Cam t'Asia

"Are you doing the loop today?" he asked me. Half an hour later, I was on the back of his motorbike and we were off. The Ha Giang loop is a slightly-off-the-beaten-track road trip in the northernmost province of Vietnam. Most people do in 3-5 days, but I had planned to be there at least a week. I arrived on a bus from Hanoi planning to do the loop by public transit, but when I met Sam that morning at the hostel, we decided to go together, at least for part of it. Almost as soon as we got out of Ha Giang city, the landscape began to change. We were in the much wilder mountains and hills of the north, driving up switchbacks to beautiful viewpoints, down cliffside roads, past trucks and other bikes and local people walking with large full baskets of corn or rice or other plants. The first day took us to Yen Minh, via two mountain passes to the Heaven's Gate viewpoint, and a two hour stopover to hike the longest, hottest kilometer of my life to some neat caves. We stay...

I took a bus from Hanoi, Vietnam, to Luang Prabang, Laos. It was supposed to be a 26 hour journey and drive through beautiful landscapes in Laos after crossing the border. One of those things was true. I took it because it was a third of the price of a flight (which would have taken an hour), and, being in the last month of traveling and incurring some unexpected expenses back home, I'm trying to save money wherever I can. Anyway, here's what happened: 5:00pm I was waiting in my hostel lobby to get picked up, when a man on a motorbike rides up in front and starts flailing his arms motioning for me to come out. He will henceforth be known as Dampe. I grab my bags and walk out the door. Not the minibus I was expecting, but I wasn't fazed. "Luang Prabang?" I ask. "Yes yes yes," Dampe replies as he takes my day pack from my hands to put between his legs. I barely had time to get on the bike before we were off. 5:05pm We arrive at a tourism office and ...

After spending a few days on Bali and drinking too many Bintangs, Dana and I headed to Nusa Penida for a bit of a quieter time. We reached our accommodation mid-morning after taking a few boats and short ride on the back of a scooter taxi when we got to the island's port. We waited for two hours to check in to find out that the dorm was out of commission due to bed bugs the night before, so we could get an upgrade to a bungalow or find somewhere else to stay. We had had a hard enough time booking this place, so we elected to take the discounted bungalow. We paranoiacally checked our own beds for the nasty little roaches, thankfully finding none. We explored the island on a scooter. Lucky for me, Dana was well experienced with one, so I could ride on the back of hers. Our first day there, we tried to go to Atuh beach. We failed to find it, instead hiking to a nice viewpoint and then down to a rocky beach, where I stupidly tried to swim and cut my hand on some coral. The coastal r...

I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and there it was, sitting in the sink: a giant roach, several inches long and meaty. This was the second one I had to deal with in a few nights. The last one had found its way onto the top of my bed canopy, inside the mosquito netting, to greet me as I was lying down and looking up. He was tricky to get rid of, but the random electric tennis racket bug zapper I found in the room helped. This time I was on my own - there wasn't even any toilet paper in here. I went outside to grab my flip flop to kill it, and returned to the bathroom to find worse news: it was gone. I frantically looked around, searching the floor, the walls and the ceiling. Nothing. I noticed the door to my room had a huge gap in the bottom of it, so I went in and searched my room as well, but no sign of him. I was getting ready for bed, so I continued where I left off. After I brushed my teeth, as I was rinsing my mouth, I saw legs and a head poke out from the sink p...

Japanese food is weird and mostly amazing, but we had our share of food-related fails in our time there. My first real taste of the strange and varied food there was when I met up with Casey and Jordan in Yamagata: not a typical tourist destination, but we were there to chase cherry blossoms. After having some delicious Yamagata beef the night before, we had a day straight out of a fairy tale: we walked in parks with the trees' small pink and white petals falling all around us, and once we found a comfy tree to sit under, we watched local people having picnics, eating food from the nearby food stalls and drinking sake from large bottles that they brought from home. We were feeling hungry, so we decided to visit the food stalls and get a snack. Many food stalls were selling the same thing, and we had seen dozens of people walking around eating it: a small ball-shaped snack called konnyaku, which kind of looked like a glazed meatball. It came in threes, on a skewer, with a tiny doll...

Hi, there! It's been a while. I'm several months behind in my posts at this point, so I decided that rather than try to keep writing posts in chronological order and keep dates accurate, I'm just going to start writing reflective posts interleaved with random events that have happened over the past two months, in no particular order. I might fix the dates later. For the first reflective-style post, since I'm a little over halfway through my trip, I started thinking about things I miss from home, and things I don't. Don't miss: TV I enjoy TV shows arguably more than the average person my age, so I thought it would be pretty hard to be abroad while some of my favourite shows aired their new seasons. Oddly, however, I just don't really care. It will be nice to watch some of these shows when I get back home, but it's not going to be first or even probably twentieth on my list of things to do. I wouldn't even say I'm really "looking forward...

When I remember it now, it seems like everything happened fast. I only remember little tidbits, truth be told. But when I was living it, when I thought I was going to die, time seemed to tick by so slowly. It began like any other day. I awoke with the sun, but it felt later than usual. I hoped that meant that there would still be plenty of breakfast left. There was no one else around - they must already be at the water. I scurried down there, but there was no one around. Where were they? I wondered, not thinking much of it. I was glad to scavenge some food after getting such a late start to the day - there hadn't been much around yesterday. I was so busy stuffing my face that I didn't notice the smell at first, but after a few moments I was filled with a sense of dread as I realized what it was. Blood. Nearby. Things get blurry after that. Barred teeth. Sharp claws. Growls. I took off as fast as my feet could carry me. I ran and swam. I hoped everyone else got away, but I ...