Borders Real and Imagined

Entering Laos provokes a strangely peaceful sensation in the core of your being. Don't know if it's in your muscles or your mind. Makes you feel almost lightheaded. I wouldn't normally generalize, but Grey felt it too- and at this point, that makes it popular opinion. Later we read that Laos is 85% undeveloped vegetation, so maybe it's just the overwhelming amount of oxygen you are inhaling. Either way Laos seems to be a country that lives already in your heart.

I woke at dawn sitting in our filthy bus at the border crossing. Everyone was asleep and snoring, including the driver tucked under his blanket. I climbed over legs and arms and out the door (which, by the way, was never closed the entire journey- maybe it didn't close.) The sky had that rich blue color it has when it is just about to give birth to blaring sunshine. I wandered around looking for a place to pee and wondered at the sleeping line of trucks and buses. Ahead of us lay Laos- wildly mountainous and thickly forested- and behind, Vietnam, a country that felt organized and well behaved to an extreme, structured [do I mean communist? I'm undecided about this- although certain things would catch me by surprise like the "Voice of Vietnam" which would blare over loudspeakers for an hour and a half every morning and evening -is that Welcome to the Monkey House where they keep getting their thoughts blasted? RIP Kurt Vonnegut, by the way, he will be greatly missed.] We have met many people by now on our journey that have been traveling through South East Asia and Laos is a universal favorite.

But at this moment, I was still in Vietnam. As I finally spotted the WC there was a man- the only one awake- who stood in front. "One Dollar!" he demanded. Oh- this country has me too well trained for early morning entrepreneurs! I laughed and went inside. When I finished he was still there. Insistent and whiny "ONE Dollar! One Dollar!" I finally fished something out of my pocket- 100 Cambodian Riel's (probably less than a penny) and he happily stuffed it into his pocket. I was definitely ready to leave Vietnam.

We have many theories on why Vietnam has such a reputation for trying to rip travelers off- one is that tourism is like a new business. People come in and want to buy something and you just try to see what you can get away with- will they pay $100?? Maybe. If not, try again. I really was tired of being asked to buy something every 5 minutes in Hanoi. If it wasn't the moto bike drivers who would hoot and wave from the corners "Moto Moto!! OOOO!!"- it was the Pineapple Ladies with their double baskets, one on either end of a long pole sitting on their shoulder blocking your way "MAdame, very good, Madame, very sweet pine-apple!" and if you tried to get away they would swing their heavy pole on your shoulder and try to get you to take a picture.. And the most aggravating- the picture takers. I am used to people wanting to take my picture (ooo a really pale foreigner!) by now- in India a man even filmed me while I ate- but in Hanoi, people started throwing their babies at me without explanation!! I would grab its chubby body in shock and look up as the shutter clicked.. I would be surrounded by the rest of the family in descending height before I could even say yes or no. Once I was having a quiet moment at the lake and looked up to see TWO people surreptitiously photographing my solitude.. I hated it! I was being haunted by Hanoi paparazzi! I became paranoid and unfriendly- I disappointed dozens of posing families as I handed the baby back.. I became almost a robot in the streets-after saying a million "kam on- no thank you"- I finally walked quickly staring straight ahead and not responding to anyone. Like a good New Yorker.

But I travel to be someone different. To be someone who watches people and cultures. Someone who is happy to meet strangers. Hanoi threatened to make the most foreign of cities a maze of avoidance and reluctant exploration.

BUT I did enjoy the city until I became burnt out. We made some friends who are expats living in Hanoi and working at different NGOs as well as other travelers. I loved going to meet my friend Akiko on her lunch break from saving the world at the UN or having dinner with our two Australians friends we met in Halong Bay before they headed off to Thailand.. Staying in one place affords you the time to make lasting friendships, and to explore every small corner of the city.

While Gregg was involved with his invention, I became the walker. When I first moved to NYC I used to walk from Columbia U to the Village and think nothing of it- I was putting the city together in my mind. In Paris, I would walk home to Monmartre from seeing my friends at Centre Pompidou. And I'm sure I did the equivalent in Hanoi. I think I got to see most of the city- even the sections that the people from Hanoi have probably never visited. I loved doing this. The city is made up of several beautiful lakes and I would come across them suddenly- a small oasis in the honking city of motorbikes. I would discover small coffee shops and write and read and think. Hanoi was a halfway point and a strange feeling of temporary permanence.

