From Rats to Roaches

It’s amazing how after having a rodent infested hotel room with rats eating the majority of your food while traveling in a part of Vietnam where the cuisine makes you want to gag can make a cockroach laden bathroom seem OK.

I was feeling really confident about the hotel tonight - especially being on the 4^th floor (surely rats wouldn’t come up this far?)  Took a shower (no hot water here, but to be fair, they don’t advertise it like the hotel last night) and washed away the mud.  Then went to a normal (Halleluiah!) dinner and even got to drink 2 diet pepsi’s (!!!!!!!!!)

When I came back from dinner and found cockroaches in my bathroom, I laughed.  I mean really!  I went next door to ask my new friend Patrick if I should get a different room.  He came and checked the bathroom – yup, cockroaches confirmed!  Patrick told me not to worry, unlike rats they carry no diseases and will stay in the bathroom where it is moist.  But he advised me to always wear my sandals (like I would take them off?!?!) otherwise I might crunch one.  I asked – do you guys have cockroaches?  He looked at me with disgust – God no! 

I learned something today when visiting a Buddhist temple about the circle of life and how good things come to people who have had a string of bad luck.  It’s my time Buddha.

It was a tough day and we even had to quit early because we were so slow on this terrain.  The ride was technical and it took a lot of mental willpower to get through all the muck and mud and rocks and potholes.   I didn’t get into a fight with Buddy #2, but I did tell him to get his shit together a time or two.   I certainly wasn’t humming any tunes about My Buddy and Me enjoying each other’s company.  But I never fell down and for that I am thankful.  There were several spills today and one ubber dramatic emotional melt down from a tired and cranky lawyer to end what could be one of the longest days of my life.  Side note:  Tomorrow is supposed to be longer.

I’ve mentioned that I am struggling a bit with enjoying some of my fellow cyclist’s company.  There are some fabulous people – Patrick and his boyfriend Dirk being two of them.  They have great attitudes, are laughing and joking all the time and are trying their best to teach me Dutch (Cockroach is Kakkerlak!).   Then there are others.  Take Jane for instance (I have changed her name to protect her identity.)  I’ve been searching my brain to come up with the right word to describe Jane, but I don’t think there is one.  The best comparison I can think of is that character Milton in Office Space who was obsessed with his red stapler, except she talks a lot more.    And when she speaks in English, I want to grab her by the shoulders, look her dead in the eyes, and beg her to speak any other language.  Dutch, Belgian, French, Farsi – I don’t really care.  Just please, Jane, never, ever speak my language again because it makes me want to say things to you that are really not nice.  But then Jane was the one who made me laugh until I cried today, so I have promised myself to try not to curse her so much when she speaks.

It was the end of 40 miles of hot, sweaty, muddy, gritty cycling and we were finally at our mini bus eating some watermelon before riding to the hotel Kakkerlak. Somehow Jane walked up to me and said out of the blue “I peed in someone’s shower today.”

She had a blank look on her face as she said it, and I stared at her.  What?  “I peed in someone’s shower today.  I didn’t know which room was the bathroom and so I peed somewhere and it was the shower”

At this point I was laughing so hard I couldn’t stop.  It’s not so much what she was saying, but how she was saying it, and the fact is – it is really difficult to figure out where to pee here.  I nearly peed in someone’s bedroom this afternoon because you can’t tell where the toilet starts and the rest of the house begins. 

Then, as I am doubled over in laughter, she says with a completely straight face, “I’m afraid the guides know the people who have the shower and I want to give them money for peeing there.”  I am wiping tears from my eyes and ask her between snorts  “how much do you pay someone for peeing in their shower?”  And she just looked at me with wide, blank eyes and said “I don’t know – how much do you think?”

And with that I just walked away because there’s no right answer to this question and I was laughing so hard I couldn’t control myself.

Alright, onto the photos.   

But first, brief update on Operation Triscuit:  I am now buddy buddy with the WI ladies!  Misery loves company and what could be more miserable than sleeping with rats??  They ate my story up and it gave them even more reason to complain about how awful they think this tour is.  This even resulted in them talking about their Triscuits and admitting to having them in the bag right before my eyes.  I’m getting closer! 

