(Moloney's email about Mt Whitney)

Moloney sent out a vivid description about our experience at the top of Mt Whitney in a separate email. Its a good description so I wanted to put it here.

************************

The Top part:

So the guide book says its hike'able. We hike up this ridiculous slope of
scree (loose granite rock+pebbles+dust). Its tough going, but frankly we all
make mince meat out of it - no altitude effects on anyones part (I surprised
myself). Then get to the shear "solid" part. Its good to note we had 2.5
people professing nervousness with heights - a nice situation. Picture shear
walls of rock surrounding narrow steep chutes of scree. We attempt to get up
the first 1/3 of this. I dunno what it was, maybe the adrenaline of getting
up there or the fact that we were constantly looking up instead of down and
around us, but we gave it a shot and even I didn't give it much thought.
Total tunnel vision on my part at least.

Jeff scambles up, sans pack, and disappears out of sight. Alex plants
himself on one of the few ledges. I'm lying belly flat on the 60+ degree
chute of death, with my left foot and left hand jammed or holding
respectively onto what I think is solid granite. Anit is below the chute and
on slightly steadier ground However, the granite here isn't what you expect
from a good old igneous rock. Nope, its strata that's been pooned up the ass
by god knows how many millennia of water, ice and wind. Below these various
chutes are some serious drops.

Jeff returns from his recon giving us the bad news that there is only worse
shit above us, and we are perhaps 1/3 the way through it. There is a
simultaneous unified and profound decision to call it quits. At this point
my hand hold starts to come loose. Without screaming too much (there was
some), I call out for Jeff-assistance. My footjam then comes loose and I
start sliding down the chute of death, and accelerating mind you. Thankfully
some of the skin off my elbows, the left side of my rib cage, my t-shirt
rips, and most effectively my belt and pack belt help somewhat. Luckily Jeff
was within striking distance and got my slide under control, plants a boot
into the scree under my right foot. He then helps me get my pack off and out
of the way. (I'm totally in the "game over man!" zone, muscles and nerves
are shaking and twitching from the shock and minor injuries...and pretty
close to tears in my eyes).

I then turn from belly to backside and literally step by step, Jeff helps me
navigate down the chute, around the first rock face, across a second chute,
over/around another rock edge and towards what was the first section of rock
above the scree slope. This was a painfully slow process: managing his own
foot and hand hold, keeping an eye on me, going back to assist Alex and the
packs etc. Jeff then carries down my pack for about 2/3 of the
main-slope-of-scree descent, which btw one can almost slide down in a "snow
plow" or snowboarding fashion.

At 2 or 3pm (having started that morning), we get back to the lakeside and
make camp. Keep in mind we probably only went 1 to 2 miles in distance...so
that should give you an idea of the difficulty of terrain. Upon completing
the descent down to the lake, Jeff, Anit and Alex make like maggots to their
sleeping bags (I don't think Anit or one of them even got into their bag). I
try to sleep also but the adrenaline and overall experience keeps me awake
until dinner time.

Here are some quotes I remember from that top part of the mountain:

Anit: "Man, I swear it was only a matter of time before one of us got
seriously injured"
Jeff: "that was the hardest (rock climb/terrain) I've ever attempted"
Padraig: every fucking curse word in every combination you can imagine.

Some other quotes:
Ranger #1 ("Grizzly Adams dude"): "Yeah, I've done that route once, in
winter. That's a tough one. Chuckle Chuckle chuckle."
Ranger #2 (upon our return to the ranger base): "Theres a route to whitney
THAT way? How was it? I've NEVER gone THAT route before."
Ranger #2 (in reference to Grizzly Adams Ranger):"Ohhhhh, He's a mountain
climbing ranger"

Ok, so that was the crazy scary part, the part that could have left at least
one of us looking like this (at best):
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/two-new-legs/bionic-legs-help-miracle-crash-survi
vor-walk-again-277582.php

As a hike, the route was stunningly beautiful and we met no campers
whatsoever on it. I spent another couple of days hiking (sore) and camping
with Anne and her parents afterwards. I've totally found a great way to
tackle Whitney next time: Uses portions of the pacific west trail and the
John Muir trail - its good shit, plus the camp ground starts us at 10Kft.

I'd better get to work, but more needs to be written on the poop-bags
(especially Alex's), my lack of poop-bag use (maximum-impact-moloney),
Robot-House! food and cooking techniques, Anit-Tivo-story-tellin-ability,
fucking bear boxes, flying tents (and ballast), 50 rounds of 9mm, the rattle
snake cometh and other tales.

Mt Whitney

This is a little photodiary of our recent attempt to summit Mt Whitney. For those of you who dont know, Mt whitney is the tallest peak in the continental US, and its apparently growing as plates under it slowly push it up. If you want to see the slideshow (which has more pictures), its located at
http://picasaweb.google.com/achakra/MtWhitney

Anyway, to start off the story, Jeff and I have been contemplating climbing Whitney for some time now, all the way back in the day when we were living out in California. (Btw Jeff's recount of this trip is here.) I gave him a call early this year, and said, hey, I gotta go for a friend's wedding in LA in July, why dont we chain a Whitney expedition onto it, so he said sure, let's go for it. Ive climbed HalfDome a bunch of times (a popular hike in Yosemite). Ive never had trouble, but I will admit that at the top of the hike, you're sucking wind pretty hard. Halfdome ends at around 8500ft over 8.5 miles of hiking I think. The hike for Whitney starts at 9000 ft, and then climbs for 11 miles to 14.5k ft. So, the intensity is definitely.. well to say the least.. intense.

Of course this is all dependent on getting permits for the trip which are very difficult to get and highly coveted. I applied for them, and lo and behold we got them. I contacted a few people who were interested and Alex and Padraig gave thumbs up.
The plan was fly into Vegas on Jul 4th (my damn buddy changed his wedding date, and now I hae to go out there again at the end of this month). Drive straight to Lone Pine (where the entrance to the Whitney trailheads are). Then we would camp for the night to get used to the altitude. And then early in the morning we would start up. Our permits were for the 5th and 6th, so we would climb , camp, summit, then hike out.

While planning for this trip, Alex collected a few books about Whitney, and we started tossing around the idea of taking some less traveled routes. One was the Mountaineer's Route (MR). Look it up, u can see that parts of it are pretty damn scary (http://www.mountphoto.com/whitney/pages/Image9.html).
While the MR didn't require technical climbing (equipment) we weren't quite sure if we could do it. We contacted a guy by the name of Bob Rockwell who was kind enough to give us some advice. This guy is an animal, he's climbed MR 30 times, and we more or less decided this may be a bit too difficult for us.

The day b4 we departed , I called to confirm our permits. Now, when I called the ranger said that my permit was for Jun 5th/6th, not Jul 5th/6th. It was one of those moments where you have been ignoring the obvious for months because you've got it set in your head the dates that you want, and what u want to see. Anyway, I felt terrible, I had to contact the boys, let them know what the drill was, and we started scrambling for alternate options, but we weren't going to stop the trip.