At the same time I find that traveling for so long made stopping difficult. Although Grey was busy with his enterprise, I started feeling the slightly lost feeling of the unemployed wanderer. Everyone else was living their day to day lives and racing around... I had nowhere important to be and my main concern was not to get run over in my daily walks.. (there are virtually no sidewalks that are entirely walkable and no one stops at red lights, I felt my heart in my throat at least 5 times a day when I thought I was about to be run over.)

Grey and I did skip town for a few days and go to Halong Bay- an unbelievable turquoise paradise with strange limestone hills jutting out of the water and small floating villages. I collected shells (ok, too many) and felt such peace that I realized I had to go into nature for longer.. So at the end of a couple weeks in Hanoi, I left for Sapa on my own.

Ah Sapa. There is a particular energy that I acquire when traveling alone. It's almost like an electric charge of capability, of personality. I define myself and make all decisions alone. I entered the night train with a nervous excitement- I literally haven't been alone for one night in 5 months! The compartment was empty until the last second when 3 middle aged Vietnamese men filed in, huge confused smiles, only a few teeth among them. We signed a few nonsensical things to each other and finally one seemed to understand "New York." He got very agitated and happy and unpacked his entire bag. Underneath all of his neatly folded shirts lay a plastic wrapped copy of Hillary Clinton's new book!? He waved it around the small room and we all had a real bonding moment. And then we all went to sleep. I had a tiny moment of uneasiness when they double locked the door, but I felt safe among the ardent fans of a strong but corruptible woman.

I arrived in the city in the foothills and jumped in a minivan to Sapa. It was raining and misty and the drive was stunning. Up and up and up. There were backpackers in the minivan chatting, but I was in alone mode and stared dreamily out the window. On arrival, the town was tiny and perched on the edge of a terraced mountain. Rice fields and women in bright tribal dress everywhere. It was surreal and chilly. I ran from the other backpackers and found a small room ($5) on the 5th floor of Queen Hotel with windows on two sides overlooking the mountains. My view was vast and exhilarating.

For the first day it rained and I wandered alone through the streets peering into the misty crevices of the far off peaks. I thought that if it stayed like this I wouldn't mind, I would just wander in my raincoat and drink hot chocolate. But the second day I woke to a clear sky. WOW. I couldn't tell what I was missing before- the surrounding mountains were unbelievable. Unfortunately by this time our camera had broken (along with my heart,) so I have 2 disposable cameras full and there will be no photos posted of this time... That day I headed down the mountain to Cat Cat, a 4 km hike. I bounced down, inhaling the mountain air and shouting "SINJOW!!" to the locals like a deranged blond mountain goat.. At one point I tried to get a small boy to walk with me past a large water buffalo standing in the middle of the road-- they seem friendly, but they have huge horns... He looked quite confused but patiently smiled and let me creep behind his small frame before turning, right before we were clear, sweetly saying goodbye and then pushing/slapping the massive buffalo up the hill with a little stick. He was its tiny shepherd. I felt very humbled.

I spent the next 5 days trekking through the villages. I took a guide for most of them, and one night I did a home stay in a Black H'Mong Village. The woman are dressed so incredibly, I wish I could show you pictures- they are cooler and funkier than anyone I know. And so sweet. There is a certain selling insanity that you have to overcome before being able to enjoy these women. They are even more persistent than the pineapple women in Hanoi. But I think because I was traveling alone, it was easier to talk to them. After I told them I wasn't going to buy anything they still wanted to talk (maybe because they hadn't given up, but it didn't really matter..) I made friends in particular with one woman, Su. I actually did buy something from her- the leg wraps that the women wear that look so punk rock they could be wandering the East Village. While she sewed them we sat and she told me about her life. A difficult one. She is 39 and looks like she could be my grandmother- her face is lined and she has no bottom teeth. She had her first child at 15 and her 4th at 22 before her husband left and was never heard from again. She told me that life in the village had been very hard until 1998 when the tourists arrived. Her babies used to cry with hunger. But now, she assured me, life is good. I looked at her small, wrinkled hands sewing my leg wraps and wondered at her idea of a good life... Poverty can make everything we have seem like too much. As we talked, a lot of the other women gathered around and contributed small pieces of the story and showed me their leg wrap designs. I sat on the sidewalk with them for a long time. I saw her almost every day after that and when I left, she gave me a small wet kiss on my collarbone.

