Make, Do

I’m a peculiar traveler. I try to exclusively engage in things that fall under these 2 categories:

1. Make.
2. Do.

This is the messenger bag I made.

Materials

Liner – Angry Birds bag I used for teaching at the rural Siem Reap school, Cambodia.

Outer layer – polka dotted 1 meter cloth from Ho Chi Minh City central market, Vietnam.

Side panels – table mats from Bangkok department store, Thailand.

Skills learned

Sewing by hand, particularly the backstitch (stronger).

Patience.

A benefit of slow travel is the relaxed time to do such ridiculous things 🙂

Never lonely

Some people worry about loneliness during solo travel. I encountered so many fun, inspiring, random, and enjoyable people during my 6 weeks in Vietnam. These are a few.

Counter-clockwise from top left:

Argentinian couple (teacher and med student) living in Berlin. Met in a small cafe and we spoke Spanish for 10 min before I broke. Their dreams are to ride a bike from San Francisco to Alaska and to drive from Berlin to India.

Norwegian international development exchange student studying the tailoring industry’s impact on local families in Hoi An. Met at a cafe while I was eating a burger. She traveled alone without a wallet for a month in Europe, hitchhiking her way around with only some clothes. Mad props.

Chinese dude who provides a boutique travel service for young Chinese tourists looking to explore Vietnam. Met at a $6 hostel dorm in Saigon. Owns a pet monkey and is now staying at a $100/month apartment in Saigon to continue his business.

Cafe owner on Phu Quoc island who takes at least 30 selfies a day. My cup of Americano turned into an afternoon of cycling and hiking to waterfalls and temples.

British couple who helped with the recovery effort in the Philippines. Met as the only foreigners traveling by bus/boat to Phu Quoc island. Guy constructs film sets and can’t think of a job he would enjoy more. Girl does social work and this trip confirmed that she’s in the right field.

Israeli couple that just completed their army service. Met during a day tour of Dalat. Girl was elated she had become conversational in English over the past year and could hold a nice conversation with me. Too bad I haven’t learned Hebrew.

Italian guy who couch surfs and rides a motorcycle from village to village offering IT and teaching help. German girl is of a different breed – she rushed down Vietnam in 9 days and hated the country as a tourist destination. Met on a sleeper bus.

Japanese girl who conversed with me for <1 min, wanted a group photo, then left to Malaysia. Random!

Chinese shoe factory owner looking to expand his business to Vietnam. Met in a hostel (girl in red is the hostel owner). First person I've met that packed lighter than me. Grrr.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

Controlled chaos, the end of the well oiled Vietnamese tourist trail for me. I learned some history at the War Remembrance museum and drifted gently down the Mekong Delta.

A surreal paddle down the Mekong Delta.

I provided most of the paddling of course.

No fear.

In Saigon (as well as Hanoi) college kids come out to the park and practice their English. White skin helps you become prey 🙂

How the War Remembrance museum begins. Informative, shocking, and makes you think about American involvement abroad. Well worth the visit.

Traffic on the road? No problem. Side walks are fair game.

Social dance at the park.

My best eating experience in Saigon. Order lunch in a tight alley, get ushered into a home where I share a table with a young girl. I take her picture, she takes mine, and I watch TV with grandma in front of the ancestor altar. And the food was tasty! $2 for a full plate with tea, watermelon, and soup.

Dalat, Vietnam

Dalat was my favorite city in Vietnam, likely due to the cooler weather and less touristy feel. The French made this their getaway back in the day. Its high elevation helped them (and me) dodge the crazy hot weather elsewhere in Indochina.

Central lake that was unexpectedly 6km to walk around when I thought it was going to be a 30 min stroll.

Strongest waterfalls I've seen here. You had the option to rollercoaster (yes, rollercoaster) down to these falls. I was too cheap to spend the $2 to do that and walked.

This is one way to bridge the gap between romanized languages and their character based past. Roundify.

The wine produced here was decent! Haha at least to the wedding reception open bar level.

Cable car built by the Austrians that dropped us off at a Buddhist temple. Go figure.

The view out into Dalat city.

Nha Trang, Vietnam

I ventured my way down south and arrived to the Russian beach town of Nha Trang where I mainly did activities like snorkeling and bike riding.

All Russian signage. There is a direct flight from Moscow to Nha Trang. Never seen so many Russians in my life. Wish I could communicate with them.

Going out snorkeling and tried scuba diving for the first time!

South central style pho. Breakfast everyday!

Nha Trang beach. View toward a big amusement park that's accessible by cable car.

Bike tour

Brit and Aussie teachers from Singapore with our guide.

Just biking through town.

Mountain biking time

This fruit is directly translated as "breast milk." Decent tasting.

Waterfall swimming. Water is so dark due to water depth.

More swimming

Clothing care

Unless you like traveling dirty, the issue with having just 3 sets of clothes is they require a lot of hands on TLC. This is my 3 part system (version 1.0) for keeping it all together.

Problem: Paying for laundry costs at least $1/kg (!?), and their turnover is usually >24hr. Not good enough.

Solution: Hand wash everyday. Usually that’s a pair of socks, boxers, and T-shirt. Guest houses provide soap and, if you’re lucky, shampoo. I use them to scrub down my clothes after I shower. If you’re lazy, focus on the bacteria-philic parts, i.e. crotch, armpits, and neckline.

Problem: It’s difficult to dry clothes in a time and space efficient manner, especially in humid places.

