Hoi An suits

"I'm gay, I know what looks good on you!" the boy said. "But I really don't want a suit" was my reply. In Hoi An every other shop is a tailor. And you can't escape the offers of the salesmen and women running the shops. I wanted to get a copy of a shirt and a pair of shorts I had with me, made of another fabric but in the same cut. The boy walked me to a backstreet close to the central market arguing "...we don't have a fancy shop on one of the main streets, so we can be cheaper". So I started browsing catalogues, touching fabrics, and getting quotes for prices. The clock read 3 pm. "I'm off tomorrow morning 8.30". "No problem, you'll have your suit this evening!". Before I knew it I was standing half naked in the shop getting measured from head to toe. I chose the best fabric they had before the boy gave me a ride on his moped back to my guesthouse: "don't worry, we'll deliver your suit by 7 pm this evening" were his last words. At 7 p.m. sharp the courier delivered the suit. It suited. A two piece suit, made to measure, slim cut, the best fabric I could find: that's US $ 120.

Lanterns

Balloons & Bicycles

Flying the Vietnamese flag

Prayer time

lil' Vietnamese

Night falls over Hoi An

Hoi An, dirty old town

Ho Chi Minh impersonator, Hoi An

Had a shave in this barbershop. I always enjoy the little surprise service at the end of the shave, like when they take out a lighter and burn the hair in your ears in India. This man took out a giant vibrator and started massaging my back with it when he was finished shaving. I was shaking in my seat.

Barberism begins at home.

P.S.: it's a blog post that belongs to my trip from January 2012. I was lazy. I'm catching up.

hamster roulette

Governments are evil. As soon as people start enjoying something the government passes a law that makes it illegal. They take all the fun stuff away from their people. Alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, you name it. Alcohol for example is illegal in countries like Sweden or Saudi Arabia. That's right: Sweden. Ever tried to buy a bottle of wine in Sweden on a Sunday? You can't, since the government controlled system bolaget stores are not allowed to open on a Sunday to sell you a bottle of Bordeaux. In Saudi Arabia it will be impossible on the other six days of the week as well. Minor details. Some countries even go so far that they won't allow you to drive your car as fast as it possibly can on its motorways.

Now, the Vietnamese love gambling. Guess what? It's illegal in Vietnam! Now lucky enough there are usually loopholes to find your way around the law to get what you want. In Sweden you can go to a pub or a restaurant on a Sunday and order a bottle of red (let me know if you find out how to order a pint in Saudi Arabia...). And if you want to test the speed limits of your car all you have to do is to drive it across the border to Germany and off you go. The same goes for gambling in Vietnam. Cross the border into Cambodia and the first thing you encounter on the other side is a casino. But there are also other ways of bending the law and bet your money within the country. On a bus ride from the Cambodian border to Saigon, our bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. There was a passenger terminal of the bus company with a food court and outside the terminal was a small fairground with a stage and some booths selling food and drinks.
And then there was hamster roulette. A big round table that had a lower section with a smaller diameter and doors around it with numbers on them. In the middle of the table there was a bucket upside down that had a rope attached to it. The rope went straight up, around a roll and down to a bloke standing besides the table. People started to place their bets on the numbers around the table. We are talking dong, millions of them. Once the bets were placed the bloke next to the table would pull the string and the bucket would lift up. Under the bucket was a hamster. The hamster started running to the edge of the circle. It picked a door and took the exit. The lucky person who bet his money on that particular door won. The next morning in Saigon I bought ten buckets. I'm going to open a casino.

What gambling is to Vietnam, are late nights of drinking in bars to landlocked Laos. There's a curfew. All pubs and bars have to close at 11.30 pm so that the customers can be at their registered home or hotel by midnight. There's one exception though: bowling alleys. The party goes on in bowling alleys until the early morning. Also, there is a law in Laos that forbids foreigners to have sexual intercourse with locals, unless they are married. I am not sure if there is an exception if you do it in a bowling alley, though...

I left the Kingdom of Cambodia a day later than originally planned. It was Tet, as Chinese New Year is called in Vietnam, and according to my "travel agent" who had his "office" set up on a street corner in Kep there was no transport on New Years Day. So I had to spend another day eating crab with Kampot pepper before crossing the border to Vietnam...
.

the "office" of my travel agent, Mr. Pharis in Kep

Hatien Vegas, first stop in Cambodia for the Vietnamese

good bye, Cambodia, last casino before the border

good morning, Vietnam

gambling room in the independence palace in Saigon, 70s style,
the president was a gambler, too.

