Eric and Zeb's Excellent Adventure!

Goodbye Saigon.

2009-01-08T20:03:00.000-08:00

We leave Saigon today to return to Seattle via 12 hours in Seoul.

We have little to show for Saigon. It should be said "Saigon is damned big!".

This would be our hotel. It took a few hours on the back of a couple motorbikes to find this spot. Most of the other hotels were full or too expensive. Our drivers persevered however. They have cable and a hot shower.

This is the coffee shop across the street from the hotel. We had coffee here every morning. Very nice people.

Crossing the street can be a challenge.

Some streets:

Driving here is insane. If you feel the least bit uncomfortable driving in places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Seattle then don't bother even thinking of trying to here. If you are in a cab, it would even be best not to look.

Wastelands...

2009-01-01T01:09:00.000-08:00

We have found a new favourite brand:

Craven "A"?

That would be a hard-boiled chicken fetus. No, not the normal egg variety. This one was inseminated and developing into a chicken. I ate that. With Salt, Pepper, and MSG. It tasted like a mix of egg and chicken. It even had a broth-like fluid in it. Delicious. I had two with some older dudes who gave me rice wine in Da Nang.

The next day. We tried to leave Da Nang, but we arrived at the train station to late for a train. Noon in other words. So we had to wait for the next train at 4am.

So we waited out of the rain under a defunct train.

The next morning early we were on the train to Nha Trang.

In Nha Trang we spent xmas in a hotel room with cable.

Also in Nha Trang, Zeb tamed his beard into that of a 70's pornstar.

Then we boarded a bus for Phan Rang.

In Phan Rang after walking 5 kilometer with our bags we finally arrived hot and tired at the beach. We immediately became a spectacle. It didn't help that we were carrying a guitar. Guitars seem to be a universal signal for free interaction. A blessing really!

We have become the jump off...

After everyone on the beach took turns kicking it with us the whole place cleared out. It was getting dark and the temperature suddenly dropped, because a huge storm was headed right for us. We walked to the first hotel we could, but it was far too expensive. Content to sleep outside as long as we could avoid the rain, we went around the side of the hotel into an unused stairway. It wasn't a half hour before a man leaned over the railing of the place next door and yelled: "Can I help you?" It was confusing because I am used to this being one of those rude things people say when they really want you to pay or leave, but in his literal and direct english he really meant it. His name is Huy (Hway) and he manages and lives at this coffee shop.

Now this is by far the most posh coffee shop I have ever seen. This is no hotel, just coffee.

Huy was very kind and excited to meet us. We were instant friends. He is slightly younger than us and his wife lives 100km from his job. Huy gave us coffee, cigarettes, Hennessey, a place to sleep for the night, breakfast, and gifts of friendship to our families. In the morning we gave him a Leatherman as our gift to his family. He was leaving town to visit his wife for four days, so we headed back to the beach to camp.

This is the camp we built:

That's right! We built a sandbag bunker in the side of a sand dune to protect from wind and rain. You see in Thailand we thought we were buying a tarp, but it was actually a bag full of plastic bags. They were finally useful.

This is what is opposite our camp away from the beach. Wasteland...

Camping was going very well for us.

One morning while we were making coffee, some men and boys we recognized as people who had come to check out our camp, started dragging long tubes through the wastland toward the beach. It was raining pretty hard and we were wondering "WHat are they up to?" Then we hear digging near our tent and noticed they were digging a trench for the pipe. We decided to help.

After we finished burying the pipeline, they insisted we eat with them.

That would be an array of various Fruits of The Sea, including squids and some unknown fishes.

I also had the priveledge of drinking a strange beverage with these men.

That would be Seahorse Wine. Yes, it IS a plastic jar with dead seahorses and ricewine. It tastes like it looks... Ahhh-mazing!

We asked what the seawater pipe was for, so they showed us.

A shrimp farm!

Shrimp Larva!

This guy has Ahhh-mazing abs!

We really like these guys. They were so friendly to us.

