And we are home at last.

Friends ask me if it's been hard returning to the States after being away for so long. And my answer usually is no, not really. After five months of romping through Southeast Asia, I have yet to kill myself from driving on the wrong side of the road, although returning to a regular diet of Instant Mac and Carl's Jr. will probably give me a very American heart attack very soon.

And no, it's not so much that I have a hard time readjusting, but more like I have a hard time trying to get over the feeling that I had a lobotomy between the day I left and the day I came back. Now that I am far removed from the people and places that defined my stay in Singapore, I almost disbelieve all the very Southeast Asian experiences that I have experienced the last several months, whether it was riding an elephant in Thailand or scaling the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Surely it was all the imaginings of a coma-induced dream while mischievous little gnomes left exotic-looking stamps in my passport and pierced my nose in my unconscious sleep. And then as a parting gift, left me a pair of very wicked boots from Hong Kong as an apology for fucking with my head.

This makes more sense to me, of course.

And while I do still regret that I did not have a chance to embark upon a mini-adventure to another country all by myself, coming home makes me realize one of the benefits of having at least one more traveling companion with you: there is at least one other person out there who will remind you that yes, it really did happen. Unless the person gets a lobotomy.

--



Snapshot of me and Toubi from Vietnam. We are waiting for the bus to take us back from Halong Bay to Hanoi. We are sick of waiting. Traveling, when it is not glamorous or culturally enriching, is a lot of boring waiting. Our director gave us the command to look pissed off and annoyed. I look like I am trying to look like I am pissed off but I am not completely convinced of my own pissed-offness. Toubi, on the other hand, looks very cute when she is pissed off. This is because she grew up in Japan. You can't see it from here, but the back of her head has a hot pink anime vein throbbing in cute anger.

Not so long ago, I said that I would write about my ten-day adventure in Vietnam. I'll do my best, even though it's wholly possible that it didn't really happen.

--

While the glitzy-glitz shoppergasm of Hong Kong would have been a very fine way of concluding my adventures outside of Singapore, I wanted my last trip in Southeast Asia to be rugged, rough and a little dirty. Just like me.

So there was no money or time to look or act pretty in Vietnam, especially if you are planning on cramming as much as possible from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City in a matter of ten days. Toubi and I lived the hard-knock life of the grungy, penny-pinching backpacker and for the most part, it was fun. We trekked up three-hour mountain hikes, wore the same clothes for three days straight, slept on very uncomfortable sleeper trains and ate a lot of street food for less than a dollar. On one particularly uneventful night, we amused ourselves watching Jurassic Park on Satelite TV after a failed attempt on another channel to enjoy Mrs. Doubtfire dubbed entirely in Vietnamese. We both probably risked death when we hopped on the back of a motorbike and realized, while tearing through the very dark streets of Cat Ba Island, that our motorist reeked slightly of alcohol. I'm not sure what I risked when I ate a barely hatched duck fetus from a street vendor in Hoi Am, but thank God it was dark and I couldn't really see what the hell I was eating.

I am going to try to go in chronological order, but I already know that I will be leaving a lot of things out. I am going to focus on the little things. We love the little things the most.

--

Hanoi



I really enjoyed Hanoi. Toubi and I loitered mostly in the Old Town District near the lake, which is where all the cheap guesthouses and travel cafes are located. If I had come up here by myself with more time, I would have spent a majority of my hours hanging out at a cafe and people-watching all the cool Hanoi kids coming in and out of the streets on their bad-ass little motorbikes.

One of my favorite sights in Hanoi was visiting the Ho Chi Minh Masoleum. This is because you get to see Ho Chi Minh in all his dead, embalmed glory, bathed in a warm orange glow as though he is peacefully sleeping, guarded by four Vietnamese men smartly decked in their best military regalia. Never mind that Uncle Ho actually wanted to be cremated after he died; we can't always get what we want, right?

I'm not sure which was worse: the fact that I kept imagining Uncle Ho rising from the dead as a Commie vampire while creepy instrumental organ music started playing in the background, or thinking that the four Vietnamese army men guarding his corpse looked kind of hot.

I know, I feel dirty, too.