I left Kep in the morning and four buses, several Mekong delta crossings and a hamster roulette break later got into Ho Chi Minh City a.k.a. Saigon when it was almost midnight. I had my first pho straight away from a street food stall. I thought I had seen mad traffic in many places I've been to before, but Saigon is just mental. You can't see the street for the mopeds. The Tet celebrations were to continue for days to come. Since 2012 is the year of the Dragon, the city had dragons installed in many locations and every moped in HCMC was on its way to one or another dragon. Chúc mừng năm mới - Happy new year!

Moped madness, Saigon

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Vietnam telecom. surprisingly it works.

Before leaving Saigon I went to see the Cao Dai temple at Thay Ninh. Cao Dai is a religion that mixes concepts of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, blends it with a dash of Hinduism (Brahma, Shiva and Krishna are sitting on the temple's roof) and honours a wild bunch of saints and holy spirits including Victor Hugo, Jesus, Shakespeare, Buddha, Jeanne d'Arc, Mohammed, Napoleon, Descartes, Churchill, Lenin and Tolstoi. If religion is a buffet, this is it. That's me in the corner, choosing my religion...

prayer time, Cao Dai temple

Prayer time is four times a day: 6 a.m., noon, 6 p.m. and midnight and this is what it sounds like.

Cao Dai temple, Tay Ninh

On the way back to Ho Chi Minh City we stopped at the tunnels of Cu Chi. During the Vietnam war the Viet Cong guerrillas built a network of more than a hundred kilometres of tunnels that served as routes for supplies, homes and even hospitals underground. It was probably due to these tunnels and the booby traps built around the area that Vietnam became a war the U.S. troops could not win. Some of the tunnels have been restored and can be visited. We were told that they have been somewhat enhanced in size (so that over-sized tourists fit) but they are still very claustrophobic and get narrower and narrower as you crawl through the tunnels for the final exit (there are several exits before that just in case you panic...).   

wrong door. booby trap, bamboo spike version.

Cu Chi tunnels: I am disappeared

Claustrophobic Cu Chi tunnels

Khmer cuisine and the state that I am in...

They great couple running the Siem Reap Rooms Guesthouse asked whether we were in an adventurous mood for dinner. So they recommended a place with no English menu and asked their staff to write down the names of the dishes in Khmer. The place was just off the main touristy area of Siem Reap, the waiters spoke no English and we handed them over our menu. This was one of the dishes we ordered:

beef with ants

It was quite dark at the place, so you could not really see what you were eating. Anyway: Beef with ants is delicious, the ants taste slightly sour, almost lemonish. It may just be difficult to recreate the dish at home...

Took another cooking class organized by the Frizz restaurant in Phnom Penh. Here's the menu:

banana flower salad with chicken

fish amok

another version of sticky rice and mango

Finally after a lot of travelling I reached the beach in Sihanoukville and indulged in seafood. It is also the winner of the fastest visa ever issued competition: got my visa for Vietnam in 10 minutes at the Vietnamese consulate there, and that included filling out the forms.

Seafood in Sihanoukville

When the French came to Cambodia they settled in Kep and called it Kep sur mer. The village is situated in the area of Kampot where they grow Kampot pepper. And there's a lot of crab in the sea. Hence the village's signature dish is crab with Kampot pepper. Go to the crab market and order one for $5, they take it right out of the water and serve it to you with green Kampot pepper. It doesn't get any fresher than this!
They also love big concrete statues in Cambodia, almost every roundabout has one. Kep has a crab made of concrete. A blue one.

Crab statue in Kep

Kampot pepper

and Kep's signature dish:

crab with fresh green Kampot pepper

Now regarding the state that I am in:


I don't know what day of the week it is. Sometimes I have to think twice to be sure what town I'm in. Or what the name of the country is. When I get to a new place and walk the streets I look out for familiar faces. Most of the times I find someone I met before. I am not certain if it's kip, riel or dong I'm paying with. I say “No, thank you” without looking what somebody is trying to sell me. It is normal when I pay that the shopkeeper walks out and goes to find a neighbour who can break that 100000 note. I see where the food comes from and eat it anyway. And most of the time it's delicious. Everything less than 10 hours is a short ride on a bus or train. I ask people I've met five minutes ago whether they can watch my bag while I go to the ATM for ten minutes. I travel with people I met two hours ago for the next three days. Whatever is on the table belongs to everyone. We like it. Life is good.

guidebooks

The trip requires a certain amount of research to be carried out before setting off.

You can download free cityguides in pdf format from in your pocket. Since they are for free, there are obviously lots of advertisements included but otherwise they are not bad at all, in particular if its a city you just pass through and don't want to spend money on a guide book. Also, when you left the place you can simply recycle them and don't need to carry them along. I always have a hard time letting go of real guidebooks. Inyourpocket guides are available for Minsk and Moscow (and many other cities).

