe as Toronto, the people are nice, though they almost always are trying to sell you something, the sights are amazing, and a trip here is definitely a good idea. You won’t be disappointed.

I needed to call it an early night. I was exhausted from catching such an early flight out of Vietnam, and had to be at the airport early the next day for my flight down to New Zealand. A New Year’s party in Bangkok was an amazing way to wrap up the Asian leg of my adventure though, and I eagerly await the more moderate temperatures of Auckland.

(Sorry about the photos – it’s hard to capture the drama of a huge waterfight when you need to keep your camera dry. It really was one of those things that you have to experience to believe, I imagine.)

As it turns out, I’m not so sure that I’ve been sick of travel; I think I was just sick of the pervasive, infernal heat. Climbing into the mountains of Sapa, the air carries a damp, refreshing chill on its gusty breezes, and despite my snatched hours of sleep on the overnight train, I was positively invigorated. The morning I arrived, the mountains were shrouded in the dense, moist grayness of fog.

I spent the first day trekking to the Thac Bac waterfall outside of town. I had thought the hike was a mere 16 km round trip, and while it seemed like my pace was awfully slow, it was nice enough walking (I later learned I had walked twice that distance, justifying the ache in my shins a bit more). In taking the main road rather than hiring a guide, I suspect I took not only the least scenic route – the roar of dump trucks struggling up the hill, gravel, mud, and construction equipment were my walking companions – but also the longest one. That said, I still preferred striking out on my own; my newfound solitude had awoken in me a slightly rebellious urge for complete independence (though not quite so rebellious as to risk losing myself utterly in the forests of northern Vietnam with scarce food, water, shelter, or direction).

I am going to embrace the chill of spring in British Columbia wholeheartedly. Mountains, beware.

My plans of going out the first night were foiled by dog-tiredness, so as a compromise I decided I would try and set out in the wee hours the next morning. That plan was defeated by a herd of well-lubricated sots who set up shop on the balcony outside my window, playing guitar and singing poorly, and drunkenly carrying on about being cockblocked until half past three in the morning. My beauty sleep came in fits and starts.

The well-manicured paths and rising tide of middle-aged Europeans beating their way up the hill as I walked down to Cat Cat village led me to believe that finding a moment’s peace may not be in the cards on this day’s hike, but I was pleasantly surprised. Through the Hmong village, past women in black robes and cylindrical caps, brightly embroidered; past children wearing thick woolen tops against the noon heat, but no bottoms to speak of; past water driven mortars-and-pestles, terraced rice paddies on impossibly steep hills, pigs wallowing uncomfortably with ropes tautly tied around their fat midriffs, and scattered water buffaloes, grass-chomping and tail-swishing. Birds chirped gaily as I crossed the suspension bridges over streams, newly roaring from the past weeks rains – it seems the wet season may have come early to Vietnam this year.

I kept walking with no real goal in mind, and decided to take the eventual trail to Sinchai village a few kilometers, but I never made it there. After the previous day’s exertions, and the growing heat of the afternoon, I no longer had walking for walking’s sake in my heart. Sidetracked by a particularly nice view, I staked out a spot on a grassy knoll, overlooking green hills and mountain mists, bathed in the brilliant afternoon sun. I finished reading Steinbeck’s “The Winter of Our Discontent,” relishing the humanity and mastery of the words. Between the book’s strangely affecting ending, the steep walk back up to Sapa, (and perhaps a bit of peevishness at sleep deprivation), my travel weariness came back to me, and I probably gave some of the hawkers more of a stone face than they deserved.

Sapa itself is a pleasant mountain community, if somewhat spoiled by the glut of its tourism. I didn’t find the locals too irritatingly persistent, however – though it seems no man is offered as many moto-rides and rentals as one who has his will set on walking.

To be perfectly honest with myself, I did very little in my two days sopping up Sapa. But I did it very well. Two days of passive, individual calm – just what I needed – and I can think of few better places to simply soak up the views than in these mountains.

