Dune buggy ride in Huacachina

Huacachina is a remote town located 5 hours south of Lima, Peru. It is a huge desert.

There is nothing to do there. Except for dune buggy riding!

For 30 soles (around 10usd) they will take you around for an hour, going up and down steep hills at an amazing speed. It was really hot but I swear I was breaking out in cold sweats. Good times!

El alto

What can I say about this little city except WTF! Imagine a huge bowl that is La Paz. On the rim is the barren El alto, perching precariously at 13615 feet. This is the only city I think where the poor has a room with a view. No one wants to live there it is so freaking cold. Those w/ money live at the bowl’s bottom, where the air isn’t thin and you can walk around without panting every 5 steps.

I wish I had taken more pictures. I was just too cold and sick from the altitude. All I remember now, and the memory is still hazy, is fat Indians in comical hats eating fried sizzling meat w/ their dirty brown hands, clear blue sky, windowless shacks stretching as far as the eyes could see, tree-less dirt roads, men with weather-beaten eyes, steep stairs, plaintive wailings, and of course the bitter cold of the altiplano.

Los lustrabotas de La Paz

South America is such a lawless place and Bolivia is among the worst.  No one walks around at night. The few who do often become victims of  petty crimes, corrupted cops or taxi drivers who rob you at gunpoint. So you can imagine how nervous I felt when I chanced upon a gang of masked teenagers in the city center.

It turned out they are just shoeshine boys.

And they don’t really wear masks because of the bitter Andean cold.  It is because they are shunned by society.

Giang river at sunset

The river is darker but still clear and green. Far away lays the vast expanse of rice paddies, dotted with trees and ponds. If you strain your eyes further, you can spot the sun hiding behind the glooming mountain range, playfully throwing sparkles of light here and there, onto the glassy river’s surface, onto the little kids shrieking gleefully, onto the thick forest of a thousand year old, and onto you.

Uncle Ho

Uncle Ho is everywhere. His sayings are made into banners and hung all over VN. His picture is in every classroom. In Nghe An, where he was born, his statue is elevated to another level. The village where he grew up is featured prominently on various tour brochures and highway billboards. The road to his childhood house is paved, clean, and dotted w/ lotus and old growths. His mother’s tomb is built on a huge swath of land cleared from a mountain’s shoulder, and heavily guarded round the clock. In Vinh City, they erected a gigantic square commemorating his highness.

And in many companies, private and public alike, shrines are put up to worship him. In other words, he is God.
Discreetly taken in the office of Sabeco-Song Lam on Jun 24 2009-during a board meeting

My job

Vietnam has given me the chance to do lots of things I never imagined I’d do. I figure I should list them down, so when I grow old and senile, I could look back and go “Did I really do that?”.

Nghe An is a province in the Northern Central part of Vietnam. It consists mostly of forests, and if you trek deep enough from Vinh City, you will reach Giang river, where the minorities live. The rich make money through illegal logging. The poor hunt, farm and fish. They live up and down the river, which is cool, green and the main artery for all who live around it.

For this job, I traveled 4 hrs from Vinh on a Dream, hired a wooden boat and for a half hour went up river to deliver a few eggs to a man living on a floating bamboo house. Who knows what he does there or whom he lives with. All that matters is the eggs were successfully delivered and he had a nice hot omelette the next day. So to the half naked man living in the middle of nowhere…”You are welcome”

Beach stall

In Saigon, business spills onto the street pavement. In Phan Thiet, it spills onto the shore, where entrepreneurial Vietnamese sell souvenirs, drinks and of course seafood.

Like nowhere else on Earth, here on the sandy beach of Phan Thiet, the food’s source is almost 0 meter away from its consumption.

A bad-ass tombstone

Wot Knu

Born 1915

Died 14/9/1995

Age 80

Caught 38 elephant, 32 oxes and 18 muntjacs

Tombstone built by family

07/06/2002

Taken in Ban Don near Yok Don National Park, Vietnam’s last wild frontier

Ranting-part 1

Stop saying you have been to the Mekong delta just because you signed up for a half day tour @ Sinh Cafe and do the following:

1. Go by bus to a city an hour away from Saigon

2. Get put on a motorized boat which swiftly carries you to a restaurant selling overpriced, badly cooked rice dishes (which for some reason you think are absolutely delicious)

3. Get herded to an islet which houses a coconut candy factory, whose owner d rather you buy something than point your obnoxious little cameras into his workers’ faces. By the way do you really need the flash? It is freaking 11am.

4. Get herded to a shop selling honey, at which location you promptly take some more pictures of you holding a python, shrieking gleefully and annoying the hell out of everyone else.

4. Take a stupid 15 min horse ride from point A to point B. And would it kill you to tip the driver some money for riding your fat ass around?

5. Led to some garden where a bunch of villagers sing songs (cai luong) and you would stand there, with that stupid face of yours trying to look appreciative, circling around videotaping as if you just saw the 7th wonder of the world. 

The Mekong Delta is 40000 km2, home to 12 states, over 16mil people and supporting nearly half the population of Vietnam with its rice production. My father spent over 20 yrs as a sailor there and still doesnt know all of its tributaries. So please label your blogs, flckr pics accordingly. Just because your flight is delayed and you spend half a night at a dingy Motel 6 near the airport in BKK doenst mean you r in freaking Asia.