Change.

Change of Plans… Off to Bangkok. Story / Photos to come later this week.

Life. War. Twitter.

That’s what six months of life looks like after laundry. I really don’t know how I lug all that crap around from place to place… I think it might be time to send all those winter clothes home… It’s almost beach season…

Spent some time over at the Hanoi Hilton this afternoon. It’s always interesting to John McCain’s flight suit and parachute on display in the museum from the American War.

OK, so I know I seem to talk about my daily adventures and never much about work but the truth is it’s not all fun and games, well it’s not all games. We’ve actually been working hard at getting Blog Craver off the ground and with the brand new site coming very soon things are looking up and going great. We’ve also added the social networking site Twitter to be main component of our blogs RSS feeds. At first it was just an idea I had…Little did I know one blog would soon be receiving 35 new followers a day and that I would be running the best Beyonce fan site on the internet… Laugh, it’s OK… Because I wake up every morning laughing my butt off too…

Speaking Spanish

After a few nights of Champions League Soccer and late walks for Pho/Bia I finally found time to get out and venture into the streets with my camera… Not always the best idea, as now everywhere I went people knew for sure that I was a tourist and wanted to sell me everything they had. Before I would just walk around like a man on a mission and no one would bother me. But today I even had a few guys come up to me and tell me my shoes were to dirty (I’ve been wearing the same pair of chucks everyday for 4 months) and they wanted me to either clean mine or have me buy new ones… I declined. It took me a few blocks but I soon realized that if I spoke Spanish…I could get away only responding with “No habla Ingles” and go on my way… I know this sounds mean and confusing to them, but until you have kids hanging on you to buy their gum or someone yelling “Hello” every step you take you’d soon see I am only doing this for my own sanity.

Next subject. After almost 5 days here, I’ve got something on my mind… I’m tired of seeing old white men with very young Asian girls. It’s getting quite disgusting and very played out. Last time I was here I saw plenty of it, but I was so busy with everything being new to me I just didn’t have the time to really see it for what it was. So creepy. It seems to be around every corner here and trust me, I hate to judge, but there has to be another way… OK rant over… Little things like this get to me sometime…

Hanoi Hustle

I’ve been here in Hanoi for 3 full days now and I have taken two photos (both seen in my last post)… For the first time since I left the states back in January I’m in a place that’s familiar and I’ve just been relaxing. I’m sure I’ll break out the camera soon, but how many pics of buildings and rickshaws should one person obtain in their life? But to give you all some more insight to Hanoi, my great friend “Smiles” twitter’d me this link yesterday… It’s called the Hanoi Hustle. It’s pretty much 100% accurate and the video is a lot better than anything I could put together.

On another note, since I’m spending most of my day be asked to buy something from someone on every corner, I started to think about all of you out there. So this is a limited time offer… Would anyone other than Megan and Tate (I swear these two were meant to be sisters…as they both have requested I buy them lavish gifts from every stop on my journey) like something from Vietnam? I’m serious, I’m thinking about heading to the Post in a couple of days and I’m open to send anyone reading this something of their choosing… Get at me in the comments section.

Phone Numbers.

Ahhh Vietnam… How I’ve missed thee… It’s very strange/rewarding to be back in Hanoi almost three years later. Never did I think I would be back, but I guess I’m really starting to learn to never say never on this trip.

In the first five mins of being here, everything came back to me… It was like I never left. Even as I sit down to write about it, I’m finding it hard to put into words. I fell as though I took this city and country for granted last time and just wrote it off as another adventure. This time around I allowing myself to sit back and relax and take everything in…and with no schedule I can take as much as I’d like.

From the notes about you can see it took little time to find some Bia Hơi and make some new local friends…And with beer running at the great price of 20 cents a cup, its hard to find an empty glass all night.

Did I mention clothing and shoes are extremely inexpensive… Picked up a new pair of kicks for just under 6 bucks…and hey, if they can last me through July, this might be my best investment yet. More from Blog Craver and Vietnam coming very soon…

Another 48 Hours

Let me start with this… Traveling for 48 straight hours is rough. Enjoy the video and ask questions in the comment section. Back tomorrow with more from Hanoi. It’s great to be back!

Vietnam: July 2006