Originally written on November 2, 2004

Today both of our families called us at the hotel, to catch up on our trip goings on, and hear a friendly voice. Also, it was much cheaper for them to call us, then vice versa. After our chats we put our bags in the hotel storage and cruised the streets looking for snacks, souvenirs, gifts, a way to spend the day in Hanoi (as we had seen all the sites we wanted to see).

Kirk found a barber!, and got his haircut. This may sound insignificant, but he had been in search of a decent (with a door!) barber, and was unsuccessful throughout Laos. Kirk was next in line and we watched the barber cut a vietnamese man’s hair, and then proceed to shave his entire face! Forehead and nose included!!! Afterwards, a young women washed the newly coiffed man’s hair and gave him a head and forehead massage. All while watching, non-stop, a soap opera on a tv overhead. Not once did she look down at her customer!

We walked around town, buying supplies. We searched forever for a decent place to eat lunch and settled on a small cafe, based on the pastries, breads and chocolates in the window. Dessert (a chocolate bun and a dark chocolate with pistachio morsel) were great but Kirk had burnt french onion soup. My chicken sandwich was good.

In midafternoon we tried to go to the movies. They are far away from the city centre, and started at weird hours or were really uninteresting movies. Even the thought of air conditioning was not tempting enough to go watch a bad movie.

Instead of the movies, we decided on killing time at the local pub, where we drank local red beer, ate peanuts, watched soccer, and watched the locals get wasted (guys asleep at the table, others laughing loudly and gesturing).

We collected our bags and took a taxi to the train station. The driver, accidentally (of course) dropped us off at the wrong station (north bound instead of south bound). Thus, we were accosted by many cyclos telling us that the north bound train has left and when they found out we wanted the southbound train they offered to drive us there for a phenomenal fee. Of course. We knew that the station was close so we decided to walk. The walk (in the dark) was through a shady part of town, and Kirk and I quickly (but not to quickly so as not to appear frightened) made our way to the correct station.

We boarded the train and met our roomates in our four bunk bed room. Two Japanese 20 somethings. We shared some of our strange foodstuffs. A drink called birds nest fungus, which tastes like sweet yoghurt except that it has chunky pieces in it. We found out later that these chunks are actual shallow nests fragments, a delicacy! We also ate seaweed potato chips, really good. Our two companions shared Japanese gum, which comes in a huge medicine like plastic container. Very good. We chatted to them about our lives and travel in broken English and went to sleep.

Written October 12, 2005

Our last day in Bangkok (thankfully!). We checked out after a leisurely morning and left our packs at the hostel as we had to return that evening to pick up passports with newly acquired vietnam visa. First stop was lunch at the Whitanhya (spelling?) building. It is a school of some type and we ate in the cafeteria. Heather had something (we don’t know what it was because the menu was in thai) that tasted like licorice a bit with rice and some crunchy sweet thing. I had a spicy chicken dish topped with a fried egg, it was very good but very spicy. Spicy + 33C temp + high humidity= extreme sweaty kirk, not pretty. » Read the rest of the entry..