My home stay was also an amazing experience. I stayed with a woman and her two children and 4 French speaking travelers (2 Quebec, 2 Swiss) and our guides. For dinner we were joined by 2 French and their guide. Despite the language barriers (I think I was the only one who spoke French and English and the woman whose house it was spoke only Vietnamese and her tribe's language) we drank homemade rice wine and toasted to the demise of the world (Sarkozy had just won).. and laughed hysterically until we fell onto our mattresses hidden inside gauzy mosquito nets. I woke to breakfast cooking on the little fire pit in the floor. The village women were the most persistent saleswomen in the world- they had their wares on display as I stumbled to the bathroom outside at 6am!! The walk back was a little more difficult after the long evening, but we got to visit the Red Zha tribe whose woman wear these bright red pillow like things on their heads and shave their foreheads.. And they are some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.

The one disturbing part of the villages was the plethora of TVs. Shacks with dirt floors, fire pits, no running water and a satellite dish outside the door. Even at my homestay they had the television blaring through our dinner. I'm not sure why this disturbs me, TV should be a

revealing link to the outside world, entertainment, culture and politics-- but the night I sat at dinner there was a game show on, and although in Vietnamese, it looked as stupid as anything I've ever seen on television in the U.S. It felt like another form of mind(less) control. The little boy couldn't even tear his eyes away to say hello to us.

It was hard to leave my little nest in the clouds, but I missed my gregoire and we needed to get to Laos, so I descended. In the train I realized how many friends I had made in my short time in Sapa- in my car we gathered- Nicole from Hawaii, Nina from South Africa and her husband from Denmark, an Irish couple, we all traded stories and tips and talked most of the night. Even in Hanoi I kept running into people I'd met in Sapa...It felt like what it had been- a small town. And us, its refugees.

Books read.

The Lighthouse by PD James- sitting in the lobby of the hotel room. felt like a nice quick well written treat.. I like a good murder mystery once and a while, even if I have to stay up all night to finish it.
Fortune's Rock by Anita Shreve- not my favorite. I've seen this author around so much in these traveler's bookstores that I decided to give her a try. People in it were kind of moralistic and annoying. I was relieved to finish it so I could sell the book.
The Drowner by Robert Drewe- I enjoyed this book- had no idea what to expect, an Australian writer that I'd never heard of before.. It jumps around a bit but so do I, and it felt like a voyage that I could understand- part magical, part very real..
Pinkerton's Sister by Peter Rushforth- I keep picking this up, getting impatient with all the reference-rich writing and putting it down.. could someone tell me if I should stick it out??

xxxxfz

PS The worst part of being so far away is not being able to be with your family when you should be... sending all of my love and constant thoughts to sweet Kevin, Alex and Pixie.

A Hundred Baguettes A Thousand Bucks Richer

Woke up on the bus crossing the Dmz from South Vietnam into North Vietnam. It was dark, but even blacker than normal because there wasn't anything out there. It's a 10 kilometer stretch that was 5 kilometers South Vietnamese and 5 kilometers North Vietnamese. A lot of battles occured here. The DeMilitarized Zones of the world are always far from that aren't they? Next time I woke up it was daylight out and it was cold for the first time since northern india. That was really refreshing cuz my legs were getting sick of my pants sticking to them. We were on our way to Hanoi, the capitol, the center of Vietnamese communism for 50 years, Ho Chi Minh, motorcycle mania, and a new wave of hipster.

We left Hoi An which we absolutely loved. The food was so great, the river, the lantern lit streets, the small town feel and the tailor shops. I got carried away in the tailor shops. But anyone that knows me knew that I would get carried away in the tailor shops. I even mentioned skipping Hoi An and eliza insisted we go because she wanted to see what I would come up with. I actually wasn't too interested in the clothing, although I did get a wool jacket made for 20 bucks (my own design). I got more into hats. Honestly don't know where that came from. I like hats I guess. More inportantly these tailors are set up where you can ask them to make anything you want, bring in photos of other stuff, lengthen this shorten that--its great, and its so cheap. People get tailored (obviously) italian material suits made for 80 dollars. I guess that would cost hundreds of dollars at home people said. The post office was filled with suits people were sending back. But I don't really like suits, I like hats I guess. I heard you could get sneakers made, and you could if you like your shoes with fake leather and glue dripping out of the sides. So I passed on sneaks.