--

Sapa





Sapa is north of Hanoi, and it takes a good long train ride to get there. People go to Sapa to look at rice terraces and the village people still living their traditional village life in the mountains. When we went there, it was very cold.



Ky, our 26-year-old tour guide, was a badass in every sense of the word. Even though he originally hails from one of the many hill tribes living in Northern Vietnam, he showed up on our first day wearing a cowboy hat, a button-down shirt, well-tailored pants and dress shoes--and strutted through the winding mountain paths like he owned the whole place.

Ky was the very personification of jauntiness. If Ky lived somewhere else instead of a secluded mountain village, he would have been the life of every party. Even with his limited English skills, he was always quick to crack a joke or poke fun at our group, which was made up of me, Toubi and two Canadian college buddies in the middle of a seven-month global adventure.

On our last day, Ky lead us on a grueling three-hour hike through rice terraces and slippery mud paths to his house up in the mountains, where his sister cooked us food and he served us shots of his homemade rice wine. The one stereo in his house (and possibly the entire village) blasted Backstreet Boys music. It was a surreal moment. While the other village people stood outside his house to stare curiously at us, Ky fed us, showed pictures of his two-year-old son and gave us each a Sapa-grown cigarette to smoke. Although none of us were hardly regular smokers at all, listening to "Hotel California" while sitting in a small village house in the mountains of Northern Vietnam somehow compelled all of us us to uncharacteristically smoke one whole cigarette in the most uncoollest way possible because none of us knew how the hell to smoke cigarettes while looking cool. We felt like guests of a very bizarre, intimate party.

Before Ky left us back at the hotel, he fixed his cowboy hat, kissed his fingers and raised them in a jaunty salute as he walked out the door and into the mountain mist. All we could do was shake our heads in amazement as he disappeared from our lives forever.

"Crazy motherfucker," one of the Canadians said under his breath. None of us disagreed.





--

Halong Bay





Halong Bay is another popular tourist destination in Northern Vietnam if you want to see scenic natural things and spend a lot of time on a boat.

Coming here made me realize that I've been neglecting the nature girl in me all my life. As much as I am prepared to join the future urban yuppies of America, I realize that I really do enjoy the mountain hikes, the kayaking and the general soaking in of nature-ness.

I really want to do rugged, nature-related things in the States now. That, and actually start exercising so I can handle doing rugged, nature-related things without dying of exhaustion. I am such a weak oyster. :(



--

Hoi Am.





Hoi Am is a cute little town right in the center of Vietnam. I think one of my favorite activities there was biking through the town and trying not to get run over by a motorbiker. According to Toubi, I don't look very natural when I am biking. The fact that my bicycle chain came off about four times did not help much, either.

At Hoi Am, we also took a half-day trip to see the temple ruins at My Son. Now I feel like a jerk for saying this, but after going to Angkor Wat--the largest religious monument in the world--all subsequent religious temple ruins feel rather anticlimactic.

This, however, did not stop me from taking fun pictures of me and Toubi angering the gods.









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Saigon

And then we concluded our trip in Saigon, otherwise known as Ho Chi Minh City. I am not exactly sure which name is used more.

I may have left Vietnam with a lighter wallet, but I may possibly have a greater love for Uncle Ho. No, I'm just kidding. But say what you want about the communists; love 'em or hate 'em, they make pretty cool posters.







--

And a little less than five months later, this travel blog draws to a close. I've been spending time with my family, my friends and my dog (!!!!!!!) Just yesterday, I spent a lovely night with one of my best friends riding through my neighborhood admiring the hokey Christmas decorations of less lazy folk. My near future adventures will be more geographically contained, but I have complete faith that they will still be fantastic, nonetheless.

And we leave you, ladies and gentlemen, with the final memories of Singapore. Going to the capital of Kitsch that is the 24 / 7 outlet mall in Little India, where you can buy a Merlion lighter that plays an instrumental version of "My Heart Will Go On." Hanging in Orchard Road where you can buy an ice cream sandwich--literally, because in Singapore, you eat your ice cream encased in actual bread! Going to a tiny art opening at an indie bookstore tucked away near Chinatown called BooksActually, where you can satisfy your smug literary needs by buying little matchbooks bearing canonical book covers.

Someone has to remember them, after all.








The End.