Alex found another route (Meysan Lake). Basically this route is a fairly straightforward 5 mile climb to Meysan Lake. Then you climb a very steep slope (1mile distance, 2000 ft elevation climb, yes close to 40% grade). Then you descend a couple thousand feet, climb up again to Trail Crescent (which meets the Main Whitney trail), and then summit. Then we were planning on climbing down via the Main Whitney Trail.
A few caveats here,, 40% grade is very very steep.
From Meysan lake to Trail Crescent is completely uncharged, no trail, no markers, just our own nav skills and gps.
Did i mention its very steep?
The book mentioned that its class 2 (no hands required, only feet), but it is difficult). JEff was confident he could find the route along with the gps, so we decided to go for it.

Anyway, now onto some pictures:

They aren't screwing around when they name places in Death Valley.


Crazy guy actually running in 130+ heat
When we got to the Ranger station, we were able to land the exact permits that we wanted. We got permits to go up into the backcountry after MEysan Lake, and rejoin the Main Whitney Trail to descent out of. Thank goodness that we got this, I think the other guys may have killed me if we didn't. Just kidding, they were actually be good sports given my collosol screw up.
Also, we asked the Ranger (Ranger Dave) about Meysan lake, he kinda looked at us, and said oh yeah i did that once.
We got to the trail head and quickly starting organizing our packs. The idea was to hike up as far as Possible to Meysan Lake, and then the next morning hit the steepest part fo the climb. This would help us acclimate to the altitude better also. Rather than sleeping at the trailhead (around 9000 ft), we could sleep at the Lake, closer to 11000 ft I think.


You can see a little tiny road in the background, that's the road from Lone Pine up into Inyo National Forest where Whitney is located. This is around 5pm I think. as you can see the sun has started its daily descent.
After a while, the sun set (around 8.30pm I think), and it was pretty close to pitch black. the moon didn't come out until around 11.30, so we had to get out our headlamps.
We trudged forward with all kinds of crazy flies, gnats, mosquitos being attracted to our lamps. When we came back down two days later, I couldn't believe some of the stuff we did in complete darkness.
We found a small lake (i.e. we desparately needed water), and we set up camp. We were exhausted as going from sea level that morning (I.e. New York City) all the way to 10000+ ft was pretty hard on the body.
Here's a picture from our campsite.




The Irish bear rowrs!



After packing up camp, we basically started climbing for Meysan Lake (close to a mile away). This is a view from the trail above the lake that we camped at the previous night.



Finally we arrive at Meysan Lake. So odd, that this huge lake is in the middle of nowhere, quite circular, and very beautiful.



Now I cant quite remember exactly which was which, but the peaks surrounding Meysan Lake are all 14000+ ft tall. Basically the trail ends here, and you have to find a way out of this little valley. So, at this point we saw what the 'steep' trail the book was referring to.Yes, that's what we were going to try to climb.




The route of attack was to go between those two pointy patches of snow in the middle of the picture. Just to give you an idea of scale, this climb is really steep and rocky. Those 'small' rocks in the foreground were practically the sizes of small cabins. Just to walk from the point where this pic was taken up to base of the 'hill' took about 10-12 mins. And climbing the rocks from the base to the bottom of the snow took close to 45 minutes. The going was very very slow, basicaly just about every rock was loose, so u had to be excessively careful where you were stepping, and more often than not, the rocks were slipping out from under us so you'd have to be quick to jump to another rock.




Above is a look down what we climbed up.





Above, yes its very very steep, and this wasn't even the difficult part yet.



This is the part of the trip where none of us took pictures, but I can describe it as it will be unforgettable (and not in a good way :-) ). At this point, we had made it up to the snow I pointed out earlier. Then the going got REALLY steep. And mind you b4, we were climbing up loose rocks. At this point however, we were actually climbing up the equivalent of gravel (on a steep hill, u do the math..). In addition to that, just about every rock we tried to place our feet on wasn't steady and was loose. We quickly learned that one person couldn't be below another person cuz rocks kept on getting dislodged from where we were standing and flying down the mountain. ITs odd, you know that scene in all the movies where one rock falls, and bounces, falls further, bounces, falls further bounces etc etc, until you can barely hear it. Well that's how it is in real life also. In addition we noticed that just about all of the exposed areas of the mountain were cracking off when we grabbed onto them. Which is unfortunately, because this was DEFINITELY not class 2 climbing(stupid book). This was class 3, we were scrambling and clutching onto rocks with our hands all over the place. Finding good footholds and handholds was getting more and more difficult.

After about 35 mins of this, we rested for a second as we couldn't clearly see which way to go. Jeff being the natural climber of the crew took of his pack and went up a bit to see where we were. He came back with pretty grim news. We weren't even halfway up our 1000 ft climb. It looked really really bad, and we had a long way to go. At this point, we noticed some dark clouds coming in. This may not sound like a big deal, but dark clouds means a few things. This time of year it means lightning typically. The high sierras get struck by more lightning than just about anywhere in the US. We were basically sitting ducks. Not to mention lightning can knock off huge boulders as well. Secondly if it rained, I can't imagine us going down with slippery water adding to the slippery scree and making our handholds more slippery. Moloney and I didn't think twice, we both said, let's head down, no way we can make it further. Now, going downhill on a crumbling mountain SUX. Every step, all the screen beneath turns into a little rock slide which you literally surf down. At this point, Moloney took a bad step, the ground gave way, and he was sliding down the mountain on his stomach clutching at the sliding ground around him to stop himself from going over the edge (not too far away). He stopped himself, as the rest of us watched all the gravel/rocks fly over the edge of the lip below us. At this point, Moloney froze up a little bit, and asked Jeff for help in getting him down. In all honesty (not to sound overly dramatic), but I think if Jeff wasn't so confident and positive, I would have 100% frozen. This was probably the 2nd time in my life that I thought I maybe could actually not make it because we still had to climb down this crumbling mountain (First time was encountering rattle snakes in the Grand Canyon in the pitch black of nightfall). And going down is much harder than going up, especially with extremely unsure footing.
I have to point out at this point, we all slowly starting making it down. And Jeff carried not only his pack (prob around 35lbs), but also Moloney's pack . He was also climbing down without the aid of his poles since he was helping carrying Moloney's pack. Somehow he was able to make it down just fine without falling once (I fell a bunch of times, bloodied up my elbow, palms, and legs, Moloney had his own falls near the top, ruined a good pair of REI pants). Even when Alex, Moloney, and I were slowly coming down near the top of the mountain, somehow Jeff was able to kind of traipse around like he was walking on flat land at sea level,, pretty amazing balance and instincts.

Alex took off cuz he really had to use the bathroom (somehow he had to go 4 times in one day, I think we're going to blame the fact that he was using the iodine water the most out of the lot of us cuz the rest of us were drinking alot of filtered water).. Ok, btw this part is fairly gross. due to the overwhelming number of people that go to Whitney now, you have to pack out ALL of your waste.. Yes that's right, you poo into a bag, seal it, and strap it onto your pack. And, it doesn't seem that any amount of bagging prevented that odor from coming out of that bag. Yes, not a fond memory for sure.



At this point, Jeff started getting really bad headaches (go figure, he carried down two packs at 12000 ft of elevation and also ran out of water). Everyone totally passed out for a couple of hours, and then we started prepping for dinner. We weren't going to be able to summit, but we felt pretty good about the fact that we even got up as far as we did with our skillset.



Above. Remember, those snow patches are around 200 ft long. if you look at this dark spot just to the upper right of the left snow patch, that was our entry into the upper part of the mountain.



