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I Meet the SouthEast

a travel blog by JohnJack_Crestani

I'm John "Jack" Crestani, and I'm a young college student on a low-budget backpacking semester around Asia. I'm here for a little fun, a lot of learning, and everything else in between, and hope I can make the ride a little interesting for the rest of yall as well. My trip starts with a life-sucking 2 day journey of long flights, layovers and awful airline food, until I reach Singapore the 13th, from which I will proceed all around mainland SE Asia. Feel free to leave comments or ask questions on any of my pictures/posts.

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City of the Soaring Dragon

Hanoi, Vietnam

Hanoi is the capital and also the largest city in northern Vietnam with 7 million people. Ruthlessly crowded with motorbikes, people and goods-for-sale along the tiny winding roads, my first impression was that this city was completely nuts. Coming from the jungles and mountains, I felt overwhelmed at first by the congestion, claustrophobia, and from crossing the street even in this super-dense city. Nor would it be considered a particularly pretty city; there aren't many parks and exhaust fumes tend to discolor most of the buildings, and the weather is gray cloudy most of the year.

Things are even CHEAPER in Hanoi though, than from the rest of the cities I have been in thus far! I am constantly amazed to see how cheap things are and am just surprised they can go lower than Bangkok or Chiang Mai. DVD's were only $1.75 and entire shows or sets of movies could be purchased for $5. Movies and TV shows are categorized completely differently than they would be in a Blockbuster or Best Buy back in America, they are organized by actor, director and show, not by genre. There are set compilations offering all movies by a certain actor such as Brad Pitt, or all the seasons of The Simpsons in a little box. And yes, they all work.

Our Pacific Discovery group also had the privilege of visiting both the 'Temple of Literature' and a prison used for the imprisonment of American's during the Vietnam War. The Temple of Literature was slightly interesting, it was Vietnams first university and founded almost 1000 years ago. A little band played ethnic Vietnamese music which made it worth it for my easily-bored self. The prison was more interesting, it housed John McCain during his time as a P.O.W. The walls and the cells looked haunting (pictures to come soon, bad internet here...) and the aura of the atrocious conditions made everyones mood very weary. The text along the walls explaining both the French treatment of Vietnamese prisoners and the Vietnamese treatment of American prisoners painted completely different stories, and was obviously mostly propaganda. I somehow doubt the Americans received 3 healthy meals a day and mostly played chess, basketball, and helped plant trees.

The Vietnamese tend to like Americans, and I have not encountered any situation during my time here to suggest otherwise. The population is mostly young and under 35, and American's were part of a long chain of attackers in the quest for a sovereign nation including France, Japan, and China. By the time we had come along, war was a very ingrained part of their world. Their war was not about communism, as we believed, but about independence and local rule. Ho Chi Minh simply chose communism because it provided the most distinct roadmap for economic, social, and political processes for the founding of an entirely new nation. The Vietnamese did not hold to any ideals other than a Vietnamese nation, communism was an easy path of action and nationalism to rally people under. The Communist experiment failed by the mid to late 80s in Vietnam, perhaps quickened by the West's embargo against the nation. It now seems to be a very capitalist society, allows foreign ownership of businesses, houses, etc, and actively courts foreign investment for factories. Its chief export is oil, and is the 3rd largest rice-exporter, just behind the US.

I will post more analysis of the situation here in my next post, when I am able to upload more pictures. I am currently in Saigon (in the south) and my next post will be from Cambodia. All the best!

The Lego House in Hanoi

People park their motorbikes on the sidewalk so most of the time you have to walk on the street.

A woman at the market wearing a funny t-shirt "Hunk if you (heart) my body!" They sell alot of t-shirts and jeans with misspelled words or meaningless English on them which usually turns out to be pretty funny.

A FOUR story KFC in Hanoi. Order on the first floor, recieve food on second, sit on 2, 3 or 4. Symbolically American food chains such as McDonald's or 7-11 haven't been allowed in Vietnam because of the war, although even these restrictions are starting to loosen as time goes by




permalink written by  JohnJack_Crestani on February 27, 2009 from Hanoi, Vietnam
from the travel blog: I Meet the SouthEast
tagged Temple, Vietnam, Hanoi, JackCrestani, Johncrestani, Prison and Johnmccain
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Motos and Models: Having Fun in Central Vietnam

Hoi An, Vietnam

After Hanoi and northern Vietnam, our Pacific Discovery group headed south to warmer waters in Hue and Hoi An. After a long bumpy overnight train ride from Hanoi, we finally ended up in beautiful Hue. A welcome change from the grit of Hanoi’s streets, Hue’s clear open sky, beautiful riverside parks (complete with ancient and modern sculptures), and less congested streets helped lighten everybody’s mood and help us relax. After a nice jog along the river and a little sight-seeing, I returned to the hotel for the afternoon ‘mystery activity’. It was a motorcycle tour of the city! 14 Americans riding around on motorscooters woohoo. And we were off.

