Part 2: Hanoi

Here’s the thing about Asia. There are so many freaking people. I mean, there are SO MANY people. Especially in Vietnam. You just don’t understand overcrowding until you get there. And you really don’t understand it until every single one of those people drives a scooter.

We left for Hanoi on Tuesday, October 27th, and were picked up at the airport by an awesome little helmet-haired dude named Huy, who would be our own little personal Dith Pran (a buck for anyone who gets that reference) while visiting the city. In addition to being awesome in every regard, Huy knew the answer to everything. Even things in addition to, “Do you hate Americans?” (The answer, by the way, is not really…but more on that later).

So as soon as we got in the car (oh, we had a personal driver too. we're looking into this here in New York), Huy started reeling off facts about Hanoi. Its 1,000 year old birthday is next year. It’s been occupied by the Chinese, the French, and the Japanese. It's a city of roughly 6 million people. 4 million of them drive scooters.

That last fact is not a joke, nor is it an exaggeration. I think I was watching Anthony Bourdain’s eat-em-up show on the Food Channel when he said, “The first thing you notice about Hanoi is the scooters.” You don’t notice the scooters. The scooters ARE the city. You’re absolutely swarmed by them at all times. They drive on the sidewalks, they drive on the ceilings, they drive up your pantlegs. They lay eggs and multiply at stoplights. They turn up in your soup.

The deal is, the government decided that cars simply weren’t a sustainable form of transportation in a county as engorged with people as Vietnam, which is about the size of California, with nearly triple the population. So they slap huge taxes on the purchase of a car, which are over 100% already, and expected to balloon to 200% next year.

The result, of course, that you’ve got families of five, including toddlers and, yes, infants, riding on scooters, surrounded by millions of people driving scooters like assholes. Oh, by the way, everyone drives like a total asshole. That’s an important detail.

Also, the custom is to always be honking. I’m not kidding. They honk to pass, honk to merge, honk to alert you to their presence, honk if they’re horny, honk if they love Jesus, whatever. Huy told us that’s just how it is. He basically told us they’re not honking at you, they’re honking with you. Which doesn’t make it any less annoying, of course.

But somehow, inexplicably, nobody seems to have discovered road rage yet. This probably has something to do with the fact that they’re all out in the open on scooters, not safely seatbelted into steel boxes on wheels with lockable doors. Or maybe it’s because if they did give someone the finger, they’d poke someone’s eye out. Regardless, when it’s just accepted that everyone’s going to drive like a complete and utter dickhead, I guess there’s nothing to get mad about.

We stayed at the Sofitel Metropole Hotel, which, in terms of making its clientele feel like turn of the century French aristocracy, is unparalleled. The hotel was built in 1901, waaaay back when the French kicked ass and took names, and all the Vietnamese employees still greet you with a “Bonjour madame, bonjour monsieur,” which is cool and weird and fancy and reminds me of the deleted scene from Apocalypse Now Redux.

Huy took us all over Hanoi and answered every question we could throw at him. Over the two days we spent in Hanoi, he took us to the infamous Hanoi Hilton, sent us on a CycloTour through the city’s Old Quarter, walked us through the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum grounds, pointed out 400 year old trees, explained the significance of the Temple of Literature, escorted us to the Water Puppet Theater, all without making us feel tired or annoyed or sick of sightseeing.

And as for that hating Americans question, here’s what Huy told us (by the way, this was corroborated by our Saigon tour guide, Trung, who you’ll meet later): Vietnam is a country with a long history of foreign occupation. The Chinese were there for 1,000 years. The French were there for 100 years. Relatively speaking, the American War (as they refer to it) was just a blip in their history.

Yes it was a very destructive war, and yes the scars of the war are still plainly visible, but generally speaking, the Vietnamese just seem to have moved on. I know it sounds like the naïve optimism of a couple of tourists, but both of our guides were very adamant about this fact.

And for what it’s worth, in the time we spent in that country, not once did we encounter even a whiff of anti-American sentiment. And we’re pretty sure it would’ve been the same even if we hadn’t told everyone we were from Toronto.

The Vac-Asian, part 1: Hong Kong

Hong Kong is the most explosively vertical city on earth. That’s not a matter of opinion. More human beings live above the 14th floor in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world. I just had no idea how many freakishly tall buildings they could build in such a tiny space…and we live in Manhattan.