Until I finagle a triscuit, I did manage to find almonds tonight so I am back up to a full supply!!  This is a good thing because for breakfast this morning I ate 8 bananas.  I know this sounds extreme, but the bananas here are small and all the other food was covered in flies.  Since bananas are protected by their peel, logically it was the only thing I felt safe eating.  I bet if you had been in my shoes you would have done the same. 

This Buddhist temple is 800 years old.  All Vietnamese men have to go to the monastery for a certain amount of time...then they go on to lead their normal lives, get married, have kids and the whole shebang.

Yes, those are bags of live ducks.  Paul's face says it all.

Bathroom stop #1.  This is why I understand how Jane could get confused.  The toilet was the ground next to that bucket.  You pee on the ground and then take some water from the bucket and splash it on the floor.  Seriously.

And Toilet #2!  I know it's obvious, but you walked to the back corner next to the yellow crates and peed through the holes in the floor into the river below. 

This was after about 3 hours...

The kids here are adorable.  I can't tell you how many times a day I've been screaming "HELLLOOOOO!!!!" back to little kids who run out to wave and give you high fives as you cycle by.  It's really sweet.

Lunch - this time real veggies.  YAY!

Gorgeous day - still no rain!  It's a beautiful country...

Rats

It wasn't a cat, it wasn't a dog and it certainly wasn't a hog.  Rats!


I figured it out when I noticed that my power bars had magically moved from lying neatly on my bed post-food inventory to the back corner of my room.  Now that's odd, I thought.  I tiptoed to look and sure enough - all three had been molested by an animal of some sort.  So that's what all the noise was!


This made me sick.  I went down to the lobby and of course nobody was there...it was late.  So I instant messaged Lee in London for some support and advice.  She said:  "Mommsen, stop bringing food into your room"  Check!


Then I finally called one of my guides who rescued me in about 5 minutes.  Thai is from this area and probably grew up with rats as play pals, but he was really nice and understanding - even when I told him he couldn't leave my side until I had packed up all my things.  He put me in the room across the hallway which is probably also rat infested.  I nearly asked Thai to sleep in the bed next to mine, but that probably would have been even more awkward than sleeping with rats.


Since this was a special occasion, I took the other half of the ambien I had taken pre-rat discovery and fell dead asleep.


I now have 17 almonds, half a bag of dried mangosteens and 1 ambien left for the trip.


Operation Triscuit starts NOW.

Coconut Jungle

I’m feeling like I need a bit of a windge.

I’m not so happy to be inside my hotel room which is the kind of “room” where you wish you were covered in cellophane from head to toe and seriously consider sleeping upright in a chair.  It’s a hotel where the headline amenity is “Hot Water”  To top it off, there’s a lot of noise coming from my garbage can and I know something alive is in there, I’m just not sure what.  I’m not going to look, I can’t.

But the good news - somehow this establishment has wireless (which they don’t mention in their list of room benefits) AND I still have some sleeping pills left from the stash my mom left me (THANK YOU MOM!) so I can sleep tonight without wondering about the animals in my garbage can.

Side note:  Shortly after getting into my hotel room, a woman walked in without knocking, opened my mini bar door, and pulled out a giant jar of what appeared to be worms.  Before I thought about it, I said in horror “what in the hell is that?!”  She of course didn’t speak English and just smiled and giggled and then left with the jar in her hands.  Maybe that’s what’s in my garbage can?  It sounds bigger than worms though.  HELP!

Anyway, this might be a long and boring note because I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself after Happy Camp!  Starting with the fact that I’m staying in a town tonight called Tra Vinh…and when the guide (his name is Thai) told me the town’s name it sounded just like Tra Vigne to me.  Which made me think of Napa Valley.  And I thought of wonderful wine and wonderful food…and I thought…oh my god.  For the money I’m spending right now I could be cycling in Napa Valley and staying in an amazing B&B, eating at the French Laundry and drinking myself silly.  This is the unfortunate state of mind I am in.