Above. These were the rocks where we got stuck, not fun.



Above. Our camp at the bottom of the mountain, next to Meysan Lake. Some how this shot reminded me of something from Tatooine.



We started our hike back (Above).



Above. One last shot of the lake and our failed attempt to summit to the LeConte/Mallory pass.





Alex not looking too thrilled ..



a VERY very welcome beer right after getting to our car and heading up to the Whitney portal store. Btw, they do make a mean burger, very friendly staff also.

I have to mention one more thing, when we went back to the ranger station to drop off our bear canisters (not fun to carry around as they are heavy as hell) we were talking about our failed hike to the ranger there. Ranger Dave wasn't around, but we told them that he said he did this and didn't seem to indicate to us that it was difficult. Well our ranger told us that Dave isn't a normal ranger, no no, he's a 'hiking ranger'. Go figure, that info would have been nice when we first met him :-).

One final note about the climb.. when I got back home, I actually emailed Bob Rockwell again (the experienced moutaineer), and asked him what he thought about this route vs the MR. He said that he's never done this route in non winter weather (oddly enough, when there is snow on the ground its actually much easier to hike up with crampons and ice picks cuz there's less chance to slip on loose rocks). And to top it off, he very quickly emphasized that this hike is WAY harder than MR. So next year, MR here we come :-).

After this, we actually met up with Anne (Moloney's girlfriend) and her family. Her family is VERY big into camping , they have this sweet Hummer (H1, not one of the wussy H2 or H3 for the urban yuppie). They basically go around the country , tour different spots, and camp out of their Hummer. But they do it in style, proper meals etc. So Anne's family treated us to a meal of Indonesian style lamb curry with herb pasta. My lord it was very very good, I think we all had 3 helpings of it. Sure beats the freeze dried food we had been dealing with thus far. A big thanks again to Anne's mother.

We were actually camping in an area under the Bureau of Land Management. The area is right off the road that leads up to the Whitney trailhead, and is in fact called Movie road (I think). Apparently a bunch of old westerns used to be shot here given its proximity to LA. Being on federal land, apparently its legal to shoot guns here, so Jeff had brought alone his Beretta (I think? I know very little about guns). I should have taken some pictures, but I forgot. But we went out to the middle of nowhere and shot a few rounds at some targets, first time I ever shot a gun, it was definitely interesting.



Triumphant at the end of our hike :-)



Our camp in the early morning, it was already getting very very hot.



Above. I really like this picture, stovepipe wells and furnace creek, like I said , they dont screw around describing the temps in Death Valley.



Nuff said.



Yes, Alex peeing in the background heh heh.

After this we headed into Vegas. Alex was worried that we wouldn't be able to check into the Venetian as we hadn't showered for almost 4 days at this point. Literally everywhere we stood in the hotel, people would first smell themselves and then look around wondering where that odor was coming from. I think we each had to take 2-3 showers (the motions, not getting in and out) to get completely clean. Im not positive I was clean even after the first two even.
And of course the following day we flew back.

The Ice Hotel

A slideshow of these pictures can be seen at :
http://picasaweb.google.com/achakra/HungaryAndTheIceHotel



So, Im not going to go into all the history and stuff about the Ice Hotel, but it is pretty damn cool. First of all the Ice Hotel is in Kiruna which is just about the northern most town in Sweden. As you can see from some of the pictures, given that we went in the middle of winter, and since its above the Arctic circle, the sun doesn't actuall rise above the horizon. In the morning it becomes lighter, and then the sun sets by around 1.30pm. It really screws with your internal clock, I could see how people can get seasonal affective disorder.
We took a 19 hour train from Stockholm overnight to get to the Hotel. I Think we rolled in around 9amish or so.
If you want to see where we were click here for a google maps view of it.
If you zoom out a bit, you kinda forget exactly how far north Stockholm is from New york for example, and then on top of that, the distance of how far north Sweden goes is close to half the distance from Miami to Portland, Maine. Sweden is a pretty long country.


(Below) Me trying to get my tongue stuck on the ice, no it doesn't work like it did in Dumb and Dumber. Some American guest saw me try it, and before Stephanie could snap off the picture, he's like yeah that doesn't work, its the first thing I tried.



Is it 'officially' a hotel made of ice?,, no not quite. So just for a quick run down of how it works: Every year, the Torne River (literally right behind the Ice Hotel location) freezes over. I think it freezes around October (although the locals claim that the avg temp is quite dramatically going up over the last 10 years and its freezing later and later in the year). Once the top layer of the river is completely frozen (which is around a mile wide? give or take?), a bunch of cutting and lifting equipment is used to actually lift gigantic ice blocks out of the river. If memory serves correct, we're looking at 6 ft x 3ft x 2 ft. They actually take these blocks and put them into a warehouse which is kept at -5 degrees all year round. Now the ice blocks used to make the ice hotel this year (say 2006) were actually harvested the previous year (2005, or spring 2006, I can't remember, but the previous 'ice' season let's say.
Ice is really cool, it moves, bends over times, develops cracks etc, and you can see this over the course of the few mos the Ice Hotel is in operation every year.

(below, yes a bar made of ice, yes those are stacked glasses made of ice, also did you know Absolut is a government run enterprise, its the very reason that no city in the United States has an Ice Bar yet because apparently bars or something in the US have to have more than one beer or liquor or something, dont ask me, someone there told me)



Now, the layout is a general lobby area with wings on the right and left which have rooms for people to stay in. I can't remember the number, but on one side is around 40 general rooms (just lights and ice bed). And on the other side is more rooms which also have lights, but this side decorated by artists from around the world. The artists submit their work every year and some 20-30 of them are selected. They fly up to the Ice Hotel, and learn how to work with snow and ice, then they apply their creative skills and create rooms. So each room is different.




When we get to the ice hotel, we go into a warm room that's connected to the actual ice hotel. Here we get special sub zero clothing (and yes its very necessary). With these special suits on, its fairly comfortable. The actual ice hotel is open for visitors during the day, and the concept of a 'room' is not quite like a normal hotel. Essentially u are paying for the ability to stay in a room from 10pm until morning (I think until around 8am).

There is a small ice church (yes church made of ice) next door. And also the warehouse I mentioned above. Funny thing, walking into the warehouse which is -5 degrees is actually comfortable, walking outside is usually colder.

(below, walking around giant columns of ice)



After getting to the hotel, we walked around and saw all the rooms, very cool. Then the sun set and immediately Steph and I thought we were going to pass out from sleepiness. Funny how darkness does that to you. We managed to find a chair to kind of zone out in, and then we were up and at em.
We walked up the road to a small restaurant (btw Kiruna is a mining town, Im not sure what type of ore they are mining there, but its apparently the largest or 2nd largest deposit of that type of ore in the world). While walking there we realize, there really isn't much around Kiruna since it is a mining town. We got something to eat there, and headed back to the Ice Hotel.

(below, this was one of the special artist rooms, out of the 40 or so artist made rooms, two of them are special 'suites', basically larger and more ornate)



At this point, we went to experience one of the highlights of being far north.. the northern lights!. Now, even though Ive studied a fair amount of physics in my time, I just assumed Id see a ton of northern lights the second I got out of the train. Whoops, I forgot the basic reasons that they happen
1) charged particles have to be emitted by the sun
2) it has to be clear
Ugh, so that's one thing we didn't see. Apparently its not uncommon to go to the Ice Hotel and miss it, you pretty much have to be lucky, or live there and look up at the sky all the time. But they had some pretty pictures of the lights on the web I enjoyed later :-).