I came up with this design which is basically a complete copy of a hat eliza had, but I added a little flare with some bandana material and I made different sized brims and cup depths just to experiment. I mean you can experiment when the hat costs $2.50 to make you know? The couple that owned the hat shop Quoc Tien were so sweet, and man, they were pretty patient with a crazy American dude that would come in twice a day to order three more hats, but this time "can you make the cup of the hat 1 mm deeper?"......yes, I was getting into one of those "I want to get it perfect mode". But I did. And these hats RULE. If you'd like one call my office, they're 500 dollars each --they're designer now. I hope the friends that I sent the hats to liked them.... Before we left, the couple at Quoc Tien made me a hat with their logo on it as a going away gift because we had such a great time together(or it was the amt of money that I spent). The guy that sewed and seamed to be the seamstress liked my design so much that he had a bunch of them made that he hung in his shop for sale. I let him go on the copyrights infringement.

Hanoi didn't seem any different at first. Taxis, motos, and tuk tuk drivers were jumping over each other to have us pick them to be their driver. I lost it here for a second, felt bad about it later but I didn't really regret it that much. The fifteenth guy was asking us to go to his hotel and pushing the pamphlets in our face. They are the only ones highly schooled in english in Hanoi. They start the conversation by asking, "where are you going?". Time and time again we've been so nice and polite and instead of saying, "why the f do you need to know?, it's none of you're business where we're going.", we have learned to have an answer right away. We check the guidebook on the bus before we get to a town, pick a hotel to say where we are going and then walk there or figure out where we really want to go. And if it's too far, we walk until the harassment stops and then we find a taxi. We just don't want to support the way they do it, and hopefully if more tourists do not go with those guys, they will stop. It's not like we don't take taxis everyday and stay in hotels so the money is going around. In fact, we probably take less taxis because of the harrassment. Anyway, we get off the bus and this guy pushes his pamphelt in our face and asks us where we are going, and we tell him the name of the hotel we memorized. He proceeds to call me a liar and says, "fuck you". I actually was kind of excited about that because I was almost wanting confrontation, because we had been so polite to all these harassments for so long. So I said, "NO..... FUUUCK YOOOUU" while I pointed my finger in his face. Neither of us accomplished anything but to stir up negative energy but it sure did feel good for that split second when I had my finger an inch from his nose. Even eliza thru in an F U or something to that effect so I felt a little better that I wasn't over-reacting.

We actually felt a lot better after that(sadly), got into a cab and realized for the first time on our trip that no one spoke english at all. They weren't even getting words like "same same" or "yes", "no", and "thank you". These few words can get you quite far in foreign countries but without them you might as well just stick to sharades. I noticed that even when we used Vietnamese words they didn't understand our pronounciation. I loved it. This is one of my favorite things about traveling - trying to speak a foreign tongue and actually accomplishing something. Even if its buying a loaf of bread, I think its so much fun when you actually walk out of the store WITH the loaf of bread. Funny cuz this might be the same thing that makes me want to leave.

The next day I took a moto (taxis that are motorcycles) to the US embassy because I had this idea for a product that would succeed in Hanoi -really all of Asia-and they had a department that helped Americans in business in Hanoi (I'll get to that later). I was by myself because it was another one of my crazy ideas and eliza probably had no interest. I got out there ok because people knew where the US embassy was, but the way back without the map I was screwed. I walked out of the US embassy and looked for a moto. In Hanoi, that is not a hard thing to do, every 20 seconds there are men on motos yelling, "moto?, motobike?, where you want to go?" I went over to them and realized there was nothing I could say. Not only did I not know the street that our hotel was on, I didn't know how to say the neighborhood (the Old Quarter) in Vietnamese. I knew that there was a big lake nearby but I couldn't remember the name of it. How would I get back?, I thought, with all these crucial components missing. The moto driver being very smart asked me to look in my pockets (just by pointing to my pockets and making a "pulling out" motion with his hands). He noticed an ATM receipt and grabbed it and tried to find an address, which there was, and I was on my way home---or on my way to the ATM near my home. I went out and bought a phrasebook the next day. That little book was my lifeline for the next month. It's amazing how much you can communicate with one word. Anything you need and everything you are looking for can usually be summed up in one word--it's true.

