My Journey on the Great Wall began at 6:30 am. It was a two hour ride but I was very excited to hit the summit. It was cold but I didn't care...The Great Wall awaits.
After the 6th step, I knew I was in for trouble.
Just...keep...climbing....
Damn you Mongolians!
"Ladies and gentleman, we will be landing in Beijing shortly."
Our plane landed at 11am. We checked into our hotel at 4:30. The hours inbetween were filled with hopeless begging: begging everyone in the airport for a pen and getting feircely denied or pointed toward random walls and bathroom doors by airport security (1.5 hours); begging taxi drivers to accept our fare even though we only had a bad english transliteration of our hotel's street (2 hours); begging for bus tickets from a subway ticket vendor and begging the bus driver to let us out the exit door that had suddenly switched to an enter door at our stop only (2 hours); and basically begging for forgiveness for all the wrong we had done that had made fate so eager to fuck with us (ongoing).
1) Vendor reels you in with a line such as "Hey Boy! What you need?"
For some reason, it was difficult to locate a computer lounge in one of the world's most technologically advanced cities. I attribute this to a) everyone has laptops and hangs out in hot spots instead of lounges, or b) i still haven't figured out the hand signal for "where can i find a computer?" (the phantom typing motion usually gets me pointed to a creepy massage parlor). Right now we're in Beijing after a 3-day trek from Hong Kong to Macau to Bangkok to Taipei to Seoul to Beijing (all in the interest of saving about $150 instead of flying direct), and the past few days have been a true test of our mettle, most of our time spent in the airport drinking overpriced Ovaltine and playing card games for the "Dorimon Cup," (the rights to a plastic Dorimion doll that came free with our purchase of $1 or more at 7-11). We finally made it to the Red Lantern Inn, a ridiculously cool guest house which we'll address in a bit, but for now...Hong Kong.
Our TurboJet ferry, truly deserving of the "Turbo" moniker, shot us across the water from Macau to Asia's king of cities for a late-Saturday arrival, where we were prompty ripped off for the 114th time by a taxi driver (one more and we qualify for a free six-inch sub). Wary of the notorious high costs of living in Hong Kong, we entered the lobby of the famed backpacker destination Chungking Mansions, to which we instantly handed the "Most Deceiving Name" award (narrowly edging out the nametag affixed to the enormous ladyboy in the Bangkok airport that read "Anna.")
To understand the enigma that is Chungking Mansions, imagine an 18-story haunted house, where instead of ghosts and witches there are drunks and Faux-lex salesmen, and instead of cockroaches there are...bigger cockroaches. To its credit, the place scored off the charts on the "character" scale, with a veritable Indian food/bootleg DVD paradise on the first floor, and each stairway landing boasted its own unique 1-inch flood which provided endless fodder for the "guess that fluid" game.
Two seconds later, we were in the elevator, and while Don and Tony celebrated our lucky break, I eyed up the friendly Swedes and tried to decide which of the inevitable endings to this story I'd prefer. I settled on, "We get ripped off and end up overpaying for a room that was never really paid for," over "There is no 8th floor, it's a medeival torture chamber," or "We somehow get roped into becoming drug mules and spend the rest of our lives walking the insanity circle from Midnight Express."
The next day brought us to the super duper major part of the city, Hong Kong Island (we were staying in Kowloon, which is only moderately duper), with no plan other than we heard there was some mountain we were supposed to climb by sundown. It turns out, the entire island is built on the face of a mountain and the streets are filled with sky-climbing escalators, the first set of which threw us into a Sunday afternoon "Carnaval!" on Hong Kong's Bourbon Street, Lan Kwai Fong.
The next evening we scrounged up some half-decent shirts and dined with a friend of a friend in Hong Kong's top restaurant, Felix, where the Maitre'D scoffed at our unhidable beards and sneakers and we gawked at the world-famous view from the bathroom urinals, which sit against a glass window atop one of the city's highest buildings. And after a hard-fought battle filled with guilt trips and tempter tantrums, Don finally convinced me to accompany him to Disneyland, where we were visciously harassed by the dude in the Dale costume who insisted through mascot sign language that "Amy" in the Happy Birthday sign was actually Don, and that the two of us were lovers.
With the daily decrease in our savings accounts and the thinning of options to fill time during the newly dubbed Operation "Walk & Eat to Sidestep Unavoidable Casino Killings" (aka Operation W.E.S.U.C.K.), we feared our fondest memories of Macau would be walking onto the Hong Kong ferry with both knees intact. Miraculously, we're walking out with a smile.
