Day 52: I Don't Need No Stinkin' Sun Creme

Listening: Yes, I'm jumping like a jumping jack. Dancing, screaming, itching, squealing, fevered, feeling hot hot hot!!!

What's my problem? My lips don't feel like my own.

The way I usually work with the sunshine is that I burn my first time out in it, and from there on out, I tan until the end of the season. So, as I hopped onto the back of Leo's bike and he asked me, "Do you have sun creme?" I nonchalantly answered, "Nah. I don't need it." Ha. Right.

Off we went, straight out of Hoi An. At first, I thought we'd never get out of populated areas. There was small town after small town. I'm not talking about multiple street towns. I'm talking about stretches of shops and buildings alongside the road we were riding on. But, before long, they all disappeared. There we were in the mountains riding along.

About an hour and a half in, we stopped for coffee at a little roadside cafe. I think it was the only place for at least a few kilometers around. I had some killer coffee and watched four Vietnamese guys play cards. I tried to figure out the rules, but once I thought I had it, I saw something else that just kind of blew out the structure of the game in my head. From there, we headed deeper into the mountains.

Since we left at around half past seven in the morning, I hadn't had breakfast, or ingested anything besides that miniscule, but very tasty and strong cup of coffee. So when we pulled up to the pineapple farm at around ten in the morning, I was famished. I don't know if it was that I was hungry, or if it was because the pineapple had been harvested minutes earlier, or if it was the fact that it was grown by an ethnic minority, but it was probably the best pineapple that I have ever tasted in my life. It was soft and juicy. It was sweet, and just exploded with flavor in my mouth. I ate the entire pineapple myself.

From there, we hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a network of roads used by the Viet Cong to transport supplies, weapons, and personnel down into southern Vietnam during the war. The landscape itself was beautiful. I could see how fighting on that land would be extremely difficult. It wasn't that it was all jungle. It was jungle and mountains and brush.

One of the more sobering sights that I saw were large black expanses on some of the mountains around the Ho Chi Min Trail. Napalm. The effects are still apparent today, thirty years later. The land is still completely scorched. The earth itself is black as coal and there are hectares and hectares of flattened black land. Apparently, nothing can grow there anymore.

If there's any wonder why the Vietnamese hate the Americans, there's your reason. And it's so funny thinking about how many Americans hate the Vietnamese because of the war. We were on their land. We were napalming their mountains and fields. They killed some of our people. We killed some of their people. That's a score of three to one. I feel bad that my country did this. I feel bad when I see the amputees still on the streets here in Vietnam. I know that my people did this to them, and I'm pretty powerless to do anything about it.

We had a long ride from there. We followed the Ho Chi Minh Trail up through Snake Road, which winds precariously through the mountains, back and forth, uphill and downhill.

On that stretch of road, there's nowhere to really stop for lunch. We stopped at a few minority villages so that I could see the longhouses or see how they live, but there was no chance for food until we hit Danang at around three in the afternoon. We ended up having lunch at China Beach.

China Beach was where one of the firs US army bases were in Vietnam during the war. Unfortunately, and fortunately, there is no longer any evidence of the occupation. China Beach is now a pretty pristine stretch of beach with resorts popping up all along it.

For lunch I had the frog with chili and lemongrass. I have to say it was pretty yummy. However, by the time I sat down to eat, I noticed a red line on my skin around the bottom of my shorts. Yeah. I'm a moron.

To be honest, my sunburn isn't that bad. It's no worse than the one that I got in Koh Tao. I'm sure that my nose and legs will start peeling in a couple of days and it'll be all good.

From there, we went to Marble Mountains where it's just one giant tourist trap. And I got trapped. See, Leo's family is from Danang. Coincidentally, they live at the base of Marble Mountain where there are numerous shops selling marble sculptures and so on and so forth. Are you seeing where this was going? Yep. I got the sell. And I got the sell hard. Not by Leo, but by his family. Yeesh. So, I ended up buying a small marble buddha. It's supposed to bring me luck on my trip. We'll see how that goes.

After I got back to Hoi An, I checked into the room that Isa had gotten earlier in the day and showered off the dust of the day. Since Isa wasn't around, Lydia had left town, and I didn't know where Julia was at the time, I set out looking for dinner.

Of course, I was in the mood for some local specialties, because I knew that I wouldn't be in Hoi An forever. So, I went to Miss Thahn's. Miss Thahn's is a little food stall among about ten other food stalls. Each food stall has their own row of tables. They all try to hawk their menus and get people to sit in their row of tables. The action takes place when someone beckons someone over to sit in their area and then they end up sitting in another. Sometimes it gets heated, and sometimes, there's a downright yelling match. It can get kind of amusing. I saw a couple the day before when I had lunch there.

