“Ankor What? Pub Street. [Siem Reap, Cambodia] The backpackers’ favourite where you invariably end up dancing on the tables till the small hours…” — The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia on a Budget
In related news, a frequent question during our trip has been, “What day is it?” Not, mind you, asking for the date, but for the day of the week.
I think I did a really good job packing. I read a bunch of travel blogs, I had various backups, little tools, repair kits, first aid, expandable overflow bag, and lots of little useful things not always thought of. I thought I had everything covered, but some things you learn on the road.
I had packed a travel body wash / shampoo combo and my wife had picked us both up some awesome Lunatec self cleaning travel wash cloths that can be used as loofahs (gear that has already proved very valuable — thanks for the tip, ZINK Year).
As we traveled from hot city to very hot city I started to sweat. Especially as we started to reach locations like Beijing, with less than ideal sanitary conditions, I noticed something. I started to smell!
A smell in hot weather when you are walking 13 miles or so a day (thanks fitbit) might seem obvious to people. I have never really been a very sweaty person, in the states I don’t normally need antiperspirant or deodorant. I smell fine showing once a day even if with a light workout. If I have a real workout I shower after and all is good. Not so much in Beijing I tried to shower 4 times in one day and still couldn’t stay smelling clean. Something wasn’t right and I needed to solve the problem. (I went through this little journey of discovery while a friend was traveling with us, sorry Dina!)
We had been in and out of hotels and I had been using a loofah often with the hotel provided liquid body wash. I realized that wasn’t strong enough, back home I always use a soap bar. Buying a real bar of soap and keeping it in a little zip lock bag (you did pack some of those didn’t you) between hotels. This got me most of the way back to normal, but with the extra daypack on my back and hotter temperatures I eventually added travel size deodorant to my arsenal. It is safe to say even if you don’t normally need these kinds of things at home, you might need them while traveling.
Only later did I remember my lush shampoo bar, which is great for travel, and very powerful. I have since used this bar as soap when needed and it works great, definitely cleans better than many of the free shower gels provided by hotels. I mostly have this item for the 24 day camping Safari in Africa, but I’m happy it has already come in handy.
Happy to be back to a nice clean non-smelly person, I figured I should share that nothing beats a real soap bar, a little extra packing space and weight easily worth it.
As long as we are on keeping things clean and smell free, let’s talk laundry. When doing laundry in the sink, we learned from our Vietnemes host family that we needed less water and about 2X the soap in the mix when hand washing clothes. The tip has definitely improved the freshness and lasting effects of a sink clothes cleaning. Also, allowing our clothes to soak in the soap water in the sink a longer time helped improve the freshness. A sink was is really best for use for the times between finding real laundry facilities (which is still highly recommended every couple washes as nothing really beats it). We did have access to several buckets in our home-stay, which is a way better way to hand wash clothes, than in the sink. Our host family really upped my clothes washing skills.
Single use packets of Tide travel (or similar), are highly recommended for sink cleaning. We originally had little sheets of soap, Travelon travel laundry soap, which looked great and travel really well, but they don’t really get clothes very clean and certainly can’t get socks back to smelling fresh after a hike. If you are out of single serve laundry soap, you can find it at little markets all over the world. If you are in a pinch, I have found shampoo, body wash, or directly rubbing a bar of soap on clothes to be effective.
We have also learned some tricks and improved our skill drying clothes while traveling.
When you have a nice sunny desk, hook up a travel laundry line, we love our sea to summit clothes line. Things dry great outside and smell amazing. Remember to keep and eye on the weather, we left a set of clothes drying out through a storm and had to start over. If you don’t have a deck you can string it up as best you can inside, which sometimes makes the room hard to navigate (effectively making a trip wire, which nearly kills me in the night). This works but depending on humidity, AC, and such it can take more than 24 hours to really dry out and then it doesn’t smell quite as nice.
So what to do if you have to sink wash, and you can’t hang outside in the sun, be it lack of space or current weather situation?
We have started to dry pretty much all our clothes using the, Exofficio drying method. While they recommend this for their excellent give-and-go underwear. It works great on t-shirts, travel pants, socks, etc. Basically, a simple 4 step drying process.
While this requires extra towels, most hotels didn’t have a problem giving us one extra. We also sometimes just showered using a travel towel and would use one hotel towel to help dry clothes. In a rush or didn’t use the Exofficio method? Don’t worry, you can always bust out the hotel hair drier in a last ditch effort to get your clothes dry for your night out.