We spent New Years in our camp on the beach drinking beverages and burning shit!

I have to say that Phan Rang is...

Awesome! But we head on to Saigon tomorrow with hopes for more luck.

This lil' guy is gonna miss us...

It's on in Vietnam!!!

2008-12-21T00:25:00.001-08:00

We made it to Vietnam!

1,484,500 Vietnam Dong

"If you wanna ride. Don't ride the White Horse." -Laid Back (1983)

We arrived in Dong Ha, Vietnam.

Dong Ha is just south of the DMZ (aka The 17th Parallel, aka Ben Hai River). Dong Ha had many American soldiers camping there during the war and a lot of "very terrible" fighting with the Viet Cong. We spent two days touring the area with some motor bike drivers: Dung (Joong), Aowg (Dong), and Huc (Hook).

What's left of a Claymore mine.

Aowg with a poece of an old rocket launcher.

An old American bunker on a hill. A Colonel stayed here.

The whole hill is planted with rubber trees now.

Statues at the National Cemetery. There are 75 cemeteries like this.

The graves in these cemeteries are only for North Vietnamese (Viet Cong) from the war.

Many are unknown. The Viet Cong did not have dog-tags. They had a scrap of paper on a small button. It wasn't really water proof and they broke often.

Inside an old American bunker. The US encampments were not preserved after the war. Some random pieces remain.

Dung and Zeb on top of the bunker.

The old 17th parallel bridge over the Ben Hai River.

These are the Vinh Moc tunnels. A village in North Vietnam on the coast built an underground network of tunnels and lived underground through the war. Children were born down here and the elderly and children stayed in the tunnels while the young men and women fought against the South Vietnam Army and the Americans. The surface was bombed all to hell, but they had artillery to cover the sea and a surface network of trenches to help them move around safely. There was even a very deep bombshelter.

These are some of the trenches.

Fishing boats on the sea.

Some troops camped here.

The famous Rockpile. American Artillery was stationed on top.

People still live in these mountains.

These are the kids that live there. They wanted candy. We didn't have candy.

Some of their homes.

Zeb and Aowg demonstrating camping in an old American war camp.

Huc and Dung treating us to Duck meat and rice wine of which Zeb had none. As they explained saying you don't eat meat in Vietnam is like saying you are not hungry.

We then took the train to Da Nang.

Da Nang is the first big city we have seen in a while.

Laos...

2008-12-17T04:14:00.000-08:00

...is excellent!

800,000 Kip!!

In Paxse we stayed for 4 days.
We found this bridge.
It was built with help of Japan and it is on the back of the 10,000 Kip bill.

Pretty dope.

We witnessed an amazing spectacle in Paxse. I am not really sure what it was. We stayed in a guesthouse near the stadium. One night we heard a commotion at the stadium, so we went to check it out. It was packed for an elaborate ceremony that seemed like a halftime show about the virtues of hard work.

This would be the fishermen dancing. The fisherladies were dressed in blue.

After the festivities at the stadium we wandered to a fair ground sort of place that had many competing booths. One of them had this totally awesome Lao-pop star singing his fucking heart out man.

We discovered that Lao (in Lao there is no 's' in Lao. Spelled or pronounced.) is very serious about coffee production. The climate is right for it and it is an industry people are proud of. Of course much of the coffee is exported to Thailand where it is processed and relabeled as Thailand coffee.

This would be a distributor.

Our beards have gotten a bit weird.

The local beer is Beerlao. Seriously. It is like Pabst.

It looks like Lao rides on Michelin too.

Two Orange Crush to go, please! Yes, it comes in a bag.

This kid can shred some wicked "Scorpions" solos on an $18 guitar!

This is shredder kid's buddy bird boy. The bird is Nuk. These two took us out for drinks and showed us off to the locals.

Eric found some more drinking buddies in Paxse. A Vietnamese engineer and two Lao police officers. At the end of the night the police officers declared they were tanked and that they should go home. They each got on a motor bike and drove into the night. Not uncommon, so we hear.