We toured around two Buddhist temples, a monastery, an incense making area, French gun-turrets and a royal palace now tomb. Truly too many places to show pictures of here, though I chose to post up the picture of the sticks incense are made from to the left, and a picture of a Buddhist pagoda is shown at the top of this entry. Pagoda’s are built at some but not all Buddhist temples and are always seven stories high. The French turrets were quite interesting because they were a very new attraction, it had only been two years ago that they finished clearing the landmines from the site.
The turrets were used on ships of the Vietnamese traveling up the river back in the 50’s and 60’s. One theme was common among the separate sites; the endless rice paddies that stretched in between every one of them. Vietnam is one of the largest rice-producing nations and it shows. After Hue, we would travel another 3 hours across endless stretches of rice fields to the beach and resort town of Hoi An.

High fashion city meets beach town in Hoi An! Not their fashion, not the Italians fashion, but Your fashion. This small beach town has hundreds and hundreds of tailors and tailoring shops with every cotton, silk, linen and polyester known to man and its up to you to point to something you like in one of their catalogs, bring in your own picture of what you want, or just design it yourself. From suits($60) to shoes($20) to boardshorts($15), they make everything, and quick, usually a day maybe two with alterations. I personally got a silk pink/black dress shirt (for Vegas), baby blue silk shoes (also for Vegas), and some really cool boardshorts (not exactly for Vegas). I finally shaved off my 'Wolverine' facial hair, which may have helped me during the groups ‘fashion show’(complete with thumping Vietnamese music and judges...) I came away with the award Hoi An’s Next Top Model.

Enough about that though, Hoi An as an awesome beach town is much more interesting. From luminescent waters at night to some guy I watched herding buffalo by bike, it doesnt really get boring. The bike-herding was a peculiar sight I saw while sitting in a cafe having a drink, wasn’t able to snap a picture but yea, it was quite a shock for someone not used to seeing water buffalo being herded through a city. That night was another annual event, ‘guys night out’. Craig, Jeremy, Will, Colin and I ditched the ladies for a night of beer, pool, beef, and biking. Awesome times. And all this combined to have us end up late night on the beach. But not any beach. The waters at Hoi An possess a special type of plankton that lights up like a starry aura around you when you swim through it. The plankton react to movement so that when you swim in it, splash it, or move a part of your body through it, a thousand bright tiny stars immediately illuminate. Truly the most magical experience of my trip so far and one that I will never forget.

If there’s anyone who you recommend I add to my blog’s mailing list, or questions you have about the particulars of traveling/touring in SE Asia, please shoot me an email at Jack.Crestani@Gmail.com. Cheers!

Strike a smile, the winners of the fashion show

permalink written by  JohnJack_Crestani on March 6, 2009 from Hoi An, Vietnam
from the travel blog: I Meet the SouthEast
tagged Vietnam, Hue, Hoian, JackCrestani, Johncrestani and Pacificdiscovery
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Saigon is the Bomb

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam


Kids on a bridge

Saigon is the newest, richest, and most lively city in all of Vietnam, and has a lot of history with the US through the Vietnam War. (The government tried to change its name to Ho Chi Minh City but all the locals still call it Saigon.) From the old US Arny bases to the VietCongs Cu Chi Tunnels and the various museums concerning the war, the area sheds alot of history. The group and I visited the Cu Chi tunnels the first day in Saigon, which lie roughly 20 miles north of the city. This complex boobytrapped tunnel system spanned hundreds of kilometers and was an important base for the Viet-Cong (the bad guys).
I was amazed they had a base so close to the American HQ in Saigon, but I learned why. The tunnels were almost completely self-sufficient; the men only came up for a short time at night to empty their toilet pots. Even the smoke from their cooking was directed through a series of vents so that it would emerge far away from the tunnel, to protect from bombs. Even so, something like 25x more Viet-Cong died for every American that died there (1,000 something Americans KIA, 25,000 VC KIA). Shown to the left is an example of a tunnel system. The boobytraps were so hidden that the soldiers could only stay in their own tunnels simply because those were the only ones they knew where the traps were.