Once we got to the Ice Hotel, it was time for some libations. We went to the Ice Bar, and got a couple of mixed drinks. Yes those glasses are made of ice. Here's something weird, there are I think 5-6 ice bars around the world, and all of the ice glasses made for these bars are actually made here in Kiruna (in that warehouse), and then shipped around.. seems kind of cost ineffective, but apparently one of the 'cool' things is that all of the ice glasses are made from water from the Torne river (which is very clean).

Another couple of interesting sidenotes. The vodkas are all just out on the bar surface (cuz its -5 degrees always in the hotel). The ice glasses are also outside, but the fruit juices are kept in a freezer (why? cuz the freezer is above 0 so the juices dont freeze). The juices actually end up melting your glass. Damn them, those are expensive drinks too! I think 15 USD for the first pop, and then 9 or something for refills. U can prob get around 3 drinks b4 having to buy a new glass.

(below, pretty cool lighting id say)



(below, me making a snow angle on the river Torne)


So, here's a funny story. There was a couple that was here at the Ice Hotel, turns out the guy was at Princeton the same time Stephanie was there. Small world. Anyway once we had a few drinks at the bar, we were starting to feel pretty chilled to the bone, so we went across the way to this bar (indoors) across the street.



Once we arrived at this bar, me being my slightly inebriated talkative self struck up a conversation with some of the locals. There were three of them at the table, and it turns out they all work on/at the Ice Hotel. Two of them, Mark and Julia had been at the hotel for many years. I think they had worked on 7 different hotels. They also happened to be one of the two 'special artists' that were working on a suite. At some point in the night, they were freaking out because the suites have to be finished by New Years, so I opened my big mouth and asked if they needed help. They were quite taken back, because, well to be honest, the hotel isn't cheap. Most people are pretty well off that go here, and they spend 100s of dollars on random stuff like dog sled trips, snowmobiling etc. Here we were offering to do manual labor. They accepted our offer, but they thought we were joking, little did they know.

(below, yup a chair made of ice)



Ok, now it was time for bed. Bed is interesting, its a bed made of ice, with crushed snow on top, covered by reindeer skins. On top of the skins, you put a sleeping bag (one of these special sub zero ones. Now remember the hotel is -5 degrees. What you do is get into u're thermals in the warm room next door, and then u make a mad dash with your sleeping bag, and boots on to your room. Its COLD! We quickly arrived at our room, turned the lights off and went to bed.

What sucked is that one time in the middle of the night, I had to go to the bathroom. Not fun in the freezing cold at all. After that I was pretty wide awake (Turns out being in underwear in -5 degrees does that to you.

We woke up to a glass of fresh warm lingonberry juice (Swedes seem to love this berry, they have it in jam format also). We got up, went over to the warm room, and got ready and packed up.



We walked over to the warm cafe across the street and got some breakfast. We ran into Mark and Julia again and said, ok, so how can we help. They were shocked, they really thought
a) we forgot the night b4
b) were joking
But nope we weren't. So they essentially went through the steps about how to make snis, and the general concept of how to build these walls, shape things etc. This was by far the highlight, and it didn't cost us a dime! Its quite simple to work with ice. You of course have shovels, buckets, water, and guess what you use to smooth things down? sand paper of course! And just as you'd figure it'd work with wood,, same thing, low vs high grit for added smoothness.

Mark and Julia turned out to be very cool. They were really thankful we helped, and we kept on trying to tell them that we were thankful to be allowed to help. We were essentially full on workers, we ate with the other employees, we went and had tea with them during the day etc. We had most of the day to hang out with them since we weren't catching the train until around 8pm at night. The entire time we thought they were both Swedish. It turns out that Julia was from Australia, and Mark was actually from upstate New York! crazy. They had met at the Ice Hotel and had been there since and also had gotten married. So we spent the day chatting with them, working 'on' the ice hotel, and listening to some good tunes off of Mark's laptop.

(below, me working on steps, its actually hard work!)








(below, Steph and I on two random chairs somewhere in the hotel)





(below, Steph admiring her work on smoothing out a wall in the suite).


(below, this was actually an ice sculpture in the warehouse).






(below, a cool ice couch)



(below, I thought this was a pretty cool fountain)



(below, getting snow to make snis)



(below, me smoothing out a wall)


(below, making steps)




(below, yup that was all us!)

Budapest, Hungary

(The slideshow of all the pictures shown here are at: http://picasaweb.google.com/achakra/HungaryAndTheIceHotel




In December 2006, I was on a business trip to Bangalore, and on the way back I decided to meet up with my good friend Stephanie Yang (high school buddy) who is currently a math professor working for a year in Stockholm. Since I had almost a week, we decided to do a travel packed trip which started in Stockholm. I arrived there from India, and then the following day we took off for Budapest. The Christmas holidays was right around the corner, and we kind of forgot that most of the Western world comes to standstill/crawl around Xmas time. But no worries, we were out to see the sights which were in full swing.

We took a pretty late flight out of Stockholm, and connected via Amsterdam. We got into Budapest pretty late. We didn't even realize that we had booked a car/limo, but sure enough one showed up. Good thing cuz we really didn't realize how much conversational difficulty we were about to have.

We get into the room and fell asleep. In the morning, I woke up and got ready first so I could go and get some cash from the ATM machine. So here's a funny story. So to walk into our room, you actually have to go through a hallway through a door into a small corridor. Now in this corridor are two doors, one was our room, and the other one was another hostel room. Now, the way the keys work, is that the doors use keys to lock both sides. So to get in and lock your room door and the corridor, you have to flip a key 4 times (outside in the hallway, inside in the corridor, then inside the corridor again on your room door, then inside your room to finally lock your room door). Confusing right? Ok not that much, Im just trying to make an excuse for myself. Now one small caveat, the key was used for the dead lock, otherwise, the bottom lock on each door would self-lock. We only had one set of keys, so I then left our room, locked our door, went into the corridor, opened the corridor, LEFT The keys in he lock, and then shut the door behind me. Essentially I locked myself out of the corridor with the keys hanging in on the other side. Lovely start to the day. I go downstairs, and somehow managed to convey that I had locked myself out. These two girls that were working the front desk somehow understood and came up with me. They found some keys , but none of them could unlock the door properly because I had left the other set of keys in the other side. Stephanie was locked in our hotel room. Our only hope at this point was to wake up the person that had checked into the other room inside the corridor. We banged and banged on the window (facing into the hallway) to no avail. Finally, I contrived up a scheme to unhinge the key from the lock on the inside. There was a small metal grating above the door, I managed to pull up a chair, put a broom through it, pull myself up to the grating, stick my head through it, and try to use the broom to dislodge the key. No luck, not enough leverage. Then finally genius came to me, I would take the spare set of keys, and throw them up to Stephanie through the room window. As I tried to explain my plan to the two girls trying to help me (and laughing at me quite mercilessly), they finally understood it just when the person in the other room opened their door and took out the key from the lock on the otherside in the corridor. Lovely start to the day.