Go out & destroy your clothes again.
Getting our feet eaten by fish that are actually not that little. Feels good after a day exploring Angkor Wat (see below). Specifically, we are on the roof of our guesthouse (thanks for the rec, Susan), waiting for our traditional Khmer food to be prepped for dinner. Dinner in tonight because it is pouring here. Dan failed to mention that it is rainy season in Cambodia.
It has been amazing to explore around Angkor all day. Getting lost with Erin in a jungle of temples, stones, rivers, and trees.
A few more from Erin.
I will miss the beautiful beach and the lovely town in Hoi An. It was a perfect time to be here.
I bought Erin some flowers, but hadn’t really thought through the vase. No worries nothing one of our many 5 liter bottles of water couldn’t handle.
The women who sold us the flowers were all so excited that I couldn’t just buy from one so we bought a little bouquet from all 3 flower shops and had them combine it. They had us all take a picture together.
We are finishing up our week volunteering teaching English in the industrial zone outside of Hanoi with CVTD, and I am thankful for the greater depth of understanding of the Vietnamese way of life and culture that the experience has given me (not to mention all of the delicious food). I hope our students had as much fun as we did. Tomorrow morning we are jumping on a ($30) flight to Hoi An, to spend some time chilling on beaches and exploring the town. Here are some last quick thoughts before heading down to the central coast.
1) It is awesome to be in a place where the late-night street food includes piles of fresh Vietnamese lettuce, herbs, and vegetables (our GI tracks thank us when they have been at least briefly rinsed in potable water). The pork belly isn’t bad either. We did our best to work our way through the Old Town Restaurant Tour provided by our friends at ZINK year and agree with all of their choices.
2) After just a few days in our volunteer house, I developed callouses on my fingers from using chopsticks to stir fry peanuts, vegetables, and meats over the high heat used in Vietnamese cooking.
3) Check out this electrical wiring. The power is incredibly reliable.
4) Urban chickens.
Today, we had to travel in towards the city to teach our kindergarten and high school – age English classes. Which meant (as we are still too chicken to get with the program and get a motorbike), taking the bus. Interesting thing about the public buses in Vietnam (or at least around Hanoi), they don’t stop. They slow down, and you are expected to run alongside them and jump to get on. Same thing when you are getting off, the bus slows, you jump out and then run a few meters (that’s right, meters, not yards) while you wait for you momentum to slow. It’s basically like Divergent (the audio book we listened to while driving across the country). And, we have survived. Our French roommate informed us that we are now off to a good start in Vietnam.
On the way home, however, we were so proud of our new bus boarding skills that we jumped on the first one we saw, which was, unfortunately, going further into the city. We looked like the confused gringos we were, pointed at a couple of things written on a piece of paper, and then began to actually freak out as the bus got on the big bridge headed into the city. But then, a nice man in the back of the bus saved us by using his English skills and familiarity with the bus schedule to redirect us. They didn’t charge us for that first ride, and the gentleman told us where to get off the bus to change lines heading back out of the city, and another man even jumped (yes, jumped) off with us to ensure that we didn’t mess it up again — gesturing to where we needed to go. Boarding our next bus, we said the name of landmark by our stop and everyone nodded indicating that we were in the right place. They gestured for us to take a seat by them and proceeded to take care of us the whole way — helping us get the right bills to get the fare, and making sure that the bus slowed down so that we could get off at the right stop. Thanks to the English-speaking gentleman on bus 53 headed into Hanoi this evening, and his friend who got off with us, and to the entire group of helpful folks on bus 56A — you all rock, and we are so grateful. We wouldn’t be sitting in our apartment drinking a beer (which you can buy from apartment #206 downstairs for 10,000 dong — 50 cents) right now without you.
We arrived at our volunteer week with CVTD outside of Hanoi. We are learning a bit about how to teach English. We have students of various ages from kindergarten, highschool age, and adults learning English to improve their careers.
We have had to put together some lesson plans, and given some resources and guidance. We think our classes have gone OK.
We are staying with some women who work at CVTD, along with other volunteers in a hostel or group dorm room like apartment. Chores are shared and assigned on a schedule and Vietnamese lunches and dinners are cooked together as a group lead by our house hosts.
It has been interesting to get out of the city a bit and see a more calm and more rural Vietnam, where you can watch the rice harvest out the apartment window progress through out the day.
Listening to impromptu karaoke. Not bad.
Adventures of the Miller Mayers 