A highlight of the highlight was the Liceo Folkloric Dance Group from the Philippines. I’ve seen the dancers 4 times at the festival and 100 times while cutting this video:
I like these mating like dances with simple, very beat accented music. The Filipino girls run across the stage like scared chickens and the guys show off with weapons, animal gestures and animal noises. There’s even a little acrobatics, but always casual and relaxed.
To be totally honest, I am really into this jumping around butt-first, especially at 1:10. Just how sexy is that?
I’ve lost my umbrella 7 months ago in Nepal. It was early October and the rainy season had ended from one day to the other. I haven’t missed the umbrella ever since.
One day it started raining, and it didn’t quit for four months.
(Forrest Gump)
That has changed in the last 2 weeks. Since early May, it rains almost every night and sometimes during the day. It is the beginning of the rainy season in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
Last rainy season in Kathmandu, September 2011
I’m not a big fan of seasons and have gladly welcomed the eternal summer on a world tour.
Es regnet nicht nur in der Regenzeit
es schüttet aus Kübeln nur so runter
(2Raumwohnung – Nimm mich mit)
Eternal summer with perpetual rain, doesn’t rock my boat at the moment.
The bucket is full in Bangkok, May 2012
I do not want a new umbrella. It is about time to get away from the equator (-;
I just booked my trans pacific flight rikshaw, next week!
You travel to the other end of the world to have foreign, exotic experiences and what do you see?
Churches!
Gladly with Jesus and Mary…
… in the park or at the market.
Some churches look more like temples …
… but not on the inside.
There are also Stations of the Cross and Madonna figures.
Vietnamese are really into kitsch, the 8% Christians too.
The churches of the Vietnamese Cao Đài religion are something special. Cao Đài is a mixture of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Cao Đàists believe, that all religions teach the same thing.
I think so, too …
You can go wherever you want, but you cannot escape the religions.
You cannot even escape from Christianity, not even in Vietnam and Mongolia (-:
depending on your political or magnetic disposition…
I went 2x through Vietnam: Saigon – Hanoi – Saigon
Why?
Saigon - Hanoi = Vietnam = Hanoi - Saigon
From Saigon in the south, I traveled for 2.5 weeks to the north. From Hanoi in the north, I traveled for 3.5 weeks back to the south. Southbound, I had very nice company.
It’s not the places you go.
It’s the people you meet.
In life and in travels it is about other people. For me, this is especially true in this case. My company from Hanoi was the heartbreaker girl from Laos.
My heart is whole again, but now I’ve lost it. To see my heart and the new owner again, I have to travel back to Bangkok.
That means, no China and no Japan.
That means off to Bangkok, the city of cities (and angels).
That means a flight from one to the other City of Angels (Bangkok to Los Angeles).
The Bangkok price spiral has burst after all, but for once this was not about saving money anyway..
You can find them in almost every country in the world, including Vietnam.
In Vietnam, everything successful is being copied anyway.
e.g. the Easy Rider Motorcycle Club for tourist rides in Dalat
Supposedly, all of the easy rider clubs are fake.
Even the Peace Cafe next door has two copies in the same street.
The most blatant forgery wave can be found in the old quarter in Hanoi:
The tour operator Sinh Cafe
in blue or red
or with a Halong bay picture
and sometimes 2 of them side by side.
Sinh Cafes Open Tours concept is so successful, there are more than 50 copies.
The original Sinh Cafe therefore had to rename to Sinh Tourist:
Open Tours in Vietnam are extremely popular. You buy one bus ticket from Hanoi to Saigon or vice versa, deciding how many stops you want to do on the way. Then you can travel on your own pace.
Because of OpenTours, the vast majority of tourists in Vietnam are distributed to the few stops on the 1700km North-South axis:
Since the start of world tour exactly 11 months ago, I spent a total of 8,000 Euro.
Costs of living in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam were comparable at about 12 Euro per day. While you can live decadently in Cambodia for 12 Euro, you use up the money just for the basics in Vietnam.
The 166 USD Ladyboy Theft in Phnom Penh is easy to spot in the statistics. This stupidity has set me back about a week.
The 9,000 Euro will follow soon. A flight to America costs about 500 Euro…
The day before yesterday my cruise ship left Beijing to Vancouver. I haven’t been on board.
No cruisemate wanted to join me and double the ticket price of 2x 1065EUR for a 2-cabin was too high for me.
Plan B is a trans-Pacific passage on a sailing yacht and so far futile. My travel plans are in tatters.
going by plane is the easiest way to travel
But South America remains my next goal. After nearly 11 months in Asia, I am ready for a new continent. So I am getting ready to fly. The dream of not-flying is over again.
Before the jump across the pond, I want to get a running start in China and Japan. Japan attracts me most in the world of dragons and tigers. China was a highlight of the trip, together with Nepal and Thailand. six weeks of China were just a drop on the hot stone in the face of land area comparable with Europe.
Probably bike tourist Marcel will join me part of the way in China. He gave his bike to an orphanage last week and exchanged the saddle bags for a backpack.
For South America, I also have a new, old companion. My world tour partner Greg is back on track!
Let’s try again!
Bangkok has been my city highlight. Not even Kathmandu can keep up with the City of Angels. I yearn to return, ever since I left Bangkok.
Chiang Mai was nice, too. But I was thinking almost daily about an overnight drive back to Bangkok. In Chiang Mai there is simply nothing special. Still, I’ve stayed an incredible 3 weeks, at a 7 EUR bus ride price to Bangkok.
price for a bus ride to Bangkok in EUR
I haven’t liked Laos as much, and already the price of a bus ride went up to keep my longing for Bangkok in check. In Pakse, in southern Laos and in Cambodia the price of a bus ride came back to single digits. Promptly, these were more enjoyable places, so I stayed.
In Vietnam, my desire to go to Bangkok grew by almost an order of magnitude. The price of a bus trip to Bangkok matched up, because a Cambodian visa was added to the total cost. The more you move to the north in Vietnam, the more annoying people get. Of course, you can immediately deduce this from the price of a bus ride to Bangkok from Hanoi.
The Crazy House is famous for its unusual architecture.
You can explore it on intricate airways
with magnificent views over Đà Lạt.
It’s also worth a look inside.
and in the magic garden with a cafe.
Animals cavort
and visitors, too.
The Crazy House is being built since 1990.
The Crazy House has to be one of the most beautiful spots in the world. You can get lost for hours in the corridors and on paths with no right angles. Doing so, you explore a modern fairy tale house.
Hue, Th?a Thiên-Hu?, Vietnam 