First of all, Budapest is a gorgeous city. Somehow alot of the older architectures and what not have survived all the various empires and wars that have rolled through this area. The Danube river kind of splits the city into halves. Literally, one side of the river is called Buda, and the other side of the river is called Pest (go figure). There's a few very beautiful bridges that span it.



As you can see, the river front buildings are quite beautiful and nicely lit up at night.



The Matthias church is a famous church in the heart of Budapest. (below)







Im pretty sure (below) this picture was taken on the Pest side of the city. On the opposite side (in Buda) is what's known as the Castle District (once again go figure). The huge building you see there is the Royal Palace. Im not positive when the last monarch sat there, but obviously there is certainly not one now. The Germans actually used it as a command post in WWII. There was fierce fighting there, and it actually was damaged badly, what we see now is post reconstruction.



(Below). Im not exactly sure what these are called, but they were damn good. Kind of like a doughy cinnamony thing. Really cool to watch them make it as they rolled/cooked over those hot coals in the foreground. Also, given that we were in eastern europe in the dead of winter, a nice place to warm up your hands. We never would have bothered trying them if it wasn't for Stephanie's friend's friend who was kind enough to take us to lunch and give us some tips on what to eat. One thing you'll realize is that English is very skimpy in these parts, and you end up doing alot of pointing and gesturing.





Im not quite sure about the chronological order, but I should add somewhere in here that Stephanie somehow managed to lose her wallet. She freaked out for a bit, then I managed to convince her that it was all good (since she has her Passport), so not to worry. One thing I found intersting also, is that when we landed in the STockholm airport, there was never any immigration officials/passport control, odd.

(Below), we decided to take a trip a bit out of town. Im not sure if we were still exactly in Budapest or not, but definitely the outskirts if at all. There was an old Roman garrison out here which was excavated. It was actually closed, but we jumped the fence and walked around it anyway. We had to take a train (really their version of a light rail) to get out there. While walking around trying to find this place, we happened upon this choice piece of art work.







(the ruins below).



Heh heh,, if you dont know why this is funny, well u'll just have to not know (below)



(Below), unfortunately i didn't take a very good picture of this place, but its a famous little coffee shop (I think called Central Cafe). Apparently all the intellectuals and authors and what not used to congregate here. Budapest used to have one of the richest coffee shop cultures in Europe, but that number has greatly dwindled. You wont find Starbucks here (yet). I thought the food was fantastic, and they had some nice teas. We ran into some fellow Americans, turns out they were from the Bay area, so I jumped into a short discussion about it with them as its my 2nd home.



(Below) The Hungarian State opera house. I thought that this place was very very cool. We took a tour of the place, and quite a lot of cool stories were told to us. First of all, it was commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The acoustics of the place are phenomenal. Everything about this place screamed royalty. The emperor had his own box, he even had his own entrance and entertainment parlour for his guests. Much of the artwork, rugs, tapestries, etc. are still the originals. Couple of cool stories:
- It was pointed out to us that each of the seats had little vents underneath. And given that it was created in 1880s, it immediately begs the question, what were the vents for? Turns out they used to ship in huge blocks of ice from the mountains, and then using some sort of air blowing technology (dunno what though), they literally air conditioned the place for the warm summer months.
- I have to point out that our guide was possibly one of the most attractive women Ive ever seen, Im not sure why this is important, but Stephanie would agree that for a trip description to be complete, I have to mentoin it.
- Funny story: There was set construction going on in the background when we were in the main auditorium listening to her historical recounts. At one point, she stopped speaking, started laughing, and then pointed out that its good that none of us speak Hungarian. I guess those guys doing the set construction were pretty rough around the edges.



(Below) This was another cool thing that we saw. Its called the terror museum. As we all know, Hungary used to be a part of the Soviet Bloc. I was always under the impression that the Russians did alot for these countries. Now that Ive visited both Poland and Hungary, that isn't true at all. In general, all they did was provide heavy military support for the communist party as to ensure that they remained in power. The building below used to be the Kgb's headquarters in Budapest. The crazy stories of torture, and espionage, backstabbing, abductions, paranoia, are mind blowing. Everyone was paranoid of everyone. The guys at the top were usually replaced every so often never to be heard of again. Its fitting that they have turned this ghastly building into a reminder of what was.
Also interesting is that Russian was taught in Hungary during the cold war. There is still quite alot of resentment against the Russians in these former Soviet states. Its interesting to think that the current generation of young Hungarians are the first ones that weren't exposed to that crazy period in our history.



(Below)
Steph and I decided to relax in the famous Turkish mineral baths located through Budapest. Its all naturally heated water from underground springs. Even though it was close to freezing outside, these baths were nice and relaxing. They have various concentrations of different minerals at diff temperatures (they also have cold pools). . We were too tired to go, but apparently some of these baths turn into raves on certain nights. Seems odd to mix alcohol and hot water with very loud music, at the same time intriguing.
There's a slightly funny gross story here. First of all, it seems that ALL Hungarians are thin, I think its a general eastern block thing. Anyhow,, somehow, all the overweight ones ended up at this spa. And when I mean overweight, I mean like American overweight. Anyway, there was this one older overweight lady getting into the pool we were currently in, and well to put it delicately, she hadn't quite finished adjusting her swimsuit so you could more or less see her private part (the one south of the border). And its not like one of those things where she could look down and notice her mistake, no.. too much stomach flab in the way, nope, she was just walking around completely exposed. Not knowing Hungarian and being too shy, we didn't do anything about it, but then we didn't feel bad because no one seemed to want to mention it to her. Oh well, I guess people stay pretty private within themselves at these spas.



(Below), once again, self evident why its funny, u may have to look at a larger version of the picture.



(Below)
The Budapest subway system. I wanted to mention one thing. So this is something that the Russians actually provided help with. They literally created these lines over 40 years ago. And if you can take a closer look at these pictures, you can see that it doesn't look like much has improved in those forty years. Also, Ive heard (never seen ) that subway stations in Moscow are close to 100meters below the surface. Apparently this is so they can literally house the populace in case of nuclear attack. I'm not exactly sure if its the same reason here, but these subway stations were very far down also. They also had these crazy escalators which just ooozed some sort of communist feel. And man did they move fast. I was discussing my trip with Keya (an old childhood friend who actually lived near Budapest for a year once upon a time), and her and her husband actually saw an old man die on these escalators! He just missed his timing on getting onto the step and ended up falling almost all the way down the length of the escalator. Sad.

I will say this though, brutal efficiency is the best way to describe these trains.





(Below). Ok, I dont know why I decided to take a picture of the toilet, but I just wanted to point out the odd design of this thing. This is a bit graphic in description so please ffwd down if you've just eaten. But if you notice the water in the bottom is located near the front as opposed to any other toilet Ive seen where the hole is located near the back of the toilet bowl. As you can imagine, your poo falls not into the water which covers up the odor, but right onto the porcelain with no water. Well, I dont know if the communists didn't like people to hang out on the toilet all day, but you certainly dont want to spend anymore time than necessary.



(Below) once again, funny for obvious reasons.



(Below) My partner in crime, Stephanie, at the dumps with poppy restaurant.