Our one night in a real hotel had given us a trifle of real sleep, but our arrival in Hanoi saw us yet again wearily rubbing red-rimmed eyes and massaging crooked necks following another sleeper bus. We were promptly taken in by a criminal of a taxi driver with a fast meter, extorting us terribly on our ride into the Old Quarter where most tourists stay; welcome to northern Vietnam!

Hanoi is like a smaller, dirtier, much more expensive version of Saigon, with a maze-like plan of streets that remained nearly as confusing as ever, even after three long days and nights of pounding the pavement around town. Street hawkers, xe om (moto-taxi) and cyclo drivers also tend to be more annoying and persistent than in the south. Perhaps it was the gloomy weather that refIlected ill on the city, but my initial impressions were not positive. They developed some nuance after my time there, and occasionally I was able to catch an urgent, vital vibe in the atmosphere, Hanoi’s own. It is occasionally quite picturesque, and with its abundance of cafes (pricey, though!) and the fresh air around its lakes, it may prove to be the better city to let a subdued afternoon pass you by, but I still rate Saigon’s skin-deep charisma higher.

We took in some more of the omnipresent war memorabilia – a memorial displaying the twisted hulk of a downed B-52 bomber, and another military history museum – but for the most part spent the first day getting lost amid the not-quite parallel streets, all of which seem to have identical sounding names, and none of which are compass oriented.

With time as our enemy, we decided once more to indulge in the dreaded package tour, this time for a 2-day, 1-night boat trip on Halong Bay, apparently one of the natural wonders of the world (or so claims one of the signs). Thousands of dramatically sheer limestone islands – to which tenaciously cling a carpet of lush vegetation – jut from the ocean here, strikingly beautiful, enhanced by the gentle atmosphere of light mist to provide perspective.

The boat of choice for these trips is styled after ancient imperial junks, for ye olde authentic charm (ignoring, of course, the fact that many have masts with no sails, and air conditioners dangling from the windows of all the cabins). Seeing the harbour for the first time was something of a shock, crowded as far as the eye can see by literally hundreds of tourist faux junks. I hadn’t realized we were underway even when we were well into the bay, because the view out my window – filled with other boats – had scarcely changed.

After lunch on the boat, our first stop was at a stunning limestone cave. The enormity of the cavern and the depth and variety of formations were breathtakingly beautiful, but the entire affair was spoiled somewhat by the choice of lighting the caves in an array of ghoulish colours. While the effect was neat at times, it did a lot to detract from the sense of natural awe, replacing it with artificial, carnival wonder. The slow, busy procession of tourists did little to help the effect.

We drifted through a floating village in the bay, spent a brief stint kayaking (there’s that tour schedule disgruntlement, again), and finally were allowed to swim, just as the sun was dipping in the horizon. The water was refreshingly cool, and would have been downright blissful in the heat of the afternoon, but so it goes.

After dinner we caroused with our boatmates, drinking egregious amounts of cheap (and surprisingly not-awful) local spirits we’d smuggled aboard to avoid buying too many of the exorbitantly priced cruise beers. The following day’s time on the boat was brief and, for the most part, overcast; most of us spent it quietly, reading or thinking on the sundeck. Our boatmates were shuffled around between tours in a most inexplicable fashion, and a mediocre lunch was served at a big restaurant in Halong City before driving back to Hanoi.

That evening was Andy’s last day in Vietnam before a flight back to embattled Bangkok (he could barely contain his excitement), hence the time urgency surrounding Halong Bay, but it was spent with relatively little fanfare. We got lost looking for dinner, just as we had the first night, before ending up at the same restaurant because it was tasty and cheap, at least by Hanoi’s decadent pricing schemes.