For the Trans-Siberian Railway:
IMHO the two best guidebooks covering the railway are Bryan Thomas and the LP edition of the track.

City guides:
Moscow and Beijing mar the beginning and the end and deserve some more days and more extensive coverage.

For Shanghai I trust my personal city guide Shanghai-Sändi to lead me to the darkest alleyways and seediest etablissements.

The LP Mongolian country guide was purchased to do some pre-trip research but given the time I will get to spend there and the meetings with local vs. the weight to carry it, it will most likely stay home. sorry...

The small world atlas is a little book I tend to have in my bag which comes in handy if you meet someone and you want to show them which part of the world you're from, where you've been to, where you're going and to plan future trips.

There's an аппаратчик for that! Part II - getting around, getting by, getting what you want

Some more travelling аппаратчикs I installed on my iPhone before setting off:

Metro plans:
Metro Minsk (iTuneslink): Not the most sophisticated tube app, but it should do the job for a day. Also contains some POIs, restaurants and a map.

Moscow: Metropolitan (iTuneslink) and Moscow Metro (iTuneslink) are two apps I tried out to navigate the Russian capital.

Beijing: Beijing Metro (iTuneslink)

Currencies (iTuneslink) tells you how much your hotel room, bus ticket, souvenir, blini or beer is. Make sure to update exchange rates once in a while (done automatically when the app is started, but you're not always connected to wifi, are you?). Easy to use, good interface:

Mandarin phrasebook (iTuneslink): When I traveled China about 8 years ago the LP Mandarin phrasebook came in very handy, in particular when it comes to buying train tickets etc. It was also very well organized in sections and had some background information on all topics. Unfortunately I can't say the same about its electronic cousin. While it has the big advantage that you can quickly access the relevant topics and can actually play the matching mandarin voice, it lacks much of the background information the book comes with and seems to be less complete. Well, as long as it helps you finding the right party and a female doctor, I guess it does the job...

some food apps: On my first time in China I met some volunteers working for an NGO who gave me a "generic menu for Chinese restaurants". Basically a list of typical dishes written in Chinese with the corresponding English translation. The waiter had always great fun indicating what they could serve up from the list, called their colleagues and we all had a laugh until my gong bao jiding arrived. Now there are some apps that do the same, some better, some worse. I'll see how it works. I have not found one yet, that lets you take a picture of the Chinese writing on the menu and looks up the dish. That would be something, wouldn't it? Check these here out: China Menu (iTuneslink) easy to navigate lots of pics, cnMenu read (iTuneslink) reads the dishes in Chinese for you, but no pics, Chinese Food Menu (iTuneslink) good selection, but requires data connection.

some other useful аппаратчикs:

shazam (iTuneslink) works surprisingly well to identify music that is being played if there is not too much background noise. So if you plan to take the soundtrack home, play the song to the app and have it analyzed. Needs a data connection, so watch your roaming costs.

Electricity matters

Plugs can be different. And who travels nowadays without a camera, an mp3 player, a phone (or a laptop, an e-book reader etc.) If you want to know if your device from Djibouti would work in Mongolia (it should actually, can anyone confirm?) you should check out this site. Or that one here. Or this one. Namibian phones should have no issues with charging in Nepal accordingly. These two are the plugs that will join me on my trip:

and they should fit all the long way from the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Land of Dschingis Khan without an adapter.  Also, they accept voltages from 100 - 240V and 50 - 60 Hz. Chinese outlets are different, but I suppose in China an adapter can be found or it can be fixed some other way. The good thing is that the iPhone charger doubles as a USB adapter, so any PC should do the job. The Canon battery charger can switch cables, so maybe I can get hold of one there... If it doesn't fit I'll make it fit!

18.7 cm of Russian classics

Or 2.4 kg. Not exactly travelling light, is it? O.K., I'll admit it. ebook readers do make sense.

Long railway journeys are the perfect occasion to read all (or at least the one or the other of) those classics that one always had the intention to read, but never found the right moment. And what would suit better a trip through the Russian hinterland seen through the window of a slowly rattling train than a Russian classic. What helps better understand the psyche of your fellow Russian travelers than a book written by one of their compatriots (and the occasional shot of vodka of course)?

on my pile of books are:

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
Nikolai Gogol - Dead souls, Diary of a madman
Wladimir Kaminer - Russendisko
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina


other titles worth considering:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Idiot
Maxim Gorky - The lower depths
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky - The Bedbug
Boris Pasternak - Doktor Zhivago
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov - And quiet flows the Don
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace

more contemporary:

Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated
Marina Lewycka - A short history of tractors in Ukrainian

Mongolia, the missing link

The Consular service of Mongolia offers a section where you can fill in your visa application form online. When you finalize the form it generates a PDF document that you can print, sign and include in your visa application documents. The section on what is required for a visa is rather empty here, but the Embassy of Mongolia in Belgium has more information. It is advisable to call before sending off your documents to check what exactly is required and how exactly to apply.