We loved Hanoi. Well ....maybe I should say that I loved Hanoi. Eliza didn't love it towards the end, I think it was too long for her. We sort of came to a compromise (as successful couples do) to stay in Hanoi for one month. I wanted to stay somewhere for 2 months during our trip and really get a feel for the city. I was thinking Shanghai, China and she was not into that, so we did Hanoi that way we didn't have to go separte ways for a while and it was only one month. I wanted to slow down and experience things instead of remembering them later. Just do regular stuff and meet locals, really get to know the culture and the people. Sometimes we are moving so fast that we just see the touristy things, pack up move on and do it again in the next town. I was getting tired of that. I wanted to just see how normal people live and just do what they do. Plus it was nice to just not be moving constantly. Everday in Hanoi we found a new restaurant to have dinner in, a new cafe to have coffee in, we saw a concert, I taught kids how to breakdance (the worm), saw movies, found neighborhoods by walking around and stumbling into them, found ice cream parlors on the lake, found more hidden lakes with cafes on those as well, found so many tree lined streets Savannah Georgia would blush from jealousy, and went to great bars that were popping up everywhere due to hanoi recently becoming more developed.

I have to admit, for the first few days, I did feel a little bit uneasy with Hanoi being the headquarters of the Vietcong and Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam war. I pretended I could hear the B-52's dropping bombs all over the city during the war. At night all the lights are off including the streetlights, so I would imagine that this was an evacuation and the Americans were coming. They actually evacuated the entire city at one point during the war because it was being so heavily pounded by U.S. bombs and napalm. But that was a long time ago, and Hanoi is making a hip comeback. There are chic bars and clubs, wild haircuts, funky designer clothes, hip cafes with old french balconies, and a large gay scene. Actually I don't know if there is a big gay scene for sure, I just know that everytime we went out we ended up with a roomful of gay people. They're more fun anyway so we were psyched that we tapped in........riiiiiiight....

My favorite thing about it was the absence of global capitalism. I mean it was a big city, and it didn't have 7-11, Mcdonalds, huge supermarkets, or virtually any big chain stores. It's on its way though (KFC just arrived). That is my dream city, maybe not Hanoi, but one with only the mom and pop stores. Maybe its tough sometimes to find crunchy peanut butter from the brand that you like and dirt cheap, but to me its worth not having a homogenius cooky-cutter town that could be anywhere else on earth. Then, once everything is similiar they start making laws against things that are different. For example, a condo complex that my mom moved into in Colorado gave my mom 3 choices of what her condo could be painted: light grey, dark grey, and gray. I can't remember exactly, but I think you got a penalty if you painted it any other color yourself. My friend Jewels and I have gone for long drives looking for these "untouched" towns in the U.S.. It's kind of a fun game we have. Some cities appear to be really quaint and then wham you turn the corner and its strip mall hell. I think I remember the 2 of us being in Beacon, NY this past year. We were near the old town, I guess, because there were these beautiful brick 3 story buildings with trees and cute shops lining the main street, they had barbers that were old enough to have invented scissors. And then WHAM you hit route 6 or 9 and its SAMS CLUB BURGER KING WALMART SUBWAY MCDONALDS BORDERS TACO BELL and on and on until you are numbed back into our boring present culture. Jewels and I have this funny thing that we do when we see these things that ruin towns...we pretend to put up a black curtain to block it out. Well, no black curtains here Jewels!!

We settled into a little place in the Old Quarter that was 12 bucks a night including breakfast and internet. We've had better deals but this place was spotless and maids cleaned our room everyday.....can I get a yeeeeeeeeeeepppeeeeeeeee or something like that? .... we loved that so much that we were convinced that no matter how broke we ever became in the future, we would always have maids. We had high ceilings, french doors to a balcony, cable TV, AC, and a fridge. We turned the fan down to 3 (fan speed is opposite here---what is that all about?) and slept pretty well those first few nights.

We did 2 tourist things while we were there for a month. One, went and saw Ho Chi Minh himself, and two, went to the Hanoi Hilton. Ho Chi Minh's people have gone against Ho's last wishes and not creamated him, they embalmed him. Thats right, the dude is filled with formaldyhide once a year in russia to keep the stench down. He can be observed any day of the week from 8am to 11am at his masoleum where he is encased in glass. Sick riiight? And I don't mean sick like gross I mean sick like "ssiiiiiiiiickk". We didn't make it over there until probably the second week and even then we were the last people let in out of hundreds-maybe thousands. We just couldn't get up in time!! We still get a kick out of that, when we embarrassingly tell other travellers. Especially the eager Patagonia types who are up at the crack of dawn looking for the best hike on the map.