Saigon itself is a very modern city though Western food chains are just starting to come into the city (I'm DYING for a good hamburger...) There is everything a tourist would want, and loads of Viet businesses, banks, tall buildings, fast cars, and large developments. This is where all ambitious or poor Vietnamese looking for a job end up, and it shows. There are people everywhere trying to sell you things. I made a joke, you don't need to even go anywhere in Saigon, sellers walk up to you with anything and everything. Books, food, snacks, drinks, hookers, drugs, motorscooters, bracelets, clothes...and this was just after walking back from dinner!
Only one of those illegal offerings caught my eye though, and that was the $3 book catalogs they had! Vendors and bookstores would have little book catalogs with the front and back covers of popular books copied on a page, you would flip through, point to the one you wanted, and only pay $3. Its genius. And the currency they use is dollars(mostly), which makes budgeting 10x easier and gives a cool little peace of mind.

Interesting Fact #39: On almost all men aged 40 and above who have moles, they sport mole-hair a couple inches long and its quite unsettling. Asian men regard their facial moles with reverence and allow their mole hair grow to its full length. Its very weird.

After a nice stay in Saigon for two days, we were off for the Mekong Delta region to the south of Saigon. This area is incredibly populated with Vietnamese and also ethnic minorities because it contains the most productive land and consistant water supplies in the entire country. While many of the northern provinves are able to produce only one crop of rice each year, the Mekong Delta produces three. The entire area is flat, and either built or farmed out. We spent an entire day of biking through the region and the region is flat, dense, and completely built out with many houses with small farms with a large commercial boulevard here and there. Canals run along almost every single pathway. The transportation through the entire region is by small concrete and hard-dirt pathways, big enough for two motorscooters or bikes to pass each other, but not for a car.

After all the biking was through, we arrived at our beautiful homestay situated right over the river. We ate just as the sun was setting over the river and the big sky which was breathtaking, except for the insane, relentless mosquitos. Overall my experience of Vietnam was amazing, the country has much to offer tourists, at the right prices, and with a solid structure in place to serve any need, from local touring to world-class golfing. The people are very ambitious and the most forward-thinking and progressive I have come across, this is definately a country whose economy is sure to continue developing into the future. The population has put away the events of the past, mostly due to the population being born after the events, and the fact that American culture/society is the model they take after (though their progress resembles China). I would highly recommend both Hue and Hoi An as beautiful and cheap travel destinations for those looking to vacation, and a visit to Saigon for the experience of the museums and the big city.

I hope everybody is doing well, leave comments if you can, and feel free to contact me about anything! All the best.

permalink written by  JohnJack_Crestani on March 7, 2009 from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
from the travel blog: I Meet the SouthEast
tagged Vietnam, MekongDelta, Johncrestani, Saigon, Cuchitunnels, Vietcong and Americanjohn
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Small Town Takeo Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

On the road in Cambodia and I have no idea what to expect. Other than learning something about genocide and seeing a photo here and there of Angkor Wat, this land contains no prenotions for me to draw upon. I somehow guess that the people here will be unfriendly and hardened due to genocide. Boy was I wrong.

As our two vans pull into our homestay in Takeo, Siphen and her entire family receive us with big smiles and warmth. We wold stay the next three nights on mattresses in large rooms in her family complex. Cambodians are a very family oriented people, and tend to all live together in close groupings of buildings or a large house with the rest of their sisters, husband, parents, etc. Upon marrying, men are expected to move into their wives house. The women do much work around the house and taking care of their parents that it would be very hard for it to be done any other way. Another interesting thing about the family is that they have a big pond (pictured left) that is actually the result of a B52 bomb crater that destroyed their old house 30 years ago. And reluctantly for us their were no hard feelings.

We visited the local Takeo county high school the next morning and helped the kids practice English and to give them something out of the ordinary. It was alot of fun, we made the kids really nervous and many of them were shy to begin with, but many genuinely wanted to learn English, it is seen as the way up in these Asian societies. Another parallel is that in all the countries we have visited, the elementary, and high school systems are set up the same way as the US; a child goes to middle school with the same kids, then goes to a larger general high school with kids from further away, then college. From conversations with various Europeans, I guess it isn't that way in their countries, after 16 they transfer to a more specialized school then gap years, mentorships or attend college.

The one other person staying at our homestay was a very friendly American named Derek who worked for the Peace Corps in Takeo. Among other duties, he had taken a side-project in his spare time to train and coach a girls basketball team at the high school we were visiting. Basketball is just catching on in Cambodia so having an American coach gave the team a great edge. We got to watch one of their games and MAN, are these girls aggressive! The refs dont really call fouls and in 3 instances a girl fight almost broke out after an elbow or a trip. Derek's team ended up winning 48-2 so no wonder the girls were getting a little mad.

The next days were spend lazing around the homestay, helping build a house (kindof) and visiting a Cambodian non-profit elementary school. After this sweet homestay in the Cambodian country, we headed west to Phnom Penh, the economic and social capital of Cambodia.

permalink written by  JohnJack_Crestani on March 12, 2009 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: I Meet the SouthEast
tagged Cambodia, Takeo, Siphenmeas and HighSchool
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Genocides, Non-Profit Radio Drama and Dumps, Oh My!