So anyway, we cycled about 50 km’s today in what I would call the Coconut Jungle.  I call it the Coconut Jungle because that is what it is.  It took me a while to figure out what was going on when we started cycling because I thought we were on a cute little bike path created for tourists – I was so delighted that this existed!  It felt a little bit like cycling on Sanibel Island on vacation as a kid, but more rustic.  We passed a few little huts that sold what looked to be like packaged food and soda and I thought to myself – how nice that the local people have set up these little shops for the touring cyclists!  About 20 minutes into the ride when I passed a sign that said 'Internet' I thought “GENIUS!  If I need to send an emergency email, I can.  These Vietnamese think of everything!” and that’s when it slowly dawned on me that this was not a cycling trail – this was the main road connecting all the homes in the middle of the Coconut Jungle.

Once that was clear, I became a bit more uneasy.  It didn't help when Amanda, a lovely woman from London, toppled off her bike and down a ravine into the highly questionable water below.  That scared the living daylights out of me, but she took it like a total champ.  I think I was more upset than she was.

Not sure if you know this about me, but I used to be terrified of riding a bike.  And when I say “used to” it was until I moved to Amsterdam a month ago.  Thankfully my friend and trainer in London, Mo, pretty much forced me to buy a road bike in London so I could train for a triathlon.  He was also kind enough to make me cycle through a very confusing and dangerous intersection on Finchley Road (I’m afraid to drive a car on this section of the road much less cycle) in an effort to “kill the fear”  Unfortunately, after doing this ride several times, I would still arrive at Regent’s Park to meet Mo shaking from head to toe and counting my blessings to have arrived in one piece.  The fear is still very much alive.

These days I’m not quite terrified, but more a nervous wreck on a bike.  So I was fully aware going into this leg of the trip that the next 2 weeks would be really difficult for me but that it was worth it for the following reasons:

1.  I decided that I wouldn’t be able to see this part of the world in a tour bus because I would either be car sick or asleep the entire time.
2.  This is the perfect way to put the nail in the coffin of killing my cycling fear.   If I can cycle through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, I should be able to cycle most places without being scared.
3. What I underestimated was point #3 – traveling in rural Vietnam is no whistle through the woods…it’s serious business and I want to go back to the Bangkok airport!

One way I’ve tried to make myself more comfortable cycling is by giving my bike a name.  I’ve named my Dutch Granny bike in AMS “Buddy” so that I can sing one of my favorite childhood songs “My Buddy, My Buddy…My Buddy and MEEEEE!!!!” as I’m weaving amongst the Dutch cyclists on my way to work and hoping I don’t make a complete jack ass out of myself.  It calms me down.  With that in mind, I named my bike on this trip the original “Buddy #2” and found myself singing in my head “My Buddy and me like the coconut trees.  My Buddy and Me have the best time that could beeee!!!”  For those of you who don’t know this classic tune, you are missing out.

So this helped.  But then we ate lunch.  I don’t want to talk about lunch.  Here is lunch.  It looks a hell of a lot better on camera than it was.  It was scary.  I’m still scared.

This is Thai,one of the 2 guides, making a paste.

This is a bowl of paste with deep fried pieces of meet artfully served in cheerful dinner plates.  I fully realize it looks pretty good on camera, but it was positively revolting.

And dinner was worse and I actually ate dinner because I was starving.  I decided to put all of my food on allocation until I get someplace where I can buy normal food again.  Immediately upon deciding on this food allocation, I ate a power bar, about 45 almonds and half a bag of dried mangosteens to comfort myself.  I now have 3 power pars, 17 almonds and half a bag of dried mangosteens left.  If anyone wants to overnight me a care package

to Cambodia, I’m definitely not stopping you.

OK, there are so many strange noises in my hotel room I’m not quite sure what to do.  There must be a cat in here or something?  I’m too afraid to look.  I think it’s under the bed now and not in the garbage can.  There are lots of barking dogs outside, they are everywhere here.  That and roosters.  And giant hogs.  A hog couldn't fit under my bed, that I am sure of.

I need to complain for just a little bit more and then show some lovely photos.  There are 4 great people on this trip and the guides are really nice.  However, there are also people on this trip that I truly cannot stand.  The WI ladies being the worst.  I didn’t think they could get any more surly!  To top things off I overheard one of them saying she brought Triscuits with her on the trip.  Do you have any idea what I would do for a handful of Triscuits on a normal day in Amsterdam?  A LOT.  In Tra Vinh Vietnam??   Indescribable.  Maybe Miss Crabby Pants would be willing to trade for it?   I need to give this some careful thought.