His masoleum is on the spot where he gave a speech in 1946 quoting FDR about the independence of a nation. He thought Vietnam would be independent from '46 on, and he thought the Americans were a great allie to have and respected them dearly. Unfortunately FDR didnt return the favor and publicly separated himself from Ho. Probably because of the Red Scare going on at the time where to even know a communist was grounds for a prison sentence. And Ho fought for independence his entire life, whether on the battlefield himself against the french, or being commander in chief against the japanese and the Americans. Sadly, he didn't live to see his troops take Saigon in 1975 (on that rooftop) and start rebuilding their country into a pretty peaceful, beautiful, and independent state.

10 minutes on line and there he was. They kept the line moving pretty quickly but you kind of go around a full square so you really get a good look. He actually looked pretty damn good....considering he had been dead since 1969...shit even without considering that he looked good. He was still rockin the goatee and the black shirt, he was less than ten feet away. Pretty cool stuff.

The Hanoi hilton was a prison that had a long history with the Vietnamese, but the Americans gave it that name. Supposedly, the Americans were treated so well at the prison during the Vietnam war that they called it the Hanoi Hilton. They're were even pictures of American soldiers in the prison playing basketball, tennis, cards, guitars, and just generally sitting around enjoying themselves. John McCain was there in the mid 70's and he was in some of the photos. His actual airsuit uniform that he was wearing when his plan was shot down outside of Hanoi was on display. Along with photos of many other Americans with captions that read things like, "Here's anti revolutionary American soldier John Smith enjoying one of the many delicious sandwiches provided by the Peoples Army" I haven't researched whether these claims were true about how the soldiers were treated but I'd love to know if anyone does know. It could easily be that propoganga machine we've seen often here pumping out this crap. But I couldn't help but think, where did the nickname come from then? Does sound like it makes sense--the Hanoi Hilton.

I was also thinking that if these stories were true, this prison in the center of "enemy" territory was easily the safest place for an American male aged 18 to 30 from 1965 to 1972. If they were treated so well, hey why not, look at your options: A. You live in the U.S. and sweat every time the mail comes because you know one day your number is going to get called, and off you go to Vietnam. B. You are already fighting in Vietnam. The Americans knew where the prison was and they did not bomb that area--so no worries there. Not a bad place to be....during that time, and the sandwiches did look pretty good..

Eliza and I were kind of doing our own thing while we were in Hanoi. We always met up throughout the day, it was sort of like a regular life actually. She was off seeing fun places, writing alot, and she even escaped for a week to go into the country, and I got into the business of motorcycle seat covers. Sounds odd I know, but in Hoi An I came up with a really good idea. There are millions and millions of motorcycles in South East Asia. It's the main form of transportation, the cities are overflowing with them. One problem that I noticed that everyone has is protecting the seat from rain and sun. People put plastic bags on them, paper, cardboard boxes, and cotton sheets. I thought they could use a uv protective tarp like material that they could easily take on and off and could be shoved in the storage under the seat when not in use. This material would block the sun to keep the seat cool from the baking hot sun, and keep it dry from rain. The idea sort of steam-rolled from just an idea, to "let me try and see how far it goes for fun", to getting business advice from the American Chamber of Commerce and the US embassy, to getting a manufacturer to make them for $1 each, to getting Yamaha to buy 2000 of them for $2 each...

After coming up with the plan I thought I'd try to implement it. The plan was: get someone to make these things and look for someone to buy them. It sounded crazy but this sort of thing is fun for me, I like this stuff. Some people think its weird that I worked on a supposed "vacation", but it didn't feel like work --it was bizarre, and maybe some money would come out of it and that was good whether you're on a vaca or not.