More drinking friends from Vietaine, Lao. They were going to the Champasak Games opening ceremony that cost too much for us. We thought it was a game, but no game. Just a 4 hour opening ceremony.

Zeb found one of the last living Brontasaurus.

Eric is wondering "WhadoIdo???"

Goodbye Cambodia...

2008-12-12T21:25:00.000-08:00

We are now in Laos. Here are some photos of Cambodia:

Zeb's cooking seems to always draw the crowds.

This is the last photo of Zeb's RayBan knockoffs. They went missing in Stung Treng.

Onward to Laos!!

2008-12-04T19:13:00.000-08:00

Well, hello everyone. Here is a bit of what has been going down here.

We have left Phnom Penh and arrived in Kratie (kra-CHee). Kratie is a small town on the Mekong River. There are dolphins in this river. That would be where the Whiskey and the dolphins get their names. I should read a map more often. Above is a sunset over this Mekong River.

This is the view from the guest house we stayed at. We took the cheap room on the roof. Our bathroom was on the first floor and after 10pm they would lock a gate so we could not get down until morning. They worried that the neighbors would break in if they didn't.

These two lovely people run the guest house. Two canadian women we met there started calling her Mama. Because she was like everybody's Mama. She seemed to worry about our eating habits and pat us on the back or hug us. Rent was only $3 there. They never advertised that it came with a Maternal Guardian!

These kids asked us to take their picture, then they thanked us. This turned out to be the local hair salon crew. Adorable!

These are "Liberation" brand cigarettes. They tend to oppress the lungs however.

Black Panther Stout "The Revolution has been liquified!"

Kratie Town local Coffee Roaster. Yes, he IS roasting coffee in there. Over charcoal.

This is how Kratie Town handles garbage. It is thrown on the banks of the Mekong and later burned. This was on burning day. We watched a lady walk along the river lighting piles of trash on fire all day. Pretty foul smelling!

So in Kratie Town we discovered that to save money we should head to Laos. It is cheaper even still. But we hadn't the visas for it. A young man offered to mail our passports to his uncle in Phnom Penh along with $60 each and then his uncle would send them back with visas, but then he said that he does not recommend this plan. We agreed! So we have been in Phnom Penh (again!) for the past three days. We got visas. Met two Cambodian men who are visiting from the States. Both of them live in Seattle. And we continued to live on the cheap.

This is our TukTuk driver who helped us find the Laos embassy. His name is Saram. He is 17. He has studied English for 6 months and speaks it very well. He also studies to be an accountant. He laughs a lot. Very nice fellow. He has a girlfriend who he claims is beautiful and very clever. I believe him.

A used instrument store.

This would be a "carton" of smokes. By "carton" I mean a bag of 200 cigarettes. It cost $1.25. I will be quiting soon, but there is often so little to do and so much waiting around. (NOTE: These are TERRIBLE! I think they are made from factory floor sweepings. Like Little Debbie's "Star Crunch" only NOT delicious!)

We cooked breakfast on the street today and a Cambodian man said we look poor because we are cooking on the street. A "third-world" country and we look poor! This is perfect!

Oh yeah! On the way back to Phnom Penh I ate a big deep-fried spider. It was delicious. I think it was a proper Tarantula. I have no fear of them anymore. They are now a source of protein.

!STYLE ALERT!

2008-11-24T05:34:00.000-08:00

!STYLE ALERT!

Our brains were in need of ventilation in the hot fire of Cambodia.

So with some fabric scissors intended for bandages we gave ourselves new haircuts.

NOTE: We are commited to the beards for the time being.

We leave Phnom Penh tommorow for Kratie via bus. Kratie is up-river from Phnom Penh and the only thing I know is that they have Mehkong Dolphins in the river up there. Mehkong is also the name of the cheapest whisky in Cambodia or Thailand. It is made in Thailand "FOR EXPORT ONLY" as the bottle declares. SO perhaps these are drunk dolphins who swim in the river. I am probably wrong about this, but I am hopeful.