(Below)
So inside of the hill that the Royal Palace is built on is an extensive system of caves and tunnels. From what I can remember, these were in fact manmade. Today they have been converted into a museum. What I find interesting is the fact that many of these tunnels have cave men art/drawings on them, but they are all done by modern artists. Kinda funny I thought. Its interesting, kind of warm and damp down there. For some reason, they had this one place with ivy covered walls, and a couple of fountains. Weird though because the fountains were shooting out wine. It was pretty disgusting looking wine, not exactly there for consumption . either way, expensive display case.





(below)
heh, so apparently Santa Clause is from Finland.

Thailand (again)

The full slide show can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/achakra/Vietnam

So after our 'hard' travels in Vietnam, we decided to go and relax yet again. Rajiv once again was nice enough to donate some of his Starwood points to our cause and we found a great little resort in Krabbi. It wasn't quite the Thai beach experience you see in the movies and read about in the papers since we were pampered, but nevertheless, it was fantastic.

The food here was tremendous. All types of cuisines, and impeccably made. I even tried foie gras for the first time. Have to say not my cup of tea.



After dinner, we believe it or not sat down and watched Shall we Dance (yes J Lo and Richard Gere). It was the 'family' activity on the resort for the night. They had 3$ asahis so why not.

In the morning, Jeeves guilted me into working out so we hit the gym. The guy who was monitoring the gym was this really really buff guy. Turns out he used to be a world kickboxing champion in some division. He had the trophy right there which he won in Vegas. Really funny guy. he taught us how to say hello in Thai. Turns out if you're a guy, you say "sawatdee khrab", and if you're a girl you say "sawatdee kaa". I dont know why he decided to pick on Rajiv, but he basically taught Jeeves the girl's way and us the guy's way,, really funny guy.



Yes the resort had its own 'baby elephant' for petting and riding. (I think its name was RaRa)

We went off to the airport to fly back to Bangkok. They had a hospitality lounge with snacks and free internet. So we sat down cuz the flight was delayed for 2 hours. I kid you not, this was what was on the screen. It was some sort of condom catch the sperm sex education game. Right there in their hospitality lounge.



I swear, I dont know why American based carriers suck SO badly, maybe labor costs. But even on this 45 minute flight, somehow they found time to give us steamed chicken with pasta and sauce. Gotta love Bangkok Air.

Below. come on.. admit it its funny.



Jeeves once again generously donated some Starwood points for us ot stay at a nice Sheraton. We go out at night, and it turns out they are celebrating the Buddhist Lent or something so most bars are closed. We decide to head over to Patpong which isn't anywhere near as seedy as it used to be. Instead they have tons of street shops with a huge market in the middle of the street. We got some fake soccer jerseys, and then Rajiv decided to buy a perpetual motion watch. We told him OVER and over there was no way it was going to work (turns out it worked for about a month hee hee). Rajiv and Saumil then managed to find a place to get a pedicure. Yes a pedicure. In my minds, they officially switched to the 'other' team right then and there.

We went back to the hotel, and Saumil had to start packing as his flight was that night to India. Saumil had brought an immense amount of candy and what not for his cousins in India. He then realized he was going to get charged a TON for too much extra weight in his checked luggage. So he proceeded to move ALL of this deadweight candy into his onboard backpack. His Jansport had to have been close to 50-60 lbs! It was a funny sight as he had to move one thing in, then another thing out, then something else in, weigh it, repeat (we got something like a fish weighing scale from the hotel). So I basically gave him moral support while he packed, saw him off and then we conked out.

The following day was Rajiv and I roaming around the historical sites. We saw a bunch of wats (temples). The famous one below (Wat Pho) has this ENORMOUS reclining Buddha.





After this, we were exhausted of 3 weeks of sightseeing, so we hit a movie called 'The Island', pretty good movie actually!


Below, I dont know why, but every sign showing exits east of the International Date line seem to have a guy running for his life.



Come on its funny.



Anyway, this is the end of our tale. Rajiv and I headed back to the United States. There is a very funny story also here concerning me on the plane ride. And well, to hear it you'll need my permission :-).

Vietnam (pt 3)

The full slide show can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/achakra/Vietnam

Now the next part of the trip, I actually wrote myself an email to remember all the crazy stories. So it may not flow properly, but Im going to just paste what I wrote in my email right here so I can capture all the details without having to rewrite it :-)

anyway, so that was that, the next morning we headed out really early for sinh cafe (touring company) , we got on a bus for the chu chi tunnels, this was the most remarkable thing ive seen i think in vietnam, mainly cuz im a history buff, and this stuff amazes me,basically these are the tunnels that the VC used to defeat the americans, we get there, and the first thing we see is a video of VC propaganda, it was SO funny, of course i think im fed the same crap in the US, but not this skewed i dont think, basically they made it out to seem that the chu chi was a quiet village people, and when the americans came, they slaughtered tons of people (which we did), but then they m ade it sound like the village women/girls/boys (notice no mention of 'men' heh heh) defeated the US single handedly!, it was hilarious, it made it sound like, they would defeat the US with their valor and courage (which the VC did , but not these women), and basically did it with their barehands and guerilla tactics, no mention of russia supplying VC men with tons of weapons heh heh, the best part, they even got medals, like a 3 kill meddal, or a 6 kill medal.
and they showed the women being celebrated heh heh

anyway after that, the guy showed us a mock up of the tunnels and a system map, these tunnels were crazy, they went from the saigon river all the way to cambodia, the entrances to these things were so invisible, basically the kitchens and everything figured out ways to dissipate smoke into steam and very little so helecopiters couldn't see it, the tunnels were just wide enough for vietnamese soldiers who are smaller than americans, so even if u found an entrance, an american couldn't go in, and to go to saigon, they would get into the saigon river, to do this, they would actually dig a tunnel right out of the river bank, but underneath the water level, from here they could get into the saigon, but they couldn't be on the surface, so they would use a huge lily petal or something with a straw to breathe, and they would just float down with the current for 12 hours!, and of course they could cross the river into the tunnels systems on
the other side all just swimming underwater, CRAZY.

anyway then we saw some of the real tunnel openings etc, they had an opening, then they had this tunnel we could actualy walk in, the crazy thing was that this tunnel was actually enlarged for visitors, and we felt REALLY cramped in there, totally dark, couldn't see around the corner, very stuffy and hot , i dont know how they did it with gear and stuff, and they could go all the way to the cambodian border, CRAZY, after i saw this, i really understood why the americans lost, these people would have all died b4 letting americans win, just nuts, oh and all these tunnels were made with just a small shovel and a basket, and then the dirt would be sent back to river, or outside ..

anyway, i was quite impressed by this stuff, at the end we saw a bunch of snake wine, yes, ike wine vinegar with dead snakes in it, pretty crazy, apprently its used for some stupid thing like arthiritis or something,

also, we were told that a bunch of Vietnamese citizens filed a class action suit against the pharmaceutical companies in the US who produced Agent Orange. This stuff was REALLY REALLY nasty. The babies born to alot of parents exposed to this stuff were absolutely messed up. No eyes, limbs, completely dysfunctional to where they needed 24/7 care. The citizens lost (go figure), but that's war for u.

Ok, that's the end of my email, here's back to blogging..
Below is saumil trying to get in and out of one of the acces holes. Mind you, Saumil is a skinny guy, very skinny.. and he could barely get in and out of this hole. It was ingenious, basically Americans (being larger, even military guys who are in shape) couldn't get in and out of these holes.



One of the crazy killing devices.



Yes a scuttled American tank.



Below.. I think its obvious



We shot ak-47s.. no joke, left over from the Soviet supplied resistance to us Americans



You can't really tell, but there is a huge bomb crater next to me. I would say that its around 30 ft across, and 10 ft deep. probably dropped from a B52 bomber..



We went into the tunnels. They would literally crawl around these tunnels in a full crouch position. Honestly, Im not claustrophobic, and I knew that within 50 ft I could exit.. but it freaked me out. Its hot, cramped, humid, and you could basically nothing else but crawl and still be touching all the walls (sides and top). Now, here's even crazier, they have expanded all of these tunnels for tourists so fat people can get through. Now we ain't fat, but still,, pretty small tunnel.



Yes the crazy wine..



When we got back to the city, we decided to walk around. Went to some famous market place. Basically an enormous warehouse with tiny aisleways with ALL kinds of small shops. Saumil negotiated a chess set for his nephew in India (he was continuing onto India afterwards). As we left the market, we decided to walk down to the water front. On the way I saw some tennis courts, and of course was intrigued as I hadn't hit a ball in over 2 wks at this point. We walked in, and it was a high rise luxury condo with a bunch of storefronts in the bottom stories. I found the sales mgr and asked her how much a condo here is. After doing the conversion, i found it was 2500US/month $!!!!!. Man , I was thinking I could move here , work remotely for Oracle, high roll, but I couldn't even afford to live as a high roller in Saigon! Sheesh.

It was about time to get drinking again, so we found some sort of brewpub thing. The guy couldn't keep our orders straight to save his life. After getting a light buzz going here, we decided to go this ritzy roof top bar on top of the Hotel Caravelle. Stoli Tonic was around 4.50$ USD, we said forget this, one drink and we're out. Too expensive for our traveling selfs..

We then headed off to dinner at this really really nice restaurant called Mandarin. I can guess that this is the equivalent of Vietnam's Per Se. The food and service was incredible, and they had probably one waiter for every two people. Even live classical quartets and duets and piano spread throughout the place. Total bill? I think around 50$ for 3 people.

So, then we headed over to this bar which , well to put it lightly, turned out to be a tourist trap for people who wanted prostitutes. We didn't know until after we ordered. We immediately asked for the check, and then batted away the girls who were quite aggressive. Once they realized that we weren't here for the 'special' services, they slapped us with a ridiculous bill. They charged 30k dong for cashews! Now, that's around 2 USD which is ridiculous when the beer is around 2USD wherever you go. So I was pissed, so I asked for a doggy bag to be obnoxious, and they were being obnoxious back and not giving me one, so I grabbed as many as I could in two hands and stuffed them into my pockets. Not quite a statement, but it was as much as I could muster at the time.

So the following day we decided to walk around Saigon a bit, see some museums and what not. So below is another funny incident where Saumil was trying to grab Rajiv's boobs . There are some funny videos in the slide show.. You can see Rajiv protecting himself.



After this we went over to the old command headquarters for the south vietnamese army. Ho Chi Minh of course renamed it the Reunification Palace after his forces finally stormed it. Basically this was the building from where the south Vietnamese government operated, and b4 that, it was the site of the French Indochina governer. During the war of course, the US military sat side by side with the south Viernamese (essentially which ever dictator the US chose to put in power). It was crazy to see all of the old statistics about the facility. On this date, Ho Chi Minh's forces stormed, on this date the Americans left etc.







Below, I wonder if they have better cell reception back then than we do now.



For some reason, Im not into massages, I hurt more than when I go into them, so saumil and Rajiv went off to get massages. I went off to the war remants museum,basically pointing out US atrocities, they were of course very very sad and horrendous. Granted, its war, its just something that we're protected from in the United States by our 'fair and balanced' media. These pictures will live in my memories for ever.. Kids born affected from agent orange, people affected by dioxin, napalm victims,, of course no northern atrocities by the north vietnamese against the south were reported, again propaganda for you. Next to it was an old south vietnamese jail camp turned into a museum. The conditions that they lived under was atrocious. The way they starved people, tortured them etc. (it was areplica of their alcatraz). IT makes guantanomo look pretty nice compared to the stuff these peoplewent through.

Im sure you can read more about this guy, I dont remember the name but this is a Buddhist monk who burned himself alive as a protest against the war. Sometimes I accidentally turn the hot water and it burns. I can't imagine being able to sit in such stillness with no physical acknowledgment of it. Maybe there is some truth to the Buddhist philosophy after all and their control of their mind and needs.






So after this we headed off to the airport. I have to say on the way we saw a ridiculously beautiful lady on a scooter. Now the cab driver couldn't really understand what we were talking about but saw us looking at this beautiful girl. While we gawked at her, he looks at us and says.. 100$.. no joke..

So later that night we ended up at the airport on an Air France back to Bangkok. So when we got through airport security, we're waiting in the gate area. They finally call our flight, so as we walk up to the lady who's tearing boarding passes right b4 the ramp, she takes ours, looks at them and walks away. Im like great, now we're stuck in Communist Vietnam,, but she comes back with different colored boarding passes. We look at them and ! lo and behold, they have upgraded us to first class!. Im not sure why we got this, but Im guessing its because since I bought the ticket on my credit card with my miles account, there's a chance that it was because I flew so much with Air France in the past.



Now what was even cooler, was that we enjoyed our lap of luxury for an extra two hours as the plane was grounded for mechanical problems heh heh.

We got to Bangkok airport, and made the decision just to sleep in the airport rather than try to find a hostel at that time at night since we had a 9am flight to Krabbi (beach town in Thailand). Here we are sleeping.



For some reason, I wasn't as tired, so I decided to put shaving cream on Saumil's face.

Vietnam (pt 2)

The full slide show can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/achakra/Vietnam

We then left Mui Ne to go to Nha Trang which is a popular beach resort for the rich folks of Saigon. It kind of had a bit of Vegas feel except no casinos, but on the beach. Just everyone ready to throw money away for the weekend. We finally found

Above are sand dunes we stopped at on the way. These little kids were trying to sell us rides on their foam mats. Below Saumil tried to 'carve' up the slopes, it didn't work that well.



At this point, we were getting hungry. I wasn't very hungry when we passed what looked like an ok place to eat, so me and Tooong overruled Saumil and Rajiv. Well mostly Tooong had made up his mind not to stop. So we went to Hung Phat 2, no joke. This place was prob the size of half a football field. There was at least 60 tour buses outside, and it was packed. Now, we sat down, and looked at the menu, and the first thing we see is pictures of frogs and snakes. We asked for chicken, Toong barely translated but said no we dont have any. Finally he says, ok, go over there (buffet line) grab some stuff. There was a soup (flies in it). There was a bunch of other food, I think some fishes, some other meats, I dont konw what they were, also with flies in them. The eggs looked edible until I noticed some other sort of crazy meat in there. Anyway, Saumil and I got rice, and they give some steamed veggies on the side (we didn't know what they were, but at least they were bland steam veggies). We proceeded to eat this with tons of hot sauce basically. Rajiv was bold and tried a bit of everything. We predicted he had 24 hours to live.