This weekend the ticker taper parade for the World (really?) Champion Yankees was in our neighborhood, and I overheard a drunken Yankees douche, er, fan, blather, “This is the greatest city in the fuckin’ world, bro!” (p.s. the Yankees winning the World Series is about as exciting as Goldman Sachs executives giving themselves billion dollar bonuses…yay, the bad guys won…again!!).

Point is, yes, New York is an awesome city. But I wanted to ask that fan exactly what criteria he was basing his theory on. Because if it’s number of skyscrapers, or impressiveness of skyline, I gotta say, Hong Kong’s got this city beat.

According to the ever wise and reliable Wikipedia-san, Hong Kong has almost two thousand more high-rises than New York City. Two thousand! We’re not talking about dollars or cars or people here. We’re talking about massive structures of steel and girders and glass and lightening rods and millions of people to live inside them.

I mean, I don’t want to turn this into some kind of municipal wiener contest, I’m just saying…for such a small amount of surface area, it’s shocking to see these gigantic economic stalagmites explode upward in such a brazen disregard for nature and gravity and all that is holy. I mean, they have typhoons in this place. Yeah, those are real.

On top of that, the surrounding areas are stacked (stacked!) with mile after mile of public housing that is so singularly unique I wouldn’t shut up about it the whole time we were there. “It’s like Robocop!” I kept exclaiming. Except, of course, sans crime-fighting cyborg with a heart of gold. So I guess it’s nothing like Robocop.

It’s strange, because on one side of the island you’ve got these huge bundles of skyscrapers that throb with the scary futuristic uniformity of a circuit board. And then you go to the other side of the territory (their word, not mine), and…and…

Ok, I should take a step back here. First of all, I have to mention that we were staying with our incredibly generous and hospitable friends the Tiedes, who have relocated to Hong Kong with their two dogs, Prophet and Lester. After a full day of exploring Hong Kong’s money-maker, they took us on a harrowing wrong-side-of-the-road drive around to the back of the, uh, territory, which, inexplicably, looks like the Italian Riveria. I mean, it’s the most incongruous, best-kept secret I’ve ever seen.

So we spent our second day in Hong Kong sunning poolside and sipping vodka lemonades at their private club overlooking craggy cliffs that plunge into turquoise water. There are surf beaches, sandy seafood joints, yachts. It’s crazy. Even if I don’t get to have a yacht, at least it’s nice to be in a place where yachts like to hang out.

Here’s the other weird thing about Hong Kong. When you walk around the guts of the city, which, despite the rampant capitalism is still mighty Chinese, the whole city gives the impression of being built in a treehouse.

That’s because Hong Kong sports some pretty rocky geography, so they just stack all the pubs and restaurants and chicken-windowed shops right up the side of the rocks. There’s actually a moving walkway, called The Escalator, that hauls your fatass right up past level after level of bars and restaurants and chicken-windows. God help our obesity rates when America gets wind of this.

The Tiedes showed our Asia-ignorant asses all over Hong Kong. We drank beer out of bowls, learned how to distinguish between spices that numb and spices that burn, and learned that super rich Chinese people line their security gates with shattered broken glass. And fine, maybe that last one was an isolated incident, but still…it was a learning experience.

To be honest, there’s a good chance that every piece of information I just provided about Hong Kong is completely incorrect. I’m just calling it like I see it. But if there are two things I’m positive of it’s that A. it was an incredible way to launch the journey, and B. it’s near China, right?

pre-trip prep

Our adventure unofficially began the morning of October 20th, when we dropped Franny off at the small commuter airport in Long Island, base operations for Pet Airways. This little entrepreneurial gem was no doubt the brainchild of a group of mustachioed flyboys who decided to make a little extra cash charging $400+ a ticket to fly peoples’ pets across the country in style.

So they outfitted a few single engine planes with a fuselage full of animal cages and a couple flight attendants to refill their vodka tonics, and just like that, a business was born. In our case, shelling out the extra cash to have her stay with Crissy’s mom and stepdad outside of Chicago was half as expensive as 18 days of New York City boarding, and she’d be getting 10 times the attention. Best money we ever spent. Er, top 20, anyway.

When we arrived at the airline counter to drop Franny off, Crissy was so traumatized that one of the employees asked if Franny was moving to Chicago permanently. “Well, not exactly,” I responded, clearing my throat. “We’re going on vacation for a couple weeks.”

Now let me clarify here. My wife has an actual, bona fide phobia of flying, as diagnosed by yours truly, the one sitting next to her on 99.9% of her flights. Admittedly, she’s much better than she was when we first started dating, thanks to a little old-fashioned grit, and a lot of new-fashioned Xanax.

