Tokyo Street Performer

A few notes about this video:
1) We have no idea what he's saying.
2) The little green thing on the ground at camera left is a Godzilla figurine. We watched him attempt this stunt and fail, after which he knelt next to the toy and either pleaded to it for help or blamed it for his failure.
3) It was really, really cold to be wearing skimpy spandex. ~50 F at the hottest.
4) As far as I can tell he did not attempt to collect any money for his performance. Presumably this is just how he likes to spend his Saturdays.

Who's the Boss?

US celebrities are often lured to Japan for product endorsements by lucrative contracts and the promise that their ads will never make it back to the US. My own governor has been involved in such affairs. We've been keeping our eyes out for more fun cameos, and though we don't have any Arnie sightings (so far), there is a cool canned-coffee ad campaign that has Tommy Lee Jones looking really tired.

More Intensity!

In case you're curious, hot coffee from a vending machine tastes just as bad as it sounds. Maybe that's why Tommy looks so sleepy. Anyhow, with the above ad campaign in mind, there was a certain bathing product we spotted in Vietnam that takes on a bit more meaning:

"Nothing cures my freaky mutant stench like X-Men"

Are the Vietnamese campaigning for a Tommy Lee Jones role in a superhero movie? Or maybe they just know something we don't.

Leaked movie still or bootleg fan mash-up? Only time will tell.

Kawaii Means Cute

We all know that Japan has adorable signage. Case in point:


However, Ian and I were surprised and delighted to discover that this attention cuteness extends to manholes as well:

Only in Japan!

More Dog Poop, and Farang's First "Grand Caption Tournament"

At Farang HQ we employ sophisticated polling and tracking to find out what plays well with our many dedicated readers. There's been a steadily growing clamor for more coverage of canine feces, and you can bet we've heard it. Also, please stop sending pictures.

Without further ado, here's a fun dog poop sign from Okayama, Japan. Scatophiles eat your heart out.

You may have noticed this picture is missing the usual snarky caption. In the first ever Farang sponsored "Grand Caption Tournament," we're inviting our readers to submit their own captions via the comments field. At the end of three days time we'll vote on our favorite caption, and the winner will get a special prize.

Nagoya

After our first night's stay in Tokyo, we began our journey southward toward Matsue. On the way, we stopped in Nagoya for a couple of days to break up the long trek. We were fortunate to find a place to stay through Couchsurfing, and our host, Paul, was fantastic. He had a really comfortable apartment and he went out of his way to make sure we were comfortable. He made us fruit shakes, lent us bicycles, and helped us navigate the Japanese baseball ticket vending machines. He also took us to a great kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurant and introduced us to his friends. Basically, Paul is the man and he is always welcome to stay with us.

Our guidebook described Nagoya as "industrial" and it was, but in the way that a really well-manicured corporate park is industrial. There was a lot of sculpture in public spaces, and some of the city's architecture was really visionary. We especially enjoyed our visit to the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, where we explored the permanent collection as well as a gallery that displayed the works of students from the local university. Some of the students produced really far-out stuff. The future of contemporary art is looking bright in Japan! (Question: is "the future of contemporary art" an oxymoron? Wikipedia claims contemporary art can be defined as art produced since WWII, which future art would qualify as....thoughts?)

Mmmm...tuna rolls. This photo actually makes the sushi restaurant look a lot sadder than it was. The place was huge and there was a tremendous selection. New sushi plates disappeared from the belt almost instantly.

Very cool architecture at the Oasis 21 shopping center.

Driftwood wizard at the Aichi Museum.

Giant inflatable bird designed for outdoor installation.

Wrapping up Vietnam

We probably have enough Vietnam material to keep posting for the next two months, but we've already been in Japan for almost two weeks. It's time to wrap up Vietnam and move on to more up-to-date posts. Here's a photographic overview of our last couple of weeks in Vietnam.

Hue offered beautiful countryside and lots of historic buildings and temples. In one day of sightseeing we took a taxi, cyclo, moto, and boat. Many tourists skip Hue in their Vietnam tour, but we'd highly recommend a stop. Here's a building from an Emperor's estate:


You've already heard Charlie talk a little about Hanoi. There was a lot of traffic and noise, but we did take a scenic day trip outside the city with Richard and Debbie. Also, we found one thing that made Hanoi tolerable:

Fanny's ice cream was hands-down the best ice cream we've had since we left our dear Bi-Rite in San Francisco. We were here every day.

The parts of Vietnam that aren't overrun with motos are really pretty.

Beautiful people in a beautiful place :)

Of course, we also took a trip to Halong Bay. Halong Bay has a lot in common with Phang Nga in Thailand, but has many more karsts and is widely considered to be more magnificent. Unfortunately, we had terrible weather during our visit and didn't get to experience the scenery quite like we wanted to. Still, the mists and grey skies provided a quiet, eerie atmosphere that was quite spectacular in its own way.

Our trip to Halong Bay included an overnight stay on this private island. After spending several hours on the boat deck in the wind and rain, we were thrilled to discover that our room was equipped with an electric blanket. This island was beautiful and we would have loved to spend more time here had it been sunny.

We left Vietnam a bit disappointed with Hanoi and some of our experiences in the north. However, we loved everything we saw in southern Vietnam and in the highlands. It's definitely a place that will see a lot of change in the next ten years, so get there before everyone else does. I miss pho already.

Thank you for the new hat!

Hello it is me charlie, i have missed you very much. I know i have taken lots of time to write this, i hope you are not angry with me. I am doing the best that i can and i try to type really hard and loudly and also i can jump eight inches off the ground even when i am standing still!

I have been in vietnam, home of the vietnamese. Tiara and ian went to see uncle ho here but told me that i could not come see him because he is dead. Where i come from we are taught not to call our uncles things like 'ho' and also not to visit them when they are dead but it is a different country and we have different traditions. I did see some dead people in a cave at marble mountain. They might have been fake though because i rode a lizard that was eating a dead body but the lizard hardly moved at all. Oh no, what if the the lizard was dead too?! It was all really scary and i was so afraid and i could not stop smiling (it is a nervous scared thing that i do!)!

Wheeeeeee!!!

After the cave we went outside and it was sunnier and less full of scary things. There was a lot of wind and i almost fell out of the stone tree twice. Ian said that i could have been hurt and i was lucky to have "dodged the draft," so i told him that this is not a funny joke because vietnam had a war and it was very serious. People died in vietnam, ian. People died.

Charlie's in the trees

I also almost died a lot of times because there are speedy, speedy motorcycles all around. They are different from normal motorcycles because they are noisier and everywhere. I will pretend to be a motorcycle to help you understand:
*Vrooooom*, *vroom*
*Beep*, *beep*
*Drive on sidewalk*, *drive on sidewalk*
Okay i think you get it. Also i have a picture:

The cars are not usually this blurry unless you are very sleepy because you stayed up all night counting M&Ms

Sometimes when it gets too busy i like to lie down and listen to my monk friends and they chant and help me fall asleep. Before you get excited i should let you know that the monks are actually people and not monkeys and they don't even have tails even though i think i did see one eat a banana once.

If you look close you can see that he does not have big ears or toes that can grab on to branches or peanuts

Okay bye!

The Burgeoning White Supremacy Anime Industry

Japanese Animation ("Anime") is one of Japan's most famous exports. For every award-winning family-friendly movie like Studio Ghibli's "Spirited Away," there are a number of less savory titles that the Japanese animation houses wisely choose not to dub into English. For example, both "My Wife is a High School Girl" and "My Balls" show up on a Google search for "offensive anime title."

As Tiara and I discovered, in Japan both the nice anime and screwed up morally hazardous anime generate product spinoffs. Offerings range from children's sneakers to action figures to the ubiquitous cell-phone strap charms. It is the last two categories that has spawned some really inappropriate products. We were first unsettled by little plastic school girls garbed in skin-tight cat-suits and mini-skirts, but these proved comparatively mild once we found a store selling luridly posed stark naked and anatomically impossible figurines. Yet none of these items seemed quite so oblivious and/or downright offensive as a charm we found in the children's section. Behold:

Umm, Trick or Treat?

Super Robo Crab

Spotted in Nagoya:

I, for one, welcome our new mecha-crustacean overlords.

Shit Pipe

Nah Trang is a town with a big beach and a lot of tourists. There's some speculation about where exactly the waste from all the high-rise hotels ends up. After all, it's not like Vietnam really has much in the way of infrastructure. Tiara and I did a little investigative research, and think we found the answer. Be thankful that Smell-O-Vision never made its way to the internet.

Don't drink the water.

In case there is any confusion, this goes straight to the ocean, via a short offal stream. There is a local seafood restaurant about 20 feet to the right of this shot. We did not eat there.

Vietnamiese Silk Weaving Machine

We saw this in a factory outside Dalat. It is "oldskool."

Pigcycle

I took this from our shuttle on the way from the Hanoi airport. The driver went for extra style points by seating two people and the pig on the bike.

Q: What's white and red and goes 50 miles an hour?

Special behind the scenes bonus feature - rejected alternate captions:
1) I haven't seen this fat a pig on a motorcycle since the last time I was pulled by the CHP.
2) The Vietnamese take the idea of "fast food" very literally.
3) A traditional Vietnamese CO2 BBQ

Wastebaskets of Vietnam: Penguin

Hoi An

Before arriving, we'd heard numerous comparisons between Hoi An and Luang Prabang, which was our favorite place in Laos and, after Hong Kong, the best town we've stayed in on this whole trip. Needless to say, a comparison to Luang Prabang gets us excited. Hoi An was certainly charming, but it was not the quiet and mellow Vietnamese equivalent of our favorite Lao spot. Hoi An is buzzing with tourists and is crammed with tailor shops. After two nights staying in the main tourist center of town, we moved across the river to enjoy a more peaceful atmosphere and nice views. From our new location, we were able to go to our favorite restaurant, the Cargo Club, without being harassed by moto drivers.

One of the main reasons people come to Hoi An is to get tailor-made clothes. We tried to get a few pieces made, but aside from a fabulous coat which I will be wearing daily this winter, most of our pieces came out a little ill-fitting. It took one tailor five fittings to make me a pair of pants that were anywhere close to my size. She took out her frustration by blaming my "big thighs," which led me to three concurrent thoughts:

1) Not true. At 5'0" and 103 lbs, I'm pretty much the tiniest an American adult can be without qualifying for a handicap parking sticker.
2) This is not a good way to make friends.
3) Aren't you supposed to be a tailor...making clothes that fit people's bodies?

Ian's experience wasn't any better (apparently his shoulders are "uneven," making it absolutely impossible to make his sleeves fit correctly), so we were left a little disenchanted.

We did take a nice day trip to the beach, and our Cargo Club croissants and desserts were always on hand to make us happy to be in Hoi An.

Charming riverfront restaurants.

The Japanese Covered Bridge, as seen in some movie with Michael Caine (yay!) and Brendan Fraser (nooo!).

Very pretty little beach near Hoi An.

Sunset on the river.

One of the river's many floating lanterns.

The Vietnamese will carry just about anything on the back of a motorbike.

Around Dalat

One day during our stay in Dalat we rented a van with Richard and Debbie and another couple they had met. We spent the day visiting nearby waterfalls and other countryside attractions, such as a greenhouse and a silk factory. We really loved the scenery around Dalat and found this attractions to be surprisingly not touristy. Like the sand dunes and fairy spring in Mui Ne, the Dalat waterfalls showed us that Vietnam scenery is a lot more varied than we realized. We knew the coast and Ha Long Bay would be beautiful, but there's a lot more to see in Vietnam than that!

Loom in the silk factory. These things made great clanking noises and had a sort of steam punk aesthetic going on.

Awesome waterfall #1 (Ian and I stopped reading our travel guide once Richard and Debbie came along and did all the reading for us, so we don't know the names of any attractions anymore).

Very, VERY happy Buddha at awesome waterfall #1.

Awesome waterfall #2, also known as awesomest waterfall, as it was the best of the three we saw this day.

Looks like someone got a $3 haircut!

More of the awesomest waterfall.