With his early morning flight we parted ways, and with the travel fatigue of five months wearing on me, I spent a lazy, but somehow satisfying day in Hanoi, reading Steinbeck by the lake and writing postcards in an outdoor cafe. While most of the time Andy and I traveled together we’d been content to pay the minor surcharges associated with the convenience of travel agents, feeling the press on my wallet and a nostalgic urge to rough it a little (travel agents are hard to come by in Africa), I decided to DIY my night-train to Sapa, saving myself a quarter of the price (which, at 300,000 dong - $18 USD or so – for a soft-sleeper to the gateway city of Lao Cai, is still no pauper’s rate).

And here, for no reason in particular, is a bizarre Britney Spears obituary tablet spied on the streets of Hanoi, along with a (Communist Jesus?) banner hung up at a cathedral near our hotel.

As it turned out, our next destination was not Hoi An, but Nha Trang. We had not planned on spending any time in Nha Trang, dismissing it as a tourist-y, paradise-hell of sorts, but the bus stops there for a day, and the agent at our hotel convinced us to sign on to a package tour on an island-hopping boat to spend our day.

While I shouldn’t have expected much for the money we paid (only $10), I was soon reminded of why I have been skipping package tours. The boat was packed to the gills, and we soon embarked on a strictly timed visit to an aquarium, island-hopping, and snorkeling (with terrible equipment at a largely dead reef, where I was also reminded of why I wear shirts while snorkeling – I now resemble something like a shark, with a dark back and light belly to evidence the nasty burn I received). Things began to look up at the lunchtime feast, followed by an interactive entertainment show (though everything ended up sounding sort of like sludgy punk covers), and a “Happy Hour” at portable swim-up bar, where all the drinks were free (albeit very, very weak). The last stop was sunbathing at a terrible public beach which you needed to pay admission to (I refused on principle, read and swam instead). I’d say it was worth the admittedly small admission price, but I really do dislike regiment in my vacationing. We then took yet another overnight bus to Hoi An, though a minor fiasco over ticket confirmation saw us paying more, but ending up with an upgrade to a mediocre sleeper instead of the seats we’d originally booked.

Hoi An is ostensibly on the tourist trail for its neatly preserved old-world colonial architecture and small-town charm, but the real reason is because it has earned a reputation for churning out cheap, custom-tailored clothes. Indeed, it is home to more than 300 different tailors; the storefronts – and beseeching calls from wishful suit-hawkers – sprawl out along every avenue in the city. Despite my somewhat militantly ascetic ideology surrounding fashion, even I was taken in by the prospect of hand-tailored garments made for a fraction of the cost of off-the-rack items in Canada. The ultimate tally of my consumer whoring – $171 USD – makes my eyes water a little bit, though for the price, the checklist of accrued articles below verges on ridiculous:

One suit (to replace my bulky Value Village get-up)
One wool, double-breasted winter coat
Two dress shirts
Two casual shirts
One (brilliantly ostentatious) red silk shirt
Silk tie, handkerchief and cuff links (the latter are cheap plastic, however, so they don’t really count)

(So yes, I may have utterly betrayed my principles, but I prefer to think of it – read: rationalize it – as taking advantage of my location to make a pragmatic investment in useful, formal clothing – assuming it lasts more than a few wearings, that is)

We spent only one night in Hoi An, and in that time we were able to get all our items tailored and in the mail, bound for Canada, before catching another overnight bus to Hanoi at two o’clock the next evening. Our unplanned shopping spree and the unexpectedly tight timeline meant that we needed to eschew seeing the sights in earnest, but from our cursory wanderings, I don’t think we missed out on too much.

Despite that, we did have a memorable encounter that I doubt many foreign shoppers witness while in Hoi An. Upon getting lost going back to our hotel and wandering out of town, we decided to take a shortcut down a side road and ended up stumbling upon a firing range with a row of Vietnamese training the sights of their assault rifles on a line of targets. They stopped shooting when they spotted us, eying us warily – their silent gaze telling us to ‘go back to your suit shopping’ – and we retreated, a little bit nervously, back to the main road. Getting lost may well be the best way to see a city for real.