But let me tell you something. My wife’s fear of flying is not a cute little scaredy cat bumpity poo in the planey waney. When that 90-ton winged monster rears up and lurches off the runway in defiance of gravity, something inside Crissy’s primal brain unhinges, and the primordial fight or flight response blares like a siren in her skull. And her inability to do either as the plane rockets into the sky sends her into a writhing, scrambling, eye-bulging, skin-tearing rage for roughly 6 minutes.

Like I said. The Xanax helps.

Anyway, the point is, when it came to Franny boarding her first flight, Crissy was projecting a lot of Xanax-free fear onto our confused puppy, who was actually in great hands with the friendly, helpful employees. Plus, Crissy brought along Franny’s pillow wrapped in one of my stinky t-shirts, so she’d have a familiar scent to keep her calm in case of turbulance.

And to be honest, I’d bet my life that if Franny had her choice of horrors to endure, she’d take a couple bumps in the clouds over the running vacuum cleaner ten times out of ten.

P.S. What, you thought I was gonna lead with the dead body story?

The future is a place of many wonders

We made it. We traveled to the future and back and lived to tell about it. We have many things to report about what you can expect out of mankind in the next 12 hours, including: people will be loud and pushy in the airport, they will be overly paranoid about contracting the swine flu/Sars/ebola, Asian airlines will have a dizzying array of entertainment options to choose from on personal screens…in coach, and food will taste good.

During the course of the 18 days we spent in the future, we experienced expansive cities, mind-boggling swarms of scooters, 10 shots fired by an AK-47, the true resting weight of a 50 lb. boa constrictor, and one dead body.

That’s right. A human corpse.

Tạm biệt

Nhìn thấy bạn trong hai tuần!

little (particles of) shit

Last night, around 3 a.m., I woke up to little furry tickles on my face. Now that Franny sleeps in the bed (it was only a matter of time), I cracked one eye, expecting to see our dog's cute little mug snuggled up next to mine.

Instead, I opened my eyes to find a furry little pink butthole, millimeters from my nostrils.

When I recoiled and tried to shove the little starfish out of the way, she responded the only way she knew how without having to wake up.

By releasing a fresh wave of broccoli breeze, right in my face.

Arrrgh

I know I know. We’re the worst bloggers ever. We agree. Let’s just move past it, ok?

We passed a big milestone since the last time we posted. One full year in NYC, as of September 20th. We made it alive.

We decided to celebrate the one-year anniversary by dressing like pirates and cruising around the southern tip of Manhattan on a modified pirate ship. You know, for International Talk like a Pirate Day.

What? You’ve never heard of ITLAPD? The day that pirates gained their independence? The day that the pirate prophet was born? The holiday that all Somali pirates consider amateur night at the pirate bars?

Truth is, ITLAPD is a joke holiday started by two Oregonians in the mid 90’s, and was promoted by humor columnist Dave Barry (thank you Wikipedia). It was also roundly promoted by our friend Danny Thomases, who so enjoyed bar hopping around Greenwich Village in a pirate costume that he turned to his fellow pirates and growled, “Arrggh ye milksops, cock yer hat athwart my hawse and have a care of the lee-latch.”

Which is pirate for, “Let’s rent a pirate boat, invite all our friends, make everyone dress like pirates, and get loaded.” And so it was.

We weren’t totally sold at first, but when our friends with two kids told us they were going, we had no excuse. Plus, as it turns out, trannies and crazy people had it right all along: shopping for costumes when it’s not Halloween is completely awesome. Empty stores, abundant selections, attentive employees. I think I’m gonna start doing all my Halloween costume shopping in mid-September.

We didn’t go too crazy, since pirate costumes aren’t exactly appreciating investments. But I think we did well enough. Let me just add that Crissy’s do-rag is absolutely authentic, and was not purchased in the costume section. The picture of the super pissed off black dude on the packaging is targeting a very specific demographic that, thankfully, my wife does not fall under.

We ended up having a really incredible time. The weather was gorgeous, the number of people on the boat was perfect, and there were just the right amount of sloppy drunks to provide entertainment: 3 by my count, including one girl who fell flat on her face 30 seconds after complaining about the lack of tequila variety.

The party was so fun, in fact, that I have little recollection of how we got home. Crissy’s memory of the end of the night is equally hazy, though she remembers enough detail to know that we didn’t get mugged on the way home, which meant that my pounding skull was completely self-induced.