We saw some stuff here:

The first thing would be The Killing Fields.

Besides these exhumed skulls enshrined in a big temple looking building, a gift shop and a field of excavated graves we found these kids.

This photo cost us a dollar and a half. It was good to see that among the horrors of Cambodia's past the children remain unafraid to extort a few dollars from guilty tourists. Honestly, it was sad and confusing that our donation of a dollar fifty elicited jubilant cheers among the group of them. We were left wondering how they would split it.

This is a gas station. A small one. The gas is sold in recycled liter bottles. Mostly Johnny Walker Black Label bottles.

This is the view from the back of the guesthouse we are staying at. It is on a lake and the rooms are $3 per night.

This is some of the first graffiti we found in Cambodia. It seems to be a bit rare. The other is of a rack of shoes in a street-wear shop we found in downtown. All the shoes were $20 and some of them look like they were made in the 1970's. Including some dope Nike Cortez, in white, grey, and powder blue.

Holiday in Cambodia.

2008-11-16T05:35:00.000-08:00

We have continued our journey east from Bangkok toward Cambodia. Along the way we encountered this beautiful relic:

A 1930's Mercedes Benz in a garage in a country that never sees snow or salty roads.

Then we camped in this National forest. I forgot the name, but it doesn't matter I can't pronounce it anyways.

In the early morning a Babboon attacked our camp.

This guy got away with three packets of dried noodles before Zeb chased it off in his underwear. We don't have a picture of that, but it was terrifying. For me and the babboon.

After a couple days at the park under siege from babboons, wild deer-like animals, mosquitos, and leeches (I hate leeches, but they are not as bad as mosquitos: they don't really hurt or itch. I got bitten three times and Zeb not once)we decide to head to the Cambodian border. We rolled down route 33 and stopped at the last town before the border (I forget the name, but you can follow along on your maps). We randomly stopped at a very cheap hotel for the night. It happened to be run by a couple from Cambodia. When they heard that we were trying to cross the border with Thai motorbikes they gave us some sad news.

The taxes to cross the border with motorbikes from Thailand are too expensive for our meager budget. If the bikes had U.S. plates, then no problem, but they are licensed in Thailand and subject to the rules of the region. There is a tax to leave Thailand and another to enter Cambodia. It seems that the borders on the map actually have a width to them in the real world. So the man of the couple helped us to sell them and offered us a spot on his bus to Siem Reap, Cambodia. He even got us visas for the border. Lucky us. How much did we sell the bikes for you might ask?

1.2 Million Cambodian Riel!

With our bikes sold we are again at the mercy of mass transit. The bus to cambodia was leaving the next day, so we had dinner in their restaurant where, for no apparent reason, they had a caged squirrel. If you have never seen a squirrel in a cage, this is what they do. Well, at least this tweaky bugger.

His performance was mesmerizing! I couldn't stop watching through dinner.

The next day we crossed the Cambodian border. This took nearly 2 hours. Then we boarded a bus. By then we were glad to be done with the bikes. See there aren't exactly proper roads in Cambodia. They are often unpaved. Mud in the rainy season and hard bumpy dirt in the dry season. This would be fun on proper dirt bikes, but our little road bikes would not have handled so well.

This appears to be a common form of transportation. That would be about 20 people in the back of a pickup truck.

These are my new favourite Cambodian cigarettes. Cambo. The package mentions Virginia, London, New York, and Paris but they have nothing to do with any of those places. They are made in Cambodia.

We are now in Siem Reap. As I write this we are preparing to take a bus to Phnom Penh. Here are some of the temples we saw in Siem Reap.

These can hardly sum up the amazing old temples we saw. But we tried.

We rode there on the back of for-hire motorbikes.

The next our drivers took us to a military training base and we used their range to shoot automatic weapons. An AK-47 and a Tommy Gun. Seriously, they had a Tommy Gun!

This is what happened to our $4 a night hotel room.

We trashed it like rock stars.

On The Road Part 2: Return to Bangkok.