Since our time in Vietnam was so short, we decided to take a short haul flight from Phu Quoc to Ho Chi Minh City (henceforth referred to as Saigon). Joyful surprises abound at small airports; I’d forgotten my Swiss Army knife in my carry-on bag and, amazingly, they boxed it up, gave me a receipt, and gave it back to me on the other side!

Saigon lived up to none of the evil preconceptions that surround it. While it is a frenetic hive of activity – intersections are an insane, gridlocked confusion of rapidly moving motorbike gridlock – it is a shockingly clean, modern city, with broad boulevards, dotted with public green space sprouting beautiful old trees. It is not extortionately priced, and people are friendly, helpful, and fair. I never felt like my wallet, camera, or backpack was threatened by the notorious moto-snatchers, and our accommodation was comfortable and secure (albeit up a flight of a million stairs – minihotels here are narrow, and make the absolute most they can out of their plots). Navigating the absurd traffic – somewhat akin to parting the sea, as motorbikes glide around you – is even exhilarating at first (though once you get used to it, it tends to become mundane and inconveniencing).

Our first evening was spent eating a delicious meal in an open-air street cafe, drinking and haggling good-naturedly with street merchants; by the time we’d accumulated a shocking number of beer bottles on the table, we also counted among our spoils two large bunches of bananas, two hammocks (and hanging string), rice crackers, dried squid, a pack of cigarettes, and a street weighing on a mobile scale (confirming my suspicions of my travel paunch and the evils of Asia’s liberal use of the Holy Trinity of salt, sugar, and fat). They were joined the following morning by a pair of sunglasses for Andy; you can call us suckers, but our complete lack of driving interest in any of the items makes for a keen bargaining strategy on the streets of Saigon, and all were scored for a song.

The first day was spent at the Revolutionary Museum and the War Remnants Museum. The former was interesting enough, though has little to recommend it, really. All the museums in Vietnam have a brilliantly stilted, colourfully propagandist reading into the history that makes visiting them so much more fun than just a dry presentation of facts (though sometimes my contrarian mind recoils from spin, and I end up inwardly resenting those whose side I would otherwise support). The War Remnants Museum was the better of the two, with a truly captivating hall of photographs, a sort of pictorial memorial to war journalists who lost their lives. The American war (as it’s called here) clearly remains a large part of the Vietnamese cultural psyche. Military hardware of all sorts – including fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, guns of all sorts, and a massively intimidating 175 mm mobile howitzer – are found in abundance at museums around the country.

We had planned on seeing the Vietnamese History Museum the next day, but apparently it is closed on Mondays, so we instead wandered through the zoo and botanical gardens. I’d heard that conditions were somewhat abominable, as is common in zoos throughout the developing world, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was only really put off by seeing the sad intelligence in the eyes of caged primates (especially the big orangutan who discontentedly threw fruit peels at us), but I expect that’s to be found anywhere. The laxity of zoo-keeping standards also means that there’s the opportunity for a shocking degree of interactivity; while standing on a feeding platform, I was nearly bowled over twice by powerful sweeps of a giraffe’s neck.

Our last day was spent at the Cu Chi tunnels complex, 70 km outside of Saigon, an enormous network – more than 200 km! – tunnels that served to spearhead some significant resistance efforts in the south. As we meandered through the jungle with out tour, inspecting hidden tunnel entrances and nasty pit traps for careless GIs, the damp air filled with the echoing reports of machine gun fire from a nearby shooting range (where they charge almost $1.50 for a bullet!) added to the ambiance. While it’s possible to intellectually conceive of the conditions of tunnel life, it doesn’t truly sink in until you’ve had a chance to duck-walk through a section of them. Even enlarged and lit for fat American tourists (the original diameter was 80 x 60 cm!), the tunnels are close, stuffy, and claustrophobic. I was sweating like a dog (where did that nonsensical cliché come from, anyway?) from exertion and the stale humidity of the tunnels after only 100 m.

The rest of Saigon was largely rounded out with laziness in the De Tham tourist center, before an overnight bus to our next stop, Hoi An.