Happy New Year!

It's a new year in Vietnam and today I shall eat myself into a week long coma. 

Hope everyone is safe and your bellies all full :)

Southern comfort

white sand dunes in Mui Ne, Vietnam

I always hate being that girl taking millions of pictures of landscapes and fruit trees, but when you're in a place as beautiful as the south of Vietnam, it's kinda hard not to be a scenery whore.

Fairy Springs

When people think about Vietnam, they usually think about the war and horrible traffic and dense jungles, but there are many unique microenvironments that really make this country special. Mui Ne, for example, is pretty much the Las Vegas strip of south Vietnam, full of Russian tourists and crowded resorts, but on the outskirts you can find really out-there places like this.

Renting a motorbike is by far the best way to see the country. Driving along a coastal highway at sunrise doesn't get much better.

Vietnamese people hard at work at like 4 in the morning lol

Sand sledding: fun on the way down, terrible going back up

WeeeeeEEE!!!

Mandatory

So we came across some guy who offered to let us ride his ostrich for a dollar....UH FUCK YES?

It feels just as ridiculous as it looks

Phan Thiet is a fishing town where you can get super fresh seafood from boats like these

Not sure how these rock formations came to be...maybe from the red sand dunes slowly eroding over time?

Mui Ne beach

Cu Chi is a town about an hour west of Saigon. During the war, guerrilla soldiers dug intricate underground tunnels here that have been preserved for tourists to crawl through. Fat Americans started coming, and now they've expanded the tunnels so everyone can fit

I had to do it

Waiting for the public transportation

Vung Tau is the beach hangout for people from Saigon to go for a weekend getaway. The coastline isn't as nice as Mui Ne, but the local hospitality is so much better. You can chill on the beach and have people bring beers, grilled squid, fruits, and pretty much whatever your heart desires for just a few bucks

This is the world's biggest Jesus statue. It's even bigger than the famous one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil...which I found pretty hard to believe.

In true Vietnamese tradition, they made the Jesus hollow so you can climb it

We also took a 2 hour excursion to the Mekong Delta, where the famous floating markets can be found selling fruits and  handcrafts and lord knows what else. They even let us ride these sketchy looking boats back upstream.

Fish sauce (nuoc mam) factory. It smelled like dead rats basting in salt.

The fishies get put into this huge wooden vat and stew in salt for days or months. Vietnamese people do not fuck around when it comes to fish sauce.  If you've ever been to a vietnamese person's house, they flip shits when there's no more fish sauce. No dish can be made, no meals can be served, no one can be fucking happy when there is no fish sauce. The only thing you can do is to sit and think about how terrible it is that we've run out of fish sauce, and sit around and blame each other for having eaten too much of it, and shaking your head yelling that you already went to get it the last time it ran out

Rice paper to make derishous spring rolls

I don't know the english word for this fruit, but I loves these!

All for now :)

Done and done!

Miami beach, Florida

Awaiting a 20 hour flight back to the motherland *sigh* Last time I was on one of these, the fat man in the seat in front of me leaned all the way back, heard it click, greedily thumped and pounded it to go back even further, and nearly broke the chair. Needless to say, he was basically sitting in my lap with my lips nearly caressing his balding head, and we were pretty much lovers for the rest of the flight.

Didn't get to sight-see in LA or Miami, but I've been to both places before so I'm not gonna cry a river over it. Can't wait to get back to good ole' nam nam nam :)

San Francisco

San Francisco has about as much visibility as Stevie Wonder. I couldn't see a flying fuck until about past noon when the sun finally came out past the horizon. As you can see from the pic, bay area is pretty foggy! Locals told me today was probably one of the clearer days....sweet zombie Jesus how do these people see!?


(on the sides of the Golden Gate Bridge are little blue crisis hotlines for people to call (last minute?) in case they come to the bridge and commit suicide...which happens pretty frequently. Heard a story about a dude who jumped at the wrong angle and didn't die and is now just paralyzed for the rest of his life. Sad.)

SF is really pretty. A bit too pretty. It's kind of like how you never wanna be around your hot cousin even though she's a really sweet girl. I felt out of place most of the time. Even the sketchy places were nicer than ClayCo.

Another thing that is no bueno about SF is how HILLY it is. I am about as out of shape as a paraplegic, so walking up 90-degree concrete hills is about as much fun as hang-gliding into a volcano. You can't tell from the pic, but some streets literally drop off into the abyss when you look over the edge.

Cable cars and trolleys make traversing the hills of SF fun :D :D :( :(

SF is rich in arts, poetry, and music...if you're into that sorta thing. There's a bunch of artsy hipster types that live in these parts

Mmmmk

The SF Chinatown is bigger than most of the other ones in the US...lotsa people who don't speak English makes for lotsa good dim sum

My favorite thing about SF are the houses. The city is very rich in culture and obsessed with all things Victorian, so the houses embody this grandiose feeling. You gotta be pretty baller to live here though....I think something similar to this one is on sale for 5 million-ish...

More pretty houses! They have color consultants for homeowners in SF who take their job very serially. "Painted Ladies" are houses with 3 or more colors.

Recognize this...?

It's the Mrs. Doubtfire house! My mom loves that movie. I think people live here too. Wonder if they're trannies.

Painted Ladies homes from that show Full House. Seriously brought back a flood of memories from childhood in a part of my brain I didn't even know existed.

Saw this on one of the buildings. Can anyone tell me wtf these statues are doing? This homeless guy told me "it's bitches cryin' cuz there ain't no straight men in San Frisco"

Tons of rich folk live in the hills of SF...millionaires, celebrities, even billionaires...

Rich people out on the bay

Luckily, I made some friends with the locals and got to go out to Muir Woods and see the famous redwoods. Wow, they were gorgeous and so, so tall. Pictures don't do it justice...the richness of the bark, dampness of the forest floor, and lushness of the vegetation is just something to be experienced.

Camwhoring in the park XD

What would a trip to the Bay Area be without some good seafood? Sausalito is a cute little sleepy town (full of rich people nevertheless) that's right on the coast. I met someone who lived on a fishing boat and he helps run a restaurant that serves fresh delicious fish 'n chips :)

Not as good as ATL wings, but they try

In Chinatown, there's a fortune cookie "factory" where this family has been hand-making fortune cookies for God knows how long. He puts in the batter in the machine which flattens it, then he has to take the chip out before it cools and molds it into the vagina shape, all the while getting the little fortune in there.

Pre-cookie cookie

Who would even buy this much fortune cookies...

Alcatraz is the infamous prison about a mile from the SF peninsula where the real fuck-ups from mainland prison get locked up. I watched Unsolved Mysteries and some people supposedly tried to escape by swimming to shore...but they never found the body so who knows what the hell happen....wonder if it's haunted O_o

End :)