miscellaneous meats

i didn't realise i'd left it this long. lots has happened. both involving me and not involving me. new presidents. dancing bears. flooded countries. giant cockroaches. joe kinnear. he manages to get a mention every time but he doesn't seem to be doing much. why does he have his hair like that? he looks like a cross between a walrus and a wolf.

anyway. im currently in dalat in vietnam. it's in the hills which is the only reason it's not flooded along with the rest of the country. it's wet and misty and they sell rice jelly filled with miscellaneous meat which i've just ordered by mistake. the jury's out on this one.

nanning was different. there's not much to do there apart from collect visas and get stared at by the locals. that said it's interesting to see the places untouched by the tourism brush. the hostel i stayed in had a nintedeo wii and one toilet complete with infinity mirrors, so there was enough to keep me entertained. myself and matt spent an evening drinking the chinese equivalent of tennants super t next to the strangest river ive ever seen. it was if the river was shitting. no one asked for it. it just happened. i'll move on.

From hanoi

the usual border-crossing fun to vietnam followed. general carnage involving golf buggies and eager locals. nothing too stressful though. hanoi was the first stop on the flooded express. apparently 55 people had drowned the day before we arrived. no one drowned when i was there. they knew i wouldn't stand for it. a lad we went out with did fall in to the lake right in the centre of town though. he thought that the lake was 'a step' and fell right in. this was the highlight of hanoi. i should mention that i also saw water puppets and drank the occasional 'bia hoi' - 16p for a glass of beer? i'll have 19.

From hanoi

11 of us took a 2 day excursion to halong bay, one of the 7 natural wonders of the world apparently. it was pretty nice. we ventured through caves, kayaked, jumped off the boat and all that malarkey. malarkey. i'm proud of myself for that one. our tour guide looked like a vietnamese jack nicholson and i liked him for this. he spent 20 minutes on the coach ride explaining how he gets to work every day. thanks for that jack but my ears are bleeding. a successful trip anyway. much fun was had by all.

From hanoi

on the way to hoi an we were persuaded by an over eager vietnamese war vet (a veteran, not an actual vet. i'd imagine all of the vets were called up to fight in the war though, so maybe he actually was a vet? i'll never know) to get off the bus and take a guided tour of the demilitarized zone that divided north from south vietnam during the war. we went down some tunnels used by the vietkong, saw some of the war cemeteries and stood on a tank. it turned out to be a good decision.

From hanoi

in hoi an i bought 2 tailored suits, 2 shirts and 1 pair of shoes. i don't have a job or even a home but for some reason i felt the need. we rented mopeds and drove to the beach on the second day where it rained again. the rain cant get you when you're in the sea though. take that one rain. poseidon wins this round. i liked hoi an. my current travelling companion richard painted a monobrow and a french mustache on his face and got overly drunk. i'll remember hoi an for this. the monobrow. so cruelly outlawed by modern society. lets bring it back.

From hanoi

finally. na trang. apparently some sort of uber beach resort. you can't be a beach resort if you're wet. fact. fact of science. end of. it was still fun though. again when you're in the sea......poseidon 2 - 0 ....etc. the bars were also good, as was the food. i think i like vietnamese food more than chinese. at the roadside cafe we stopped at today, they were selling vegetarian soup with chicken and beef. brillant. most restaurants sell meals containing 'miscellaneous meats'. it's what makes the world go round people. lets go celebrate.

rayden and the pakistan sandwich

my ass hurts. yangshao has a wooden seat only policy. when you pair this with 4 days of mountain-biking it's like putting together a tag-team of pain you just can't put down. like the legion of doom. biking had it's successes. we've rarely found what we were looking for, but there's always been other things to see. like chinese people and hills.

hong kong was a success. i bought a camera that likes to turn itself off occasionally, but it only cost 40 pounds so it'll do. myself and matthew p bendall caught the tram up to victoria peak and inhaled some more pollution before catching the bus to yangshao. yangshao's the niceset place in china. this is a fact. the last 5 days have basically been the same, but different. wake up. eat breakfast. hire bike. get lost. find something - sometimes a hill, sometimes a quarry, always a chinese person wearing one of those hats that rayden wears in mortal combat. we started off shooting fake fireballs at everyone we passed but the novelty's worn off now. back back forwards - that was his move. what a champ. anyway, find something - climb a hill. ride back to town. ow my ass hurts. get drunk. pain goes. happiness comes. i unintentionally slept by a river one night and was rudely awoken by a dog at 5am. not recommended. dogs have rabies, rivers have rats and mosquitoes have teeth. do mosquitoes have teeth? i think so.

other things i wouldn't recommend would be painting your entire body with chinese oil-paint, and breaking in to area surrounded with rusty barbed wire. they both hurt. the chinese don't do halloween, so i had to cut up one of my 4 t-shirts and paste the chinese equivalent of dulux on my bite ridden torso. the chinese loved that shit. though most of them are now covered in red and yellow. unlucky.

other than that, i've generally just climbed lots of hills, done lots of good deeds, had a mud bath in a cave and spent a lot of time trying to persuade matt to eat a 'pakistan sandwich' from the local cafe. one hill we climbed had a fenced off area at the top with 'important machinery' inside. we managed to get in, but there was no machinery of any importance. another hill we climbed had a hole in the middle and was called moon hill. we were followed all the way up by an old woman with metal teeth trying to sell us drinks. matt said he'd only by a drink if she ate the can afterwards but she refused. i bought a drink.

we're catching a bus to nanning on monday then it's onwards to vietnam. everyone says i'll get mugged. not with 3 rotten t-shirts and a chinese haircut i won't. i'm practically invincible. like joe kinnear - only with less swearing.