We figured we'd surrender, after all, if there weren't neon lights on the outside of the building, the place really couldn't be that bad, right? The next few hours were spent playing digital Sic-Bo, a game - for those who don't know - similar to craps in which you bet on the various possible outcomes of 3 rolled die. The game was played completely digitally, which allowed for a quicker and more dangerous transition into the "hey, it's not really money, it's chips" mentality; and subsequently, the eventual loss of said chips/money. But we had fun, and that's what counts (sob), and hit up a Portuguese restaurant for dinner where we ran the tap of beer selection and Don got a large plate of meat that included steak, chicken, pork and a hot dog. Macau loves them hot dogs.
A couple hours of play soundtracked by a coverband aptly named "Too Close," who were extremely fond of the Black Eyed Peas catlouge, and my Full House was kicked to the curb by Chun Y's four Kings, served with a smile. Don soon joined me and we decided to reach for the stars one last time, in the arms of our old friend, Digital Sic-Bo. Down to our last bet, I tapped the screen and called it. "Trip Threes."
Early the next morning we were off to Macau, a province of China lovingly referred to as "The Asian Vegas." As soon as we got on the plane, we started dealing out hands of 3-card poker to decide our fate. Within the first 30 minutes, our imaginary dealer delt himself a straight flush. We cursed fate and decided to play Carribean Stud instead. We landed with the energy of a 15-man bachelor party, grabbed our bags, headed for the door, and stopped.
It is not an island. But after searching the airport for an English speaker and paying our cab driver an extra $2.00 for a "put baggage in trunk" charge, we were in a wonderful guest house that we've dubbed "Shawshank." Our $5/night accomodations come complete with: a chamber pot, wooden mattresses, and steel barred windows. Unfortunately, we do not have: a bathroom, a rotating fan, or a ceiling. Here, Don contemplates where he can get a rock hammer and a poster of Rita Hayworth.
Outside of our prison walls, however, the world of Macau mocks us with riches. We spent the night combing the crowded streets finding everything from miles of unidentified, possibly uncooked meat patties we've named "Suicide Meat" to a street corner shrine that I accidentally knocked over with my foot. (I'm not sure of the karmic reprocussuions of this but man, once you've spent a night in Shawshank, there's not much more they can do to you.) Operation "Avoid The Casino for As Long as Possible" continued into Day 2, where we got lost inside a temple/park area where gangs of suprisingly in-shape eldery people gave us "get off our turf" looks while we gawked at the view.
Here's to hoping we leave it looking like this:
So Sapa came and went, the collective feeling being "I bet this place is really beautiful when it's not typhoon-ing," and "How long does it take to dry sneakers with a hairdryer?" The two-day experience is best summed up by Don's videos below, the fact that we had to check in to our hotel under the name Tommy (Tommy, if you're out there, we're sorry), and the following exchange between me and our tour guide, a 4-foot-nothing firecracker from the local hill tribe and self proclaimed "Mountain Girl."
A one-day stop in Hanoi brought a trip to the famed prison "Hanoi Hilton," a Temple of Literature and a lunch of stir-fried crocodile. (It kills me to write this, but it really does taste like chicken). At night - 45 cent beers at a balcony cafe where we watched the Saturday night motorbike commute and bet on the biggest number of people on one bike (I won with 5). After a late night run-in with the Israelis from the night train during which we recited our 3 inside jokes and quickly tired of one another, we made a glorious return to the beefsteak omelete place which was even better at the illegal commerce hour of 12:30am. After paying a motorbike driver to use his cell phone and beg our way inside our chain-locked hotel door, we crashed and awaited our 9:30am bus to Halong Bay. (Which was actually at 8am. Sorry Don.)
And that was when the real weird stuff began. Like a scene out of Saved by the Bell: The College Years, a thus-far silent Vietnamese girl stood up from the back of the bus and introduced herself as our tour guide. Whacking Don on the shoulder and awakening him from a peaceful sleep, she commanded that we all announce our name and country and retain eye-contact with her while she rattled off random trivia questions about Vietnam, including:
The rest of the 3.5 hour ride moved at roughly the same pace, with Tour Guide calling upon Don to muscle our driver out of a rest stop and henceforth referring to him as "Superman," a nickname he would at first be confounded by but would ultimately live up to. We piled out of the bus and on to a harbor, at which point we boarded a boat and watched as about 20 other boats left port while we held anchor for one solid hour so our captain could "write down all of our names in case the police come." We didn't ask.
