Youth In Asia

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I’ve been indulging my audio book addiction, and it’s left me with little time for blogging. But I’ve got about 20 min so I’ll hammer out a quick update (I‘m writing fast, please excuse my grammar errors and my developing tendency to slip into Vietnamenglish):

Here’s what we’ve been up to since last time I wrote:

-bamboo raft down the Li River (look up online -grand scenery) to reach Southern China.
-tasted (just one sip) snake wine -it’s rice wine marinated in a bottle full of dead snakes.
-spent 3 days rock climbing in Yangshuo, China -very epic, see Jeremy’s blog.
-rented bikes for 80 cents a day and got around with out peddling by grabbing passing vehicles.
-got massages -the girl who worked on Jeremy was a lot cuter than the guy I got.
-long lists are boring…so this one is ending.

I hadn’t realized that U.S. citizens can’t get Vietnamese visas at the border, so we had to go to Nanning, in Southern China, to get our papers sorted out at the Vietnamese consulate. Nanning is a regular city. Tourists don’t go there. There’s nothing particularly remarkable to see but that made it a really neat place to spend a few days. People were genuinely curious about us since we were foreigners. Mothers would bring there children over to us and prompt them to say the four words which constitute their English vocabulary: “hello, how are you?”

From Nanning we took a bus to Hanoi, Vietnam. We had our first major hiccup at the border. Jeremy could not convince the Chinese officials that he was the long haired guy pictured in his passport. Despite a whole pile of documentation and identification, including his birth certificate, there was no convincing them. Finally we got out our computers and dug for pictures to demonstrate Jeremy’s Jeremy-ness. I had happened to snap a picture of him cutting his long hair off when we were in Cusco, Peru, so I made a little slide show documentary of the evolution of Jeremy’s hair-do. I’m not sure if the slide show was the reason, but after much ado they finally let us into Vietnam.

Vietnam: Central America is to the U.S. what Vietnam is to China. It got a whole lot more primitive and a whole lot less organized as soon as we crossed the border. Super fun! The people we‘ve encountered are incredibly sweet and enormously helpful. “We want help you first -more important. then maybe second we can make some money,” the pretty lady at the hostel desk said with here beaming smile when we asked here why she was so nice.

I should mention the youth in Asia. This was a big topic in ethics class and I never fully understood why. Anyway, in this part of Asia the youth are splendid. We are regularly befriended. Their help is extended. But my rhyming has ended. For the past two days two youth in Asia have helped us find, buy, and fix up the two scooters we‘re going to drive the 1700 miles to Ho Chi Minh City (plus possible detours into Laos and Cambodia). It’s time to hit the road….blessings, I’ll catch you later.

-bjorn2bwild