I have also read that you can get visas on the spot at the Chinggis Khaan International airport in UB (check before you set off). Cool Airport name by the way, right up there with the John Lennon Airport of Liverpool and the Indira Ghandi International Airport of Delhi.

Note to self: When I grow up I want to work as an airport namer. I will start with Seattle and rename the airport to the Kurt Cobain International Airport (Your gate to Nirvana).

adding it up:

Russia:
applied February 4, 2010, received February 11, 2010, tourist visa for the price of € 35.00
Belarus:
applied February 12, 2010, received February 19, 2010, transit visa for the price of € 20.00
China:
applied February 22, 2010, received February 25, 2010, tourist visa for the price of € 33.00
Mongolia:
applied February 26, 2010, received March 3, 2010, tourist visa for the price of € 60.00 + € 10.00 for post

That makes 4 visas in 28 days for € 158.00

worth knowing: The embassies of Russia, Belarus and China are conveniently located in the town I live (The Hague, Netherlands), so I could drop by in the morning on the way to work and bring or pick up my passport. Count in additional days if you need to send your document by mail. That said, I did not opt for express service in any of these embassies, which is offered by all of them, so if you are in a hurry and willing to pay the price: Go for it. The Mongolian embassy that deals with visa applications from the Netherlands is in Bruxelles and I sent my passport by registered mail. I was very impressed by how fast I got my document with the visa back, considering that I did not pay for express service. They do offer express service, but I doubt that it can be much faster.

to be sure, to be sure, to be sure...
...call in advance to be really, really sure that you have all the documents required.
...show up early! I have seen impressive queues at some embassies and people were sent home as the embassy could not handle all requests on that day. A bummer if you traveled from far away.
...get your things in order! Don't expect an employee from, say,  the Russian embassy to accept a statement from your Egyptian health insurance (no offense to the Egyptian health system intended here). They won't understand what it says and hence not accept it. It's civil servants your dealing with after all and they have their rules. Understand them.
...consider hiring someone. Visa support agencies can do the job for you, they know exactly what is required, have priority treatment. It can well be worth the additional money.
...when sending your passport by mail to an embassy in another city or country make sure to send it by registered mail and also make sure that the embassy sends it back to you using registered mail as well. Also, supply them with an envelope or address stickers of the place your passport shall be returned to.

Ni Hao, my Chinese Visa!

The queues outside the Chinese embassy are impressive. It becomes apparent that this country is considered a destination by far more people than Belarus. You queue outside, get a ticket with a number and then you queue inside and wait your turn. Application for a tourist visa is pretty much straightforward: A filled in and signed visa application form, a pretty picture of yourself and a valid passport is all it takes. The visa was issued within 4 days (I applied on a Monday and could pick up the visa on Thursday). Express visas are possible at an additional fee (but those applications are according to a sign only accepted until 10 in the morning - which may be difficult if the queues are long and it's not your turn until after 10 am). Pick up is quicker, you do not have to queue but the guys let the people with a pink pick-up form in and straight to the counter where you pay (€33 in my case, but depending on your nationality this may vary) and get your passport back.

so here it is:

what a beauty, eh?

Belarus Transit Visa, bitteschön!

Why would you want to go to Belarus? Because it's on the way to Moscow? Because Harvey Lee Oswald used to live there? To see great architecture soviet style? The KGB headquarters? If the plan is to do Amsterdam - Shanghai overland via Moscow there is no way around Belarus unless you intend to do a major detour. The embassy of Belarus to the Netherlands offers a transit visa that lets you stay for 48 hours in the country for a bargain of € 20. Find more information on the website of the Belarus Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Important for a transit visa to be issued is that your passport sports a visa of the country of your next destination (Russia in my case) or if no visa is required for that country a proof of your itinerary (tickets etc.). The visa was issued within a weeks time, faster service was available if you pay for it. Very friendly service and the best part with places that have fewer tourists coming their way than say Mallorca or Rimini is that service is very personal: When I came to pick up my passport the friendly bloke from the embassy - without asking what my name was and what I was here for - took the passport and handed it to me with a nice "bitteschön!". Needless to say I was the only customer in the embassy. You can find more useful information about the Belarus visa application process on Everbrite's Belarus pages.