No visit to the Dalat countryside is complete without a trip to the Chicken Village, famous for this statue and nothing else.

Bangkok Layover

We are currently in Bangkok for a 16 hour layover between Hanoi and Tokyo. Returning to Bangkok today felt like coming home. After traveling in Cambodia and Vietnam we realize how easy everything is in Thailand, and we have a much greater appreciation for everything from the street food and cheap prices to the ubiquitous 7-11s and pharmacies. We have a hotel room for the night and we were able to stock up on shampoo, contact solution, ibuprofen, etc. at the pharmacy nearby. We also visited one of the four 7-11s within 10-minute walking distance from our hotel and got some of our favorite Thai snacks.

The next few days will be crazy for us as we will be flying to Japan, sleeping on various nice people's couches, and booking it from Tokyo to Nagoya to Matsue. Once in Matsue, our pace will settle down and we'll spend about two and a half weeks in Western Honshu and Shikoku before meeting up with my parents for two weeks in the Kansai region. Because the Japan blogs will be slow in coming, I'm scheduling some posts to cover the rest of our Vietnam trip. Charlie is working hard to get us back up to date!

Crazy House

Sarah Hluchan, this post is for you. We could definitely see you doing this sort of thing with your houseboat.

The crazy house is one of Dalat's main attractions - the home of a Vietnamese artist with a taste for plaster and Alice in Wonderland-inspired architecture. You can actually stay overnight at the Crazy House, but I guess you'd have to deal with tourists outside your room all day. This place is hard to describe...let's just say it was incredibly kooky and far from understated. Narrow bridges connect plaster-enclosed buildings with fake trees and stalactites built into the structures. Each room has a theme, and there is a central "garden" of overgrown trees and winding pathways. Pictures are better than words here:

Main entrance.

The garden.

A man who didn't seem to work here offered to take our picture in the kangaroo room for free. The kangaroo's eyes are actually red light bulbs...creepy. The photographer gave Ian this red mesh vest to wear for the photo. Why? We have no idea.

Ian, taking his place at the head of the dining room table.

We Liked Dalat a Lot

Now that Ian and I have reached the end of our six weeks in Vietnam we are thinking back to where we wish we had spent more time. One of those places is Dalat, a smallish town located in the central highlands. Dalat's cooler climate, kitschy attractions, and proximity to the country's primary produce and wine-producing region makes it a prime location for honeymooning Vietnamese. It definitely holds a special charm - sort of like a European mountain town with charming architecture, cobblestone streets, sidewalk cafes, and open-air markets selling really weird Southeast Asian ingredients.

Anyone care for a chicken head?

Two things made our stay in Dalat special:

1) We stayed at the best hotel we've been to on this whole Southeast Asia trip: Dreams Hotel. Our room at Dreams had hardwood floors, a super comfy bed, fresh flowers, no moldy smell, and a shower with eight different nozzles. Additionally, there was a jacuzzi and a sauna on the top floor free for our use. The room included breakfast, which consisted of a huge spread of fruit (I love mangos!), baguettes, meats, yogurt, eggs, passionfruit juice, tea, and all sorts of condiments. One morning some Australians showed us the correct way to use Vegemite so it doesn't taste so terrible (the secret: use very litttle!). We loved our breakfast, our room, and the lovely family who ran the hotel. This was by far the best value hotel we've seen for $20.

2) Produce. Dalat is known for having good produce generally, but is especially recognized for its wine and strawberries. Now, strawberries and I have a special history, and like a moth to a flame, I beelined to the first strawberry stand I saw and purchased a half kilo. Sadly, I had only washed and eaten a handful of them before experiencing the ill effects of consuming fresh Vietnamese produce, but I definitely don't regret eating the few that I had. I miss clean, organic California fruit....

Dalat's central market.

Dalat is also where we spent Valentines Day and where Ian found out he was accepted to Berkeley for grad school. All in all, it's a pretty great place!

Some photos from our day swanboating on the lake with Richard and Debbie:

So peaceful compared to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

Richard strangling his swan. Not sure what it did to piss him off.

With swan boats, nice trees, and horse-drawn carriages, Dalat is all set up for honeymooners.