I Survived Vietnam Traffic

A few days ago I officially finished driving through the whole country of Vietnam, starting from Hanoi to Saigon. The total amount of kilometers we did in the end was a whopping 2400km through mostly the mountains of this beautiful country. The total time it took us to do it was 15 days. It was exciting, nerve wracking, and challenging on the body and mind. I will have to admit there were some days where I was like fuck this shit. But the other days when I couldn’t believe my eyes made it all worth while. I really wished I would of stopped and took pictures at the places that truly made my heart gasp. there were four full days throughout the trip where I was just an awe about the wild and beauty of this country. It reminded me of Jurassic Park or the movie Avatar. I think I said omg probably about a good solid two hours straight for each of these four days of going through amazing landscape. I will however always have these places in the back of my mind. Worlds of paradise and tranquility.

Driving through Vietnam is dangerous. In my group there were three accidents. Not severe, but definitely accidents. One of the accidents was a guy not looking both ways and getting hit by our fellow crew member at 40km/h, making him do a flip in the air from the force. Another was a girl that decided to tag along with us one day and try to go around this car and instead went right through it and destroyed the poor mans bumper and part of her motorcycle, luckily she came out alright. The last was a huge semi throwing another of our crew members off to the side of the road in a big pile of mud and manure. Now all of this was just in our crew but everyday we saw some kind of scooter accident on the road and also heard stories from fellow travelers about their accidents they were involved in. It happens all the time. My outlook however on this for someone that wants to do the same thing I did is don’t be an idiot, don’t be too cocky, and drive defensive. If you do this and act this way you should be A okay. People are going to cut you off and rub the back of your tires. You just have to be defensive and let the man or woman take the advantage (they know what they are doing). The biggest trucks are the fastest things on the road remarkably. They will pass other Semi’s on a upward mountain and don’t care whats on the other side of the hill. They will honk though and if you hear that you better move over. Never try to overtake these bad boys, they’ll always catch back up to you in the end. There is a system in Vietnam, a very chaotic system but nonetheless it works. Everyone drives defensively on a scooter and all of traffic will stop if you stop. They completely understand that were assholes that don’t know how to drive and for some reason they show respect for that, or they just don’t want to get hit or involved in an incident. I am not going to explain it further. You’ll figure it out the first day when you get on the bike. Just honk a lot when you pass someone and pass them on the right.

There were some fuck this shit days. Quite a few to be honest. I think there was four or five where it was 60 degrees fahrenheit and raining on top of you going 70 km/hr on a bike. That makes it cold as shit and miserable, thank god for my poncho. We drove 4 hours sometimes on days like this and at the end of it you felt like you definitely had hyperthermia. On top of that staying at crappy hotel in the middle of nowhere that didn’t have a heater did not help to warm you up. For three days I felt as though I couldn’t warm up my body properly because even the showers were cold. The scootering thing is definitely a challenge if you’re trying to bike in a 15 day period. You don’t have much time to spend in each city and again you have to constantly bike and not stop if you want to make it to the next town before dark. 5 days and 7 hours each day consistently, really puts a ding on you. I suggest if you do this make sure it’s for about three weeks. That way you can spend the extra time in cities to rest and relax before doing an epic journey. There are highs and lows in anything that you do. The highs in this trip though for sure beats the lows and is worth every penny and agony you spend.

So the last week or two of our trip it rained unfortunately since my last blog post. It is supposed to be dry season but for most of the days it was wet. The plan was to go down south Vietnam along the beaches but it was supposed to rain for weeks in the areas we wanted to go, so instead we headed west into the mountains. Through the mountains we found sun again, so ultimately it was the best decision. The three of us that started out on the trip and ended up joining other people making it seven of us throughout most of the trip. The more the merrier baby. Great group of people and we finally parted ways a couple days ago.

I did take some more pictures but I will just put it at the end of the blog. The last weeks of the bike trip was basically a repeat of getting up at 6:30am starting to drive at 8am and finish at 5pm with a meal, a beer, and a guitar (dude we were with was a hell of singer and player). A simple time but a fun time. In the major cities like Saigon we just relaxed. Went to a museum and went to nice cafes. We all needed a break from the end of our scooter journey. I ended up treating myself to a private room over looking Ho Chi Ming. A little present for my accomplishment.

Now I am sitting in a random hostel waiting for the night ferry to head to the island of Koh Tao. The ferry leaves at 10pm and I paid 1.50$ to store my bag here and have free wifi. Tomorrow I will start my open water course which is going to cost me 280$ for four days of learning how to dive. I am really excited but scared I will be exhausted from this night ferry and won’t be fully myself when learning how to dive. We shall see though tomorrow. Till next time.

I feel like I should at least describe where these pictures are since there are only so many. I don’t know if you have seen the show Top Gear, but on one of the finale episodes, they did exactly what I did and bought motor bikes and biked throughout the whole country. These two pictures are the iconic scene in this episodes below on the way to Hoi An from Hue.

These pictures below are from a Chinese Temple on top of a mountain in the city of Hoi An. A place where you can buy a three piece suit for 60 bucks.

These pictures of flowers below are in a botanical garden I found.

The pictures are deep in the south jungle of Vietnam in a national park about 130km away from Saigon. Coming out of this jungle we were all covered in leaches and bleeding everywhere from them. So pretty gnarly stuff.

Pai To Laos

I’ve been lazy with my blogging. I thought coming into this I would be blogging just about every day but it has not happened. My thoughts and experiences about this trip are therefore very general so that the viewer does not read 10,000 words of certain times of my trip. However I will try to tell you guys what I have been doing the past week or two leaving off from where I was before, Chiang Mai.

This whole trip I have just winged along the way. I feel like this second paragraph shouldn’t go here but oh well. Originally I thought I was going to go down to the Southern islands of Thailand and then to Cambodia to renew my visa and then up to the north. When you talk to people though and say I think I’m going to stay in Thailand for two months, most of them say why? There is so much more to see than this country itself. If you ever plan a visit to Thailand on a two month visit like me, go to countries around Thailand like Cambodia, Laos, and especially Vietnam. I am fortunate enough to have met people that have told me to do this instead and I have come along for the ride. So far this is how the journey is going and will continue to go. First I flew into Bangkok and stayed there for a few days to get my bearings. Then I took a 100 something dollar flight to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. Then I took a bus to the hippie land of Pai in Thailand. After that, I took a bus back down to Chiang Mai and flew into the country of Laos to Luang Prabang and stayed there a couple days. And now I am finally here in Vang Vieng, Laos. Soon I will be in Vientiane and then fly over to Ha Noi, Vietnam for new years. I will buy a scooter or motor bike (sorry mom) and then drive through the whole country for two weeks and then off to Cambodia. From Cambodia I will then fly to Phuket and finish my journey in the islands of Thailand then off to Australia. That is the plan thus far.

Pai is a hippie city. There are a lot of Stoners and trippy people that are really nice but far out. The town is known for beautiful sites to see like caves and waterfalls and beautiful landscapes to drive through and also known for partying. I stayed in Pai for five days at a hostel named The Common Grounds.

The hostel was alright. It had a bar and a cool common area to chill out, but it was definitely a