The road up the coast of Vietnam is beautiful. I would say more beautiful than Highway 1 in CAlifornia. Interesting, back in the cold war days, the soviets maintained a submarine base here. Its closed down now, but you could see it in the distance.



Small Vietnamese guy holding our bags heh. We were starving and immediately found food since Saumil and I didn't want to die at the restaurant on the road. We got some solid American food, pizza, followed by solid deep fried Indian Samosas heh. Then we hit happy hour. The night proceeded with some more libations. There's a very funny story here, but once again you'll have to get permission from Rajiv to hear it.



We then hit the road again, took to the mountains to go up to Dalat. Dalat reminded me alot of Darjeeling, classic colonial hill station. The French actually wanted to make this the capital back in the colonial days (their wussy selves couldn't deal with the hot humid climate down at the lower elevations :-) just kidding, or am I?). But it was gorgeous, and the temperature was quite nice. We found a place to stay and went over to a place called Cafe V. Really good fusion food.

The following day, we found an outdoor adventures placed called Phat Tire. We wanted to give mountain biking a shot. First, no one was willing to help us, but finally, the owner (turned out to be an American named Brian) said, dont listen to these guys I'll take you, but I can't take you until later in the day. So we come up with a time, and take off. To pass the time, we find these guys called Easy Riders. Apparently since so many tourists speaking so many western languages have been coming to Dalat for SO many years, there are these 'legendary' bike riders that have picked up all the Romance languages. We find a couple that speak English, and hop onto their bikes and they take us on a small precanned tour. Saumil being the bold one again (and not blacklisted in this town) rents his own bike and follows us.

The first place we stopped was a temple. I found this little sign to be precious heh.



There's Saumil following on his bike.



Im not sure what this place was. There was a hanging rope, a nice waterfall, I think it was just a nice little area to visit in general. Cool little rickety looking tree house we went up into.





The next stop was this special spinning table. They said that if you all stood around it would start mystically spin on its own. It was of course a load of bull as it was clear the guy was slowly pushing it when he thought we weren't looking.





The next stop was called crazy house, literally. Some Vietnamese went to Moscow and got her phd in architecture and made this CRAZY house literally. Loox like something out of Disney while tripping on acid.. wait, the people at Disney are probably already tripping on acid.











Below are our two EZ Rider drivers.



Now, here's another funny story which we unfortunately dont have any footage of. So if you remember, I mentioned to Brian that we would be coming back to mountain bike. We arrive there, and start biking down the road to the bike paths out in the woods. Interesting, there is a Vietnamese minority that primarily live out in the woods and actually commute via these small mountain trails. Also it turns out that, they dont look like the typical Vietnamese people that we had been around, and in fact also supported the United States during the war. However, even though we lost the war, the people here have all but forgotten the war. Obviously an entire new generation is alive now, its been many years, but the real thing to remember, is that the people aren't stuck on this issue in their history. There are some other groups throughout the world that I wish would take this model of forgetting the past because there is nothing you can do about it and moving forward. I also noticed that even though Vietnam got the hell bombed out of them only 40 years ago, their roads and general infrastructure was really really good. I compare it to India where they were never bombed, have been independent for over 60 years, and still the infrastructure is in shambles. Granted, they have a much bigger population problem, but , there's something to be said for the fighting spirit of the people of this country.

Ok back to the funny story. So we're riding along, almost in the mountains, and Rajiv (who is the most confident of us because he said he did this before) , is tearing down the mountain in front of me, and basically takes an ENORMOUS fall, lands on his back. He tries to get up, and man his back hurts bad. So we have to wait over an hour for a jeep to come, grab the bike and Rajiv and take him back to the shop. Ok, that was actually the funny part, maybe you had to be there. It was funny in a Jackass (mtv show) kinda way.

We went on mountain biking. Brian had some amazing stories. Here's a guy who had backpacked across Africa, India, and countless other underdeveloped countries. And now here he is living in Vietnam.

We got back on the road and headed off for Saigon. We noticed so many restaurants on the way with funny names (to our insensitive American selves). Here are our favorites.

hung phat
hung phat I
hung phat II (we ate there, disgusting food)
hung longh
hung thinh
nhung
we decided , when we name our kids, we're going to name them
hung long, or hung thick, or hung phat, or hung girth (yes we made that one up )

So, for this next picture, you should go and check the video in the slide show at the link on the top. So, Ive forgotten to mention this, but Saumil LOVES fruit. And if he sees fruit anywhere on the side of the road he would force the driver to stop. So one of the things he had been craving but couldn't get yet was sugar cane juice, the real deal. So when he saw this by the side of the road, he forced the driver to stop.
Anyway, you really should go and see the slide show , but there is this contraption which I was sure we would catch many diseases from. Basically u feed in the cane through two rollers which squeeze out the juice, it gets caught in a funnel which goes through a plastic tube and then empties out into a spigot into a glass. Ok, let me tell u, flies all over this thing (of course its all sugar), flies crawling inthe tube. All kinds of dirt looking particles. Anyhow, they finally ran through the machine and out comes our sugar water into the plastic bags that you see. I think it suffices to say that we're still alive, but man, that was some dirty looking stuff.




We finally arrived in Saigon, and we took a picture with our driver Toooong. One side note, we noticed that he was RUSHING to get back to Saigon. Our theory was with that he wanted to get together with his Jimmy since he hadn't seen her for a while :-).



I think this was a friday night, and Vietnam was PACKED. We had to splurge and I think pay a bit more for the hotel, but it was a higher end hotel for sure. I still liked the Empress back in Dalat better. We wanted some serious American food, we found a Cuban cafe and ended up getting pizza. It was like a Pizza rustica or something, but it may hvae been one of the best pizzas Ive ever eaten in my life.

Then it was time for the night's festivities. We went bar hopping, and literally took 75 cent cab rides from bar to bar, gotta love it. We went to an Aussie bar, which, was totally filled with Australians. We heard the bartender talking, and he was a Vietnamese guy with an Australian accent, very odd. then we realized that we couldn't understand a word he was saying, becuase he had an Austrliaan accent transposed on top of a Vietnamese accent heh heh. We asked him for fun bars to go to, but basically all the descriptions he gave us were of 'boom boom' bars which was not our thing. Finally we went to this new hot spot, and it was full of white people. But really good music! u2, pearl jam, etc.

Went to a place called Apocalypse Now (obviously a tourist trap which we didn't see coming). Had an overpriced drink there, and it was clearly a tourists place to pick up Jimmy's for hire. So we quickly tried to get out of there. At some point Rajiv started talking to a busted Jimmy in his inebriated state and we quickly forced him to polish off his drink and get out of there.

Im not sure if it was this night, and I think it was. But let me put it this way, Rajiv wanted to stay out, and me and Saumil were tired. So he says, I'll stay out, and meet you guys back in the room since we were next door to the hotel. Anyway, long story short, you'll need Rajiv's permission to hear it :-).

The next morning, Rajiv finally got diarrhea (remember we predicted he would die in 24 hours). I guess its a slow set in time.

One thing I noticed about Vietnam, is that everything is smaller, the chairs are lower, the shower heads are lower, elevators are more cramped, and we realized, its honestly for the shorter than the avg Westerner Asian man. No one is fat, so you could make everything smaller.