2008-11-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

"Easy Rider"

We found this.

This is a bus stop in front of a temple. See how the bus stop looks fancy like the temple. These are like free hotels. The bus stop, not the temple...

These are Thai cigarettes with very serious graphic warnings. In Thai. My favourite is the picture of a white dude with a big mustache holding a baby and blowing smoke. It looks like a bad family photo from the 1970's. Second would be the blackened lungs. Nasty!

We visited Hao Hin only to escape a rainstorm. We ended up spending too much on coffee and finding this location for to sleep the night. It is in a U-turn thing. Constant traffic, trains, and dogs.

We continued south. Our destination was Phuket. We stayed at this nice beach where Zeb cooked a fine meal and the locals avoided us. Or laughed at us. Both really.

"Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads!" -Doc Brown

This family showed us kindness beyond words.

This is Khao Lak Beach. We stayed here for two days on the way to Phuket. It was the first consistently nice weather we had had since leaving Bangkok and we needed a break. We caught the tail end of the monsoon season and riding 90kph in monsoon rains can be pretty brutal. We learned to avoid muddy puddles. Those conceal potholes that go all the way to the dirt.

A mosque on the road to Phuket.

We arrive in Phuket!! This is a picnic shelter in a park in Phuket on the edge of a mangrove swamp and low tideflats where people dig for things. There were mosquitos everywhere.
We decided this was the place to sleep for the night.
Zeb made a really amazing curry. Some older Thai ladies tried to give him advice but it was all in Thai. He did receive a thumbs up from one of them, and we both enjoyed the food. Apparently we had chosen poorly in sleeping here. It turned out to be an all night jump off. There were lots of cars and loud stereos and not much sleep. We left Phuket the next day and headed north. There were too many tourists in Phuket for our tastes.

As a shout out to our dear friend Chaya we decided to stay in Chaiya for the nite. We slept in a park on the beach again and it too happened to be the jump off. But this one had something we had never seen. Watch:

It is hard to see in the videos, but what is happening are scooter wheelies using two people (probably both drunk) to offset the weight of the scooter and pull the front wheel off the road. We also witnessed a three person wheelie that went for about 50 yards. Now I ask you: who would ride bitch on a wheelie?

Sleazy Z and Sleazy E signing out. Over and out...

On The Road (Part 1)

2008-10-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

Here are some temples on the way to Chon Buri:

These were not even the most impressive temples we saw.

We decided to head south on the peninsula to Phuket. We were forced to drive through Bangkok again. We got lost for two hours. As we finally got ourselves oriented (or so we thought) the rain started, so we stopped under an expressway on-ramp to wait out the rain. We asked for directions and found ourselves invited as the apparent guests of honor to the birthday party of the daughter of the man "Dome" we were speaking to. Not wanting to be rude we accepted. They fed us some awesome Thai food. Also, not wanting to be rude, Zeb ate pork/anonymous seafood for the first time in 16 years. Also, stubbornly refusing to be rude and against all warnings we drank water with ice. Neither of us have gotten sick yet.

The family was very excited to meet us. Especially the son when he heard we are from Seattle the land of Nirvana. The father of the family, Dome, is the Food and Beverage Manager at an upscale Bangkok hotel called Novatel. He was very excited to hear that Zeb is a "barman" and would love to talk about bar stuff if we come back through Bangkok. We have made a life-long contact in Bangkok. He generously offered to help us in any way he can. Firstly, by saving us from getting totally lost again. His directions got us to Samut Prakhon.

Where we were guided to this hotel:

We are unsure whether this is a porn-star hotel from the past or the future as neither of us have seen it's like. The bed had ground effects. The mirror on the ceiling had ceiling-effects(?) and there were mirrors everywhere. The TV had nothing but porn. However, it was the cheapest hotel we had stayed in yet even though we took the room for more than three hours (the minimum). We gladly showered off the road dirt. Oh, yeah!! The weirdness of the birthday party was heightened by the fact that we were both soooo filthy we thought we had tanned quicker than expected.

Ready for the beaches...

2008-10-21T01:46:00.000-07:00

This is Mr. Preecha:

He is a Taxi driver in Bangkok. He is a very patient man. The first day we set out to find motorbikes (or motobii as everyone else calls them) he was the first cab to pick us up. It was Sunday and everywhere was closed. Did Mr. Preecha give up? No, he met us at noon the next day and drove us around for 4 hours without rest. In total this kind and dedicated man drove us around for three days to help us get motobikes. Then we followed him on the bikes to get a rack for one of them. When Zeb got a flat tire within 20 minutes of buying the bikes Mr. Preecha guided us to a shop where an awesome man fixed the tire and fitted the rack I found after riding around on the back of a scooter with an old man that Mr. Preecha asked to help us. Then we followed him through THE most insane traffic I have ever experienced back to the hotel. And through all of this his grasp of english was only slightly better than our grasp of Thai (which is none (except for hello and thank you)). Bless Mr. Preecha for helping two insane americans find their way.

These are the motobikes:

This is how much they cost us:

We are spending the rest of the day getting provisions, finding a route out of the massive and confusing Bangkok, and fitting our gear to the bikes. Tomorrow we head south to the coast to camp and surf along the beach for the next month and try to spend less money. Bangkok isn't so cheap as one might think. Hopefully people will stop asking if we want to see any sexy-lady-ping-pong-live-shows, or if we want suck-suck-boom-boom. Good lord! Enough!

We are leaving for Bangkok in a few hours...

2008-10-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from europe to bring you up to date:

We needed a way to get to Rome. So Zeb and I built us the badass submarine. It sank, but we made it anyway. Long story...

Homeless in Paris.

2008-10-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

We have since left Paris, but is worth noting that it is too expensive for everyone and all the Hostels were full or ridiculous. The people of Paris and particularly the Police force do not seem to care when and where you sleep. This means that there were tents pitched on street corners and we slept under a billboard on an overpass. Although, it is not acceptable to try to cook dinner using a gas stove in front of the "big house". The police poilitely asked we go "that way"(policeman pointing. We later looked at a map and realized that by "big house" he meant the President´s House. Cooking in front of the Egyptian embassy is totally ok though.

Here is a photo of our camping spot on the second night. It is in the Y intersection of two streets. We are blocks from the "big house" in the police indicated direction. No one bothered us. Zeb cooked some delicious pasta. I drank wine, we slept and in the morning we made coffee and greeted people on their way to work.

Notre Dame is awesome by the way!!!

Soooo Amsterdam Happened....

2008-10-08T03:14:00.000-07:00

Amsterdam was cold and rainy the whole time. So naturally we camped at camp Zeeburg. In a tent. I mean hail storm cold. Nasty. But it was fun. We spent too much and had a good time anyways.

I learned that a warrant isn´t a problem if I stay out of trouble. I tried to pay my ticket from last visit, but the police were uninterested in helping me. Oh well!

Also, we are apparently travelling dressed as international prostitutes. We have been asked for how much are we available.

Panorama Bar... total insanity!

2008-09-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

I cannot express the massive, debauched, maniacal spectacle that is Panorama Bar. It is a tremendously ugly and beautiful place. For three days every weekend this club is open non-stop, day and nite. We arrived there Saturday nite at 1:00am and left around 8:00am. The music never stopped, the dance-floor never thinned out and the smoke never cleared. We both felt horrible the next day. It was amazing. Ouch.

It is Sunday nite. We leave for Amsterdam in the morning. Our friend Robert Taliesin from London ran the Berlin Marathon today. He finished in under 4 hours and we are celebrating tonite. It may hurt a little.

We have arrived onto the Berlin!!!

2008-09-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

We made it to Berlin after an 11 hour layover in Amsterdam, no biggie. A warm clean bed would have been awesome, but all the hostels were booked due to the big marathon. SO we slept in a campground. Totally cheap. There will be photos to follow soon...