Our first stop was a massive natural cavern made tragically un-natural by a paved stone walkway and Disneyland style lighting throughout. Still, it managed to be impressive as hell. (The picture on the left may or may not be upside down, but I can't really tell. That's how freakin trippy it was maaan!) Tour Guide accompanied us, heavily enforcing our 40-minute "in cavern" time limit, despite the fact that it was 2pm and the only other thing on our schedule for the day was "Dinner - 7pm." Tour Guide encouraged us to use our imagination when looking at the rock structures (a la Walt Disney in Arizona with a 1/2lb of peyote). She pointed out a particular structure and asked what my imagination saw.
After being harshly reprimanded for breaking our 3:12 curfew while getting lost inside the next cave, we were on the boat for the rest of the day for mindblowing scenery and a visit to a really for real fish market, where Tour Guide and the boat crew bought about 10lbs of fresh jumbo prawns which they feasted on lavishly while we dined on rice and onion salad. We capped off the evening with 25-foot jumps off the top of the boat and a late-night (8pm) rooftop chill session where a suddenly tranquil Tour Guide sang us old Vietnamese folk songs acapella, and Don improvised a few numbers including "Passive Aggressive Song (Give Me Some Shrimp)", and "Ode to the Dragon of Halong Bay" which brought the fuckin house down.
As the Bay rocked itself to sleep, we sat with a Dutch couple and mulled over pirate pillaging the champagne and caviar boat next door, before retiring to our sweltering hot, above the engine-room quarters where Don instantly passed out and I drew swords with insomnia and lost, as usual.
The biggest task for the tourist is crossing the street. Here's us trying to do it:
At night, it gets even harder:
Here's me continuing to complain:
Sapa peaked for us here: (we finally found our "pork-waterfall" {we ate pork near this waterfall).
Author's Note (Prologue): With the 50-year storm wrecking havoc on Hanoi, where havoc-wrecking is usually reserved to motorbike-riding hooker gangs, we decided to head out to Sapa, Vietnam's storied mountain region. With respect to our time (we have little) and money (we have none), we opted to take the 9-hour Night Train, which - like the Night Ferry - did have its drawbacks, most of which I will now itemize. For even thought I actually had my own bed this time, and I reached some sort of spiritual awakening at around 4am (see psychosomatic side effects of Mefloquine anti-malarial drug), I've learned one thing from the great leaders of my tribe, men like Woody Allen, Jackie Mason and Jerry Seinfeld. We're funnier when we're complaining.
Drawback #1 - The Roomates. While the Night Ferry bunked us cheek-to-cheek with 170+ other sweaty, under-deoderized backpackers, they atleast kept their clothes on. Our 4-person room was rounded out by Bert and Donny, two Belgians who instantly stripped down to their tightie-whities (which were actually tightie-blackies), and remained that way for the next 10 hours.
Drawback #3 - The Bathroom. While the Night Ferry blessed us with a "squatter," a type of waste disposal unit I'll address in a later post (or more likely, never ever again), the Night Train had a standard toilet in a room that was, for some unknown reason, 20 times more turbulent than the rest of the train. The result was an experience similar to the carnival game where you shoot water into a clown's mouth to make a balloon pop, except in this case the only thing exploding into oblivion is your sense of human dignity.
Drawback #5 - The Stopping. For some ridiculous reason I thought that the "King Express" was an express train. It wasn't. So while the other 3 roomates slept soundly, I sat awake and was sent into a panic when the train grinded to a sudden halt around Hour 2. Naturally, I assumed that either the engine had broken down leaving us stranded in the Vietnam wilderness; or we were being hijacked. And not the good kind of hijacked like in Busty Cops 2 (hot!), but the bad kind like in The Great Train Robbery that ends with a mustachioed man shooting you in the FACE.
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Author's Note (Epilogue): The above blog was written two days ago, long before we were told our 7:30pm "soft sleeper" train back to Hanoi did not, in fact, exist; and we were tossed on the 9pm "hard sleeper" train, which meant that our roomates increased by 2 and the space between my head and the ceiling (3rd bunk) decreased by about 600%. However, the hard sleeper had something that our other two "night" vehicles did not - cheap beer. Six or fifteen warm cans of Bia Ha Noi later we were packed into the hallway with a Frenchman and 7 WILD Israelis who were blasting house music and officially certified my "Israel Beard" (as it is called by Vietnamese women whose opinions on whether or not I should shave it range from "yes" to "definitely.") The party raged for a solid hour before an angry woman told us to quiet down as "this is not Spain," so we made some awesome videos and I actually ended up getting some sleep. Viva la Night Train!