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

What do these three things have in common? Our Pacific Discovery group experienced them all in Phnom Penh! Phnom Penh is a city separated by a large gap with riches, development, and corporate jobs in one corner, and with entrenched, dump-diving, amputated poverty in the other. But in the space between exists a vast amount of wonderful, inspiring, and driven non-profit NGO's that are committed to helping solve to complex hurdle of poverty that so many in this country are subjected to. During our stay in Phnom Penh, we visited quite a few NGO's (Non-Governmental Organisations which basically means non-profit orgs). Non-profits have been a staple of our trip in Cambodia, as it is the poorest country that we will have visited on the trip. We would visit the Toul Sleng Prison to learn about the genocide that went on during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, Equal Access to learn about marketing messages and educating young Cambodians, and to KDFO a school for impoverished children who live in a dump (literally).

The Toul Sleng Prison used to be the main prison of the Khmer Rouge in their genocide of the educated and the weak back in the 70's. By the bloodstains, scratches and inhumane conditions unmodified from that time, it shows. Its still on the walls!!! The prison really goes for the shock factor and pictures (such as to the left) of skulls and cases of human bones make their point. After seeing all the nitty gritty of Toul Sleng, I (and many others) decided that we didn't even need to go see the actual 'killing fields' because it was just more of the same, only they actually made full sculptures and stuff out of the human skulls there. Point made, alot of people died. What wasn't as clear though was who, when, why, how concerning all the killing. From what I gathered, Communist Khmer Rouge initially focused on killing all the city-dwellers (the emptied Phnom Penh) and the educated, but sort of moved on to killing anyone, even people in their own faction. 15% of their entire population to be exact. So it was chaos. Yet most people in Cambodia don't even know much about it. This is because they were born after 79 when the communist Khmer were overthrown. It has created a big generational gap in their society.

Creating awareness and helping educate kids is were Equal Access, the NGO we visited the next day, comes in. Non-profit radio drama for sure, we got to go into the studio they use to create their radio educational programs and do our own radio drama! The messages the skits carried were...use government recognized programs if your going out of the country for work (directed towards women so thy dont get trafficked into the sex industry), and use a condom so you don't get AIDS(directed at young guys who like to party or think they're too cool). This was the most organized NGO (I thought) we had visited thus far; the difficulties of getting modern messages out to most of the (mostly rural) Cambodians is not an easy task. They explained how they managed to do that to us, the politics of working with radio stations, government censorship, the impact of their programs, and the various other ways they seek to inform Cambodians about the Khmer Rouge, sex, safety, etc. They presented their material as in a very professional yet hands-on manner, as if we were potential investors, and as a future businessman myself, this approach worked. Their website is EqualAccess.org.

The last thing our group did in Cambodia was visit a dump and take kids who went to the dump-school out for a nice day. The conditions at the dump were appalling, and the fact that people live/work there is even crazier. It looked like a scene out of Mad Max in this dump, all the bedraggled people sifting through garbage, clamoring after each new garbage truck that enters to pick-up the most aluminum cans, plastic bottles or cardboard. The people that make the most money pickuing up trash are the guys who have the most kids not in school. Very low life-spans at these dump camps too. After a walk through the dump, we went to a school at the edge of the dump called KDFO Children (I have no idea what it stands for) and took some of the kids out for some real culture, not their trash.
We went to a very nice play complete with backlit cutouts, a ladyboy actors, a small Cambodian music ensemble, and some wonderful actors. The play was of some famous Cambodian mythology and, although performed in Cambodian, its plot consisted of some fued between the king of the monkeys (a man) and the king of the Tigers, complete with a romance subplot. The kids enjoyed this, and the subsequent play workshop immensely, and it feels wonderful to have helped these children have a unique experience and expose them to some 1st-worlders despite their awful circumstances.

All in all, experiencing the 3rd-world in such a full on way has been a complete culture shock, and I am still trying to fully grasp my head around questions and answers of extreme poverty. Through our Pacific Discovery groups visits to various NGO's including Equal Access, Friends Restaurant (+vocational education, job training), and KDFO Children, I am happy to see that there are many motivated individuals out there figuring out solutions, and managing to make an impact despite the wide gaps of culture and communication that lie between us. Hope everyone is well!


(The city center Paragon)

permalink written by  JohnJack_Crestani on March 13, 2009 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: I Meet the SouthEast
tagged Cambodia, Johncrestani, Pacificdiscovery, Phnompenh, Equalaccess and Ngo
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