Hong Kong

I just passed by a luggage store called "Ever Rich". The YKers get it.

Hanoi it turns out was a very good time. It was nice to be back in the enveloping socialness of a hostel. Every night in Hanoi ended with a trip to Finnigans. Of course the capital city of Vietnam has an Irish bar down the road from the hostel.

I spent one day trying to see an old communist's dead body, but when that didn't work out I got a guy with a motorbike to drive me around to some museums. It was all very culturally enriching. However the only fact that stayed with me is the Vietnamese women blacken their teeth on purpose by chewing a certain type of root. I thought it was just poor hygiene.

While in Hanoi I took a trip to Halong Bay, a UNESCO world heritage site. It was stunningly beautiful, of course. It was also the most randomly organized tour I've taken. On at least four separate occasions I thought that they had completely forgotten me on this bus stop/restaurant/junk/parking lot. Only one of those times they actually had. We were stopping to see some very nice caves and I was in the bathroom. My junk was pulling out as I got out of the bathroom (I just re-read that sentence. I think I need to clarify that "junk" is a certain type of Asian boat), so I had to jump onto another one that was pulling into the dock. In the process I broke my watch, but made it to the caves.

The rest of the trip was cruising around the mist shrouded limestone juts of stone and drinking beers on the top deck. At one point we got to do some night kayaking through a floating village. One of the top ten most surreal experiences of my life. We were kayaking in what I will forever consider a Terry Gitersos Special. Not an actual kayak, but this cheap plastic open bodied affair. Suffice it to say me and Jon (my Swedish kayaking partner) were thoroughly soaked by the end of it and ludicrously happy.

I slept the night on the junk and made it back to Hanoi just in time for the hostel's happy hour. After a brief visit to Finnigans I got email addresses and said goodbye. I got up at 5:30am and shared a taxi with Jon and Christina (my Swedish kayaking partners Swedish wife) to the airport and got into Hong Kong at around 1pm.

I have no idea what to do in Hong Kong. This is one of the few times I've been in a foreign city without the benefit of a guide book. I asked a Hong Kong girl Jenny (we were sharing a room on the junk) what there was to do and she just shrugged, so I've spent my afternoon doing that old backpacker staple; wandering around and getting hopelessly lost in a foreign city.

Hong Kong is very clean and very vertical. Right now I'm sitting in an cyber cafe on the fifth floor of a building that has a very small sign outside a very small door. Everything seems to be like that. Only the very poshest stores actually have space on the bottom of the building, everything else is straight up.

What else... I want to do a Vietnamese coffee tasting when I am back at home. I am determined to find the optimum milk:coffee ratio.

Other than that, I will be back in Vancouver, Canada in just two days!