Solution: Use the “California roll” (Figure 1). The key is to use your own towel to dry off and use the large towels that the hotel provides for roll-drying your clothes. Afterward, don’t hang your clothes to dry in the damp bathroom. Hang them in front of the fan or AC (Figure 2). Your clothes will be dry in no time!

Problem: Your clothes have holes in them.

Solution: Patch them and bombproof them. Needles, thread, discarded cloth, and shoulder pads (stay tuned for a backpack improvement project!) cost me 50 cents in Vietnam. The parts that first start to go are pants (Figure 3), backpack, and socks (Figure 4). Go online. Learn. Try. At the very worst you muck up everything and have to replace your socks for a buck or your pants for 2. Travel slowly. You have time to perfect your art.

Figure 4. Sewing technique. A. Smartwool sock over Nalgene bottle. B. Sewing patch. C. Reinforcement complete. D. Good to go!

Personalize your tour

We’ve all been on subpar tour packages. We’ve been unwillingly taken to businesses and ended up paying more than the sticker price (What? The cable car/coffee/jeep aren’t included?). So when you’ve had the last straw, you exclaim, “Screw it. I’m doing it my own way!”

To instantly awesomify your next tour, (and by “you” I mean “me”)

Prep
1. Identify the objective.
Oh, the tour office has a hike that would cost $25. You think, “I could do that on my own…”
2. Figure our how to get there.
A detailed Trip Advisor posting on the Lang Biang mountain hike is 2 years old. They say to use bus #5 from Dalat. You cross reference with the restaurant and hotel. Nope, there ain’t no bus #5. Use “Lac Duong.” Um, can you write that down? And where exactly is the bus stop? The posting also says it’s difficult to find the hiker’s trail when you get there but helpfully posts pictures of the correct turns. You take some vital screenshots.
3. Stock up.
Ritz bits with cheese. Gummy worms.

Approach
1. When in doubt, ask. Don’t be a man.
2. Accept mistakes, many of them. You are winging it in a foreign country after all.

Top left: Screenshot of correct turn onto hiker's trail. Bottom: Waiting for the bus with motorcycle riders preying on passengers. Top right: Near collision with excavator.

Execute
1. Bus costs 20% more than expected.
2. Bus almost collides with heavy machinery.
3. Bus conductor helpfully points out return bus schedule.
4. No map at trailhead.
5. You can’t find the hiker’s trail and end up using the road where jeeps make you eat their nasty exhaust.
6. A Trip Advisor reviewer: “With 2 small children we messed around and took many breaks on our way up and it took 40 min to reach the top.” You take 3 hours.
7. You meet nice hikers who share reconnaissance info and offer to stick with you since you’re solo. “Naw, I got this.”
8. You make it to the 2000+m summit! Great city views.
9. As you descend you ask a ranger how to take the hiker’s trail. She helpfully points you in the right direction.
10. You see horses painted like zebras!?
11. Downpour on the way back. Luckily you’re on the bus already.
12. You celebrate with a fantastic cup of Americano in the “Swiss Alps of Vietnam.”

Top: You can take pictures of these "zebras" with Vietnamese cowboys and cowgirls. Go figure. Middle: At the top! Bottom: Walking through the pine trees on the elusive hiker's trail

Overall
Personalized touring = instant adventure.

Hoi An, Vietnam

Hoi An was spared from American bombing and is now a riverside town primarily known for silk and tailors. One can tailor make anything here. Suits, gowns, hats, shoes (sneakers, sandals too), trekking pants?! Even bikinis. Cost of suit (jacket and pants) ranges from $90-150. If an Aussie says it costs more to dry clean than a tailor made dress shirt ($20), then something is really out of whack! Here are some scenes.

First fitting. I ended up revisiting them 3 times. I’m just a princess when it comes to custom made.

People light incense around twice a day. Ancestor worship and praying for good fortune. Full moons and beginning of months are also times of lighting incense. Strong customs.

Me being a stalker again. Quite a beautiful photoshoot!

Sign with “fixed prices.” Good information for the savvy bargainer.

La plage. A nice bar fully equipped with everything you’d want at a beach. I did the pull ups and yoga routine. (That’s a routine??)

Scene: sleeper bus. Wife: "I can't sleep with this Vietnamese conductor man laying on the floor between me and my husband." Conductor: "I gotta hit the sack, man, screw it." Husband: "I'm just going to put on my headlamp and pretend nothing's happening. I've seen worse from the wifey. This is nothing."

Part 2: Motorcycle tour

There was a lot going on in this motorcycle tour. Here are more experiences.

Ho Chi Minh trail

Dip in the hot springs!

Large green haul

My 2 favorite signs - 1. There ain't no city here. 2. Matching game

China beach. I guess this looked like China to the Americans

Monastery perched above rice paddies

Another awesome view

Danang, looks like London to me.

Part 1: Motorcycle tour Hue to Hoian, Vietnam

This marks the first time I used the services of the number 1 ranked Trip Advisor establishment in a locale. The 3 day 2 night trip averaging 200+km per day presented a lesser trekked Vietnam, touching the Ho Chi Minh trail and the Laos border. I think easy riders are the way to go for motorcycles!

And we're off!

Our views in central Vietnam

Taking a refreshing dip in a waterfall

Juicy chicken wrapped in glutinous rice.

Vietcong tunnel. A whole village of 350 people lived in here for 6 years.

American tank

Red signifies mines have been removed