Today is my 366th day of making Vietnam my home base.  An eventful year it has been, but when people ask me how I planned on celebrating, I always felt kind of weird.  I guess it's because I'm in a phase where I party irregularly and severely hardy-deficient.  that and I didn't accomplish anything to celebrate, except magnificantly and by the skin ( Read more... )

“This must be the damned unluckiest city in the world to be taken through by ambulance”, I remember thinking as Tram and a nurse clutched me tightly as the ambulance darted and swerved, jockeying with motorbikes for an extra few feet of space. Even the ambulance gets no quarter in this city. As always in moments of total panic, my brain played Ravi ( Read more... )

February the fifteenth marks the five year anniversary of the day I ran away from my life. I had cloistered myself away emotionally a long time before that, and it seems to me that this was just the final step in the actualization of a (im)personality trait to which yeast had long ago been added, and which had then been given ample time to rise. ( Read more... )

It's December already.  I don't know what to say about the last two months.  Something about this journal has just repelled me, like two unfortunately identically poled magnets.  I open my page, flip to see what my friends have done, then close it as quick as I can.  Things happened.  In fact, some serious things happened.  But every time I try and ( Read more... )

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We're in Hanoi.  Tomorrow we set off on a motorcycle loop to Lai Chau, Dien Bien Phu and Sapa.  I'm so excited to take my sister on this trip, both because she loves driving a motorcycle too, and also because Northern Vietnam is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world.  I've coerced everyone I know who I think would like it to come out ( Read more... )

It's been brought to my attention that I haven't posted for two months. It's not like things haven't been happening. There'll be a lot of pictures here, so it's time for everyone's favorite ( lj-cut! )

I just wanted to post this picture because I feel it sums up completely the trip Ross and I took.  There's a dude, filling up our minsks.  It's not a gas station, it's some dude with, like, some gas and a pump.  There are some mountains.  Some bizarre houses.  And best of all, there is a woman staring at us getting our tanks filled.  Like, not even ( Read more... )

This is another entry with a lot of pictures, so,

Ross left recently, he's back home to finish school.  Good for him. 

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As the old saying goes, if you get violently dragged off a horse by your backpack, get back on. 
At least I think that's right.
in the spirit of myopic irresponsible decisions, I will mount my trusted steed tomorrow and head of to Tay Ninh province, site of the Holy See of the Cao Dai religion.  Cao Dai is a semi-indigenous religion to Vietnam.  ( Read more... )