By far the best part of it was meeting Huy. He owned the second shop I walked into in a neighborhood where seatcovers were made, sewn and cut. The first store owner laughed at me when I explained my project (boy did he miss out). Huy was 35 years old and blind. He tried to hide it behind the dark glasses and didn't "tell me" until two weeks after of us knowing each other. I told him that I knew the first day that I met him and I didn't care- he ran a tight ship. Plus he believed in the idea. Shit he spoke english, that was a dream come true. It wasn't perfect but with my phrasebook and his 4 years of english before his accident (never found out what it was) we made deals, argued prices, made jokes, talked seat cover quality size and shape, and discussed New York City hospitals. He had 4 or 5 guys and girls in their teens and twenties that were part of his family and worked for him. They were very loyal to him and respected him. On the first day when I was there and I was describing the tarp material that I had in my hand that I wanted to use for the seat covers, I forgot he was blind and got up to show it to him closer. One of the closest boys jumped up and politely grabbed it from me and put it in Huy's hands so he could feel it. He said, "this is ...how you say?....long pause........not beautiful." I said "yeah I know that doesn't matter." Huy's shop made seat covers that stapled to the seat--the actual seat cover, the designer stuff with patterns and stuff. Mine were just a raincoat for a seat. It took about 20 minutes to explain what I just did in one sentence and he said, "I think.......long pause.......I think................very good idea."

From there it went to me going over there to finalize the details with his staff, like what pull-tie to use or what color string, or how many stitches would go around the thing with how much elastic. All this just for 3 seat covers that fit virtually every bike in Asia from Piaggo to Honda to yamaha to vespas. His staff helped me learn Vietnamese and i helped them with learning some english. They were so amazing, so sweet, open and friendly. Every time I walked in there they would all say "Helloooo!", all in differing pronounciations laughing hysterically as if they didn't know what it meant--they just remembered that I taught it to them.

Took over a week to get those three seat covers, but now I had them and it was time for step 2: sell them. I got kind of scared during this step. I felt motivated that I had turned an idea into something that I could hold in my hand but now the prospects of selling them seemed highly unlikely. No one spoke english for one. That is kind of a big barrier when you are trying to convince sometone to part with their money. Also, I was a little worried about breaking the law, I did not want to do that. Its not big brother who is watching in Vietnam, it's Big Red. We even noticed some things being censored on TV like the word, "liberal" on the larry king show one night, and google just acts strange-we can't find anything we're looking for. I thought I'd take it slow and go to distributors, small shops, motorcycle parts and accessory wholesalers, and mechanics, just get a feel if people were interested. To make this already long story a lot shorter, those all failed miserabley mostly due to lack of the Vietnamese language. Many people liked the idea but didn't want to buy them. I met with the World Health Organization to try to get them to buy some to put ads on them for a helmet intitative that they were doing---no go.

I said screw it, I'm going to the top, I'm going to Yamaha. It was starting to become work. I was shaving everyday and I bought a pair of slacks. I mean I didn't want to be in the seat cover business for the rest of my life, this was just a crazy idea. I wouldn't have had any regrets if nothing materialized. All the experiences I had with Huy and his family were worth this whole thing. The Yamaha dealership agreed to buy some(after a meeting where I was sitting there with my sneakers painted black with a magic marker trying to spruce up my look a bit, thinking that these guys are going to throw me out of the building at any minute), they were going to use them as a promotion give away, they said I'd have to give them some more details. I definitely had more respect from these people because I was American. They sort of took me more seriously, can't say that this would work as well at home. After discussing it over with Huy so he agreed and getting him to drop his orginal price so we could make more, I got in touch with yamaha, told them they were $2 each with a minumum order of 2000 "units"(I thought throwing in "units" was a nice touch--don't you?), they'd be delivered in 3 weeks exactly, gave them a list of colors, meet my boss Huy, and write the check to him. They said fine, he would, they picked, they met, they wrote, and I banked. Half of half of half...the old capitalist way. Except the last "half" was the communist way--a tax that us capitalists are always being threatened by, you know the %50 of everything deal.....it did kind of hurt. Thought I had 2000 but I came out with a little over 1100 americanos! Not too shabby if I don't mind saying so myself. Plus I introduced a local businessman and new friend to a potentially lucrative partnership.

I kept one seat cover with me on our way out of Hanoi, partly to show people at home and partly if we ever need to raise some funds in China. The Chinese market is insane---biggest motorcycle market on earth! Na ....I think I'm over it, I'm on sneakers now. I keep seeing name brand sneakers everywhere for rock bottom prices but they don't have sizes bigger than an American 9. I'm gonna keep looking in China....I don't even want to sell them I just want to wear them.....

We are rounding the last bend of the trip....we just booked our tickets on the trans siberian train from Beijing to Moscow. We've been in motion for more than 5 months straight....

finally started missing home.......gg