Tomorrow is going to be another tough day – 90 km’s through the Vietnamese mud.   I can’t decide if I want to wake up with food poisoning or take the ride through the mud.  I guess I’m good with either option.  

I’ll end with some nice pictures of where we went today, because it was pretty amazing.  Thai has already taken 600 pictures, so I didn't get so many (it's sort of tricky taking photos while riding a bike, especially for me).

I realize how lucky and fortunate I am to be here, especially when you look at how happy the Vietnamese are despite their very difficult living conditions.  OK!!  I'm done complaining and will sleep happily with the cat or rodent or whatever it is that is bunking with me tonight.

The market next to where we had lunch

These are all coconuts...

More Coconuts

One of the three ferries we used to cross the Mekong.  Otherwise it was rickety bridges that we cycled over.

The Mekong Delta is really big with lots of fingers!

Smooshed in Saigon

I made it to Saigon and spent my layover in Bangkok taking a massive deep dive off my detox with a soy cappuccino and gigantic diet coke. When I saw a Burger King, Diary Queen and Starbucks all next to each other, I nearly dropped to my knees and started singing God Bless America.  And I mean I literally almost did start singing.  I can’t wait to go back to the Bangkok airport.

Saigon is much nicer during the day than at night, and I arrived at night which made me miss my Happy Paradise even more.  But in the morning the sun was shining and things were looking up.

The main point of difference here versus other cities I’ve visited is that there are virtually no cross walks and traffic doesn’t stop for pedestrians.  It looks something like this when you're crossing the street:

Yes, those are little kids and not Vietnamese Munchkins driving

Now I haven’t seen this mentioned in any tourist paraphernalia yet, but I think the Board of Tourism could really make something of it.  I would love a t-shirt that said “Smooshed in Saigon” and I bet most other visitors would appreciate it as well. 

First stop was the Ben Thangh Market which was right down the street from my hotel, although I managed to get completely lost.   The amount of variety at the market was astounding – from the kinds of rice to the kinds of eggs (black, white, brown and speckled) to the frogs and snakes.  Normally I’m pretty squeamish about this stuff, but for some reason it didn’t bother me.  Probably because it didn’t stink which I don’t understand because nothing was refrigerated.  Here are a bunch of photos from the market:

Baby Bottles at the market!  But no AVENT...Nuk was everywhere and they were asking about $7 USD per bottle which means they would have sold it for about $3.50 post haggling.  I know how fascinating this is for my Philips friends.

Notice this woman is eating her breakfast at her stand.  Stomach of steel.  

After that I met my friend Mike for coffee and then we went to lunch.  He’s a bit of a foodie so he ordered a bunch of really good Vietnamese treats….but one of my favorite things ended up being the Vietnamese Iced Coffee which is sludgy coffee with condensed milk.  It tastes like super sweet dessert and has to be way worse for you than a Frappucino.  I’ve had three of them today.

I took Mike’s advice and avoided the War museum – he said it was over the top depressing and my Spiritual Guide has already given me so much to contemplate that I don’t think I could manage to take on the atrocities of war as well.  In all seriousness, it is truly amazing how kind everyone is here to Americans given our history.

Then I had to go to the cycling shop to make some emergency purchases.  A lady at the shop sent me to a different market to find some rain gear, but I don't understand where she thought I was going, because this is what I found:

It was spooky and bizarre.  Apparently this market is famous for having lots of American war gear – and when I say lots, I mean a warehouse full.  It creeped me out and I left lickity split sans rain gear (it's raining so hard here, what's the point anyway?).

So then I met up with my new cycling team.  There are 9 other people in the group and two Vietnamese guides.  I am probably the youngest person on the tour by a good decade.  The most shocking thing I’ve discovered so far is that the only other Americans on the tour are also from Wisconsin (Madison).  And that’s not the shocking part (but what are the odds??).  What’s shocking is that they’re snotty and mean!  Mean Wisconsinites!!!  I will have none of it – they are tarnishing my home state’s reputation.  And so I am going to kill them with kindness and help them adjust their attitudes.  I have been on the f*&@ing Journey to Happiness and I'm pretty sure they don’t know who they’re messing with. 