For dinner, I had two orders of "white rose" and an order of cau lau bo. White rose is a sort of open dumpling. The meat in it is pork and shrimp and the wrapper is translucent white, kind of like the wrapper of har gau (if you're familiar with dim sum. Cau lau is a local specialty. It's a thick noodle with a little bit of broth and some veg. These noodles are specific to Hoi An, as that the water used to make the noodles must be from a specific well. These noodles are about a quarter of a centimeter by a quarter of a centimeter thick and aren't soft or white like pho. They're a little bit brown and they're much more firm. I have to say that I really enjoy it. I have had at least one bowl of it per day that I have been in Hoi An.

As I walked around town, I bumped into Isa. We walked around for a bit, ended up going back to the room to chill, and then headed out for some snacks for her and a drink for me. While we had been walking around before, we noticed some people eating some eggs on the street. They were eggs right? Yeah. They were eggs... half developed eggs.

On our trip out, Isa got the idea that we should try them. I thought about it for a second. I thought about the massive amount of food that I ate for dinner, and... I went for it. So there we were, Isa and I, sitting on plastic stools on a dark street in Hoi An. The silk Chinese lamps glowed red down the street and we had balut (the filipino name for the half developed chicken egg) by candle light.

We had an audience as well. There were a couple of old Vietnamese ladies who watched us eat. First, we had to crack the shell at the top and drink the broth from the inside. Oh yes. These eggs were warm/hot, so they were cooked in some way/shape/form. The broth on the inside tasted like chicken broth. It was actually quite delicious. The "meat" inside was truly like a cross between a soft boiled egg and chicken. It tasted like a really great piece of chicken, but had a texture softer than a hard boiled egg.

There were bits of "anatomy" in the egg, such as a head and some feather like things. They didn't make much of a difference in texture or taste. It took a little while for me to look at it and get the nerve to put it in my mouth, but I did it and I didn't gag. It took us a solid ten minutes to down the eggs. Isa said she thought it was okay, but didn't know if she would eat another. I thought it was okay as well, and if I were in a place that had it, I might get one every so often. I really do think that it's worth trying, for everyone.

After that, we ran into Julia and one of her friends. They were headed to a bar that was kind of noisy, so Isa and I opted to go to a more quiet bar. It's amazing how much you can learn about someone over a drink if you're listening. I learned quite a lot about Isa that night, about her dreams and aspirations, about her insecurities, and about her past.

By the time we finished our drinks, it was half past eleven, and I was knackered. So, we retreated back to the room and I fell asleep almost immediately.

The next day, Isa headed off to Hue so that she could catch another bus to Laos, and I headed to Julia's hotel so that I would only be spending five dollars a night instead of fourteen by myself.

Julia and I ended up going to My Son, a Cham ruin just outside of Hoi An. Sure, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, but then again, so are the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois. They were much more Cahokia Mounds than they were Mesa Verde. There were some ruins of some temples and it just wasn't as impressive as the photos made it out to be. Leo had told me that if I planned on going to Ankor Wat, I should skip My Son. He was right and I haven't even been to Ankor Wat.

The weather was blisteringly hot, and steamingly muggy. It was so hot and muggy, forget about frying an egg on a car. You could steam a lobster in a shoebox, and melt the drawn butter right on top. Also, there were just so many tourists. I know that it'll be like that in Ankor Wat, but, shit.

By the time we got back to town, it was one in the afternoon, so I went to get another fitting for my chef's coats. They had it wrong again. *sigh* The first time, they made it double breasted, but they didn't have it for both sides, so you couldn't switch panels. This time, it wasn't even double breasted. So, now I have to go back today and get them fitted again. Hopefully, they'll be ready by five in the evening, so I can catch my six o'clock bus to Nha Trang. We'll see.

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about the dinner on the night before I went on the Easy Rider tour. Leo, my driver, took Lydia, Isa, Julia and me to a local restaurant outside of Hoi An proper. We were away from the tourists, and away from the people trying to sell you this, that and the other thing. Dinner was simple and delicious. Of course, there were home made spring rolls, but the main course were kind of like spring rolls as well. There was rice paper, some greens, some pickled cabbage, sliced cucumbers and baby bananas, some meat on a stick and some shrimp omelette. You roll it all together in the rice paper, dip in a sweet chili sauce and enjoy. Oh man, I must have had at least twelve of them. They were definitely delicious and definitely something that I want to have again.

Anyhow, that's all for now. I'm sorry about not uploading any pictures lately. The connections have either been way too slow or the machines have blocked USB drives. It kinda makes me sad, but not too sad to keep on truckin'.