im in vietnam, and for the most part, i love it! it is hotter than the devil here, but i think im starting to get used to it a little more. we are staying at a really nice business class hotel, which is pretty much the one of the tallest buildings in hanoi. there is nothing here. which is weird, because its a huge city, and there are certainly a lot of buildings, a lot of people, and even more motorbikes, but no mcdonalds, no seven eleven, and no starbucks. we have been spoiled up until now. they havent even heard of mcdonalds here. but even though life has been a little rustic, and my mini bar food is pretty much keeping me alive right now, hanoi is great.

yesterday was by far my favorite day of the summer so far. we went on morotbikes out into the country to the village of one of wesleys friends. it was about a two hour ride out of the city into the country, and it was soooo awesome. of course we werent driving, we each had a driver and we rode on the back. it was a little scary at first. traffic is insane by our standards, but for them it is easy to handle. stop signs and red lights are more of a suggestion here then a law. motorbikes just weave in and out of traffic. wesley described it as a dance, which is true. you could literally cross a street with your eyes closed and you would not get hit. its amazing.

the village we went to was great. wesleys friend, tien, took us to his parents house where they welcomed all of us in and gave us drinks. then he took us to a local temple and we walked around the village. all these kids were following us, we gave them candy and took pictures with them. all the villagers came out of their houses to wave at us. i felt like we were celebrities. we stopped at a little resturant where most of us just ate the fruit and snacks that we brought with us, but a few of the guys went with some of the drivers and ate dog. more on dog eating around here later. but anyway, it was a lovely day. i will say that vietnamese men are kinda creepy and i (and the rest of the girls) got hit on way too much for my liking yesterday, but whatever. boys will be boys i guess.

internets almost up. more later.

Malaysia...Truly Asia

Malaysia was very interesting, I really enjoyed it. It is the only Muslim country we will visit this summer, which I never even knew it was Muslim. It basically is 3 different countries all living on one place. The Malays, Chinese and Indians. They all keep their own customs, have their own schools, and generally don’t hang out together. But somehow despite all this segregation they get along quite well. At least on the surface. Apparently this is a result of the controlling democratic government (oxymoron?) who makes sure to keep tensions down by restricting free speech. Doesn’t make sense to me, but apparently its still considered a democracy. The big question is, can you have a democracy without free speech? According to Malaysia you can. I would tend to say no.

Singapore has been interesting for the same reasons. The laws are so strict here it seems to us Americans that the people’s rights are being restricted, but they don’t see it that way. No chewing gum, no guns, there’s a fine for just about everything. I guess its all a tradeoff. If you want a society virtually without crime, you have to give up some freedoms to get it. It would never work in the US.

The food was awesome in Malaysia. I had some of the best fruit I’ve ever had in my life. Mangosteen. Delicious! I tried durian; the smelly fruit. It wasn’t good. Overall I really liked Malaysia. It was very different from everywhere else we have been.

Singapore to be honest is kind of lame. It would be a lovely place to live; very western. But I feel like i've already seen this. It’s like the states, or like Hong Kong. I don’t feel like i’ve gotten anything out of being here, whereas with all the other countries so far, whether I liked them or not, I learned something from them.

That’s all for now. Off to Vietnam in the morning. As Wesley told us today, we are now leaving the 1st world, and that’s pretty scary. Aside from Beijing, we haven’t had to deal with too much crazy stuff yet, but that’s about to change. Good thing I bought two boxes of granola bars today at the grocery store. I went to borders today and was looking at some books about the Vietnam War. This is going to be very interesting/depressing/moving. Apparently internet is super expensive there so don’t expect to hear from me for awhile.

hong kong

grettings from kuala lumpur! im chillin in the lobby of my hotel with a lovely view of the petronus towers out the window, (those towers from the classic sean connery/catherine zeta jones film, the entrapment) it is soooo hot here! if you spend too much time outside, you feel like you are gonna melt. but at least its sunny, which is a step up from the non stop bad weather in hong kong.

lets pick up where i left off last time:

hong kong: sooo pretty, if only the weather had been better, im sure our free time would have been spent at the beach. Instead we tried to stick to indoor activities. We went to the history museum, which was very interesting to learn about the history of Hong Kong and its transition to and from British rule. Another day we went to the art museum which had a Mark Rothke exhibit from washington dc, as well as a tons of chinese art. we had two company visits there. the 1st was with Brown Forman, the makers of Jack Daniels, among other beverages. i enjoyed it because he focused a lot on marketing strategy, which i find to be fascinating when dealing with such diverse markets. the 2nd speaker was a senior executive with HSBC, it was a good presentation, but very much finance oriented and very much over my head. i havent taken finance yet, so most ofthe time i had no clue what he was talking about. Other than that we spend time wandering around town, seeking out american food (we found a TGIFridays, soo yummy. i miss america), trying some local cuisine, and seeing someother sights, like the nightly light show on the waterfront, and the avenue of stars where we saw the handprints of jackie chan, jet li, and bruce lee. good times all around. I like hong kong, and i could definatly live there one day. We never made it to disneyland though. so sad.

KL update later. naptime.