There are 4 people from Belgium (2 of which barely speak English which I really don’t get…I think they’re faking it), 1 lady from Vancouver and a very nice couple from London.   I can already tell my meditation lessons will be coming in handy on this tour!  Isn’t it so much fun to practice a new skill!?  Starts at 8 AM tomorrow when we head to the Mekong Delta….

Strangely Perfect Paradise

I think I seriously might be a new woman after only a one week break.  I have been in paradise – a very strange paradise during a monsoon – but a special paradise nonetheless.  

I’m not sure if it would make the most sense to start this post with a story about The Healer, The Astrologist, The Spiritual Leader or the Colonic Hydrotherapy?

I guess I’ll start where I left off…the bottom of the barrel…hydrotherapy.   It’s a good place to start because it was literally the first thing that I experienced upon arrival.  Why have that lurking around waiting for you the entire week?

I can’t say it went as one would expect, but then again, what does one expect going into such a procedure?  It started off very strange (this was not surprising) with my two Thai nurses caressing me while I laid on a table pre-treatment as if I was going in for serious surgery.  I’m sure it was supposed to relax me, but it actually made me extremely uncomfortable.  In retrospect this could have been their clever tactic to make me so uncomfortable that I just wanted to get on with the treatment.   And so it went, and it really didn’t go too badly.  I mean it was not fun, but there are worse things in the world, and I had hope the entire time that I was going to feel like a million bucks afterward and any discomfort would be well worth it.  The nurses even told me that some people felt like they wanted to run a marathon after they had this treatment.  Unfortunately, My Body had different ideas…once everything was finally over It said to me “What in the HELL were you thinking?  What sort of a moron decides to stick a water hose up my ass for over an hour and thinks that’s a good holiday activity?” And with that, My Body passed out cold.

I woke up with the nurses putting smelly paste under my nose and rubbing it on my temples.  Apparently my blood pressure went from being low to non-existent.  I seriously thought for a second I might never get up all night – I felt like death.  And then poof!  I took a few deep breaths and felt completely normal again and have ever since.  To be honest, I couldn’t tell much of a difference in how I felt after the treatment.  But for those of you who really enjoy that sort of thing, I’m seriously happy for you.  Once was enough for me.  I’m not sure I could survive a second one and that would be a pretty humiliating and unnecessary way to die.  Not to mention, does this look like a fun place to be?

This spa is amazing – just beautiful.  And so quiet, probably only 30 people or so staying here and it is sprawling.  It actually feels pretty mysterious.  Loads of paths through thick vegetation up and down the side of a steep hill down to the ocean.  To top things off a monsoon hit the evening I arrived which makes it feel even more secluded and unusual.  

I have never in my life experienced so much heavy rainfall – it was fabulous.  It made the entire experience so cozy, and pretty much kept me from going down to the beautiful beach (except today when the sun poked its head out) so I could focus on my chock full schedule of events.  I was literally in classes, lectures or treatments from 7:30 AM and didn’t spend more than a half hour in my room between then and 9:30 PM when I got back from dinner.  This place was like an adventure park for those fascinated by the world of health and wellness.  I was a kid in a candy shop!  There were so many options to choose from and they all sounded interesting. 

A typical day went something like this:

7:30 – 8:30:  Tai Chi

8:30 – 9:30:  Meditation on the Journey to Happiness, a 3 part series

Note:  During Series One I discovered that my meditation on a journey to happiness made me cry, which was unfortunate as I looked around the room at all the serene and smiling faces in the class while mine was blotchy and red.  I decided it was best to skip Series 2 and take my journey to happiness swimming laps in the lovely pool and lying by the empty beach on a lounge chair.

Breakfast: Salad (my dream – salad for breakfast!  Why don't more people do this?), fruit, homemade croissants, wheatgrass and brain juice.

11AM:  Training session at the gym with ridiculously enthusiastic trainers who must have gotten their fitness education in the 1980's.  It made me wish I brought my leotard.

12PM:  Infared Sauna Treatment - an exceptionally hot sauna that apparently has great health benefits.  I was supposed to go three times, but could only stand the 30 minute treatment once.

Lunch:  3 courses – Black Cod Salad, Pad Thai and Chocolate Souffle (I have gained at least a kilo since coming here.  The food is ridiculously good and limitless! Never let me on a cruise).

2 – 3PM:  some sort of toe-curlingly good massage

3 – 4PM:  Yoga

Note:  Although I want to learn, I suck at Yoga and have so much respect for those who are good at it.  My first yoga class was interesting.  I was trying to concentrate on breathing the right way and holding my posture (I was just sitting down, it’s not like it was difficult, but for some reason I was stumbling).  My mind started to wander and all of a sudden I heard some murmuring and for a split second I thought it was spirits or something (It would not be surprising to be confronted with spirits at this place, believe me).  Then I felt something touch my stomach and I screamed out loud.  It was my yoga instructor who had snuck up on me to show me how to breathe.  Unfortunately I disrupted the entire class and she never came near me again.

4 – 5PM:  Stretching

6:30 – 7:15:  Meeting with the Astrologist or Spiritual Guide

Then group dinner with The Healer which usually lasted at least 2 hours and was a riot.  He is hysterical.

I met The Healer the first night I was at the spa.  The title of his workshop was “Health, Motivation and Stress Management Intro” which sounds almost like a corporate coaching event.  I was the only one there (one other person arrived a bit later) and I was completely confused when he started explaining what he does – he heals people and animals.  This was my first indication that colon hydrotherapy was only one of many strange things that I would learn about that go on here.

I’m totally open minded about that stuff and was pretty interested in what he had to say.  The other woman who arrived listened to him and was much more skeptical and told him so.  So, he asked her if there was any part of her that was in pain and she said that she had chronic neck pain and was visiting for 2 weeks to get some Chinese Medicine to help it.  He made her sit down next to him, and he didn’t even touch her neck, just put his hand near her neck and within about 2 minutes she looked at me wide-eyed and said something like “oh my god, my neck has just gone cold and I can’t feel the pain anymore”

It was truly bizarre.  Both of us made an appointment with him the next day.  I arrived to my meeting with a long list of things I wanted healed and asked for his help prioritizing.  We’ll see how it goes, but so far so good.  My bum knee is even feeling better.  He really is a special guy and I loved the time I spent with him.  I’m really glad I got the chance to meet him.

My meeting with the Spiritual Leader did not go as well.  He made me feel like a complete loser.  Now what the Spiritual Leader would say about this is that I should contemplate my reaction to our meeting and take responsibility for my feelings and not blame others.  But it really was his fault that he made me feel like a loser.

I won’t even get started on the Astrologist, but just know that 2011 is the year of Christy Mommsen and it will be one hell of a great year!  This year won’t start until January 6^th, but until then I am protected, have no fear.  And yes, I paid the Astrologist a lot of money to give me this good news.

The last thing to mention is that I got an upgraded suite thanks to my neighbors who had non stop sex for about 24 hours.  It was seriously impressive – made you almost want to stand up and cheer when they finished – but then it started all over again and it was impossible to sleep.  I mentioned to the front desk that my neighbors must be on their honeymoon (which was received with lots of giggles from the lovely Thai women in reception) and got a new room.  Well done and thanks guys!

Following Happiness Class Series 3 first thing in the morning, I am off to the airport (if it is open…it is still raining cats and dogs here and everything is flooded) to fly to Bangkok and then Saigon.  The great news is that I get to see my friend Mike who is in Saigon right now (he’s taking a year off to travel and is a pro at this by now which is good because I could use the help).  The bad news is that it’s raining in Southern Vietnam as well, and according to the forecast, this rain will follow me on my bike for about 14 days throughout Cambodia and back into Thailand.   It will be a new adventure!

By the way, my computer is pretty much broken. 
The Healer would say to this "Of course it is broken Christy, you're not supposed to use it, and so it will break.  Congratulations!"
The Spiritual Leader would say "Christy, you cannot change the past.  Remember, it is not the bugs fault that your computer broke and it is not the humidity.  Take responsibility for your computer, Christy.  Now close your eyes and think of yourself as a child.  Love yourself."
The Astrologist would say "Fight Saturn and grab Uranus!"
So that was childish, but it's seriously what he would say with a thick German accent.


Anyway, I’m using the hotel computer right now.  I’ll try to be online to see what you all are up to. 

Hope you enjoy the stories because I sure love telling them!  

Miss you all – Lots of love.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

Enjoy the pics:

My new favorite fruit - Mangosteen (why don't they sell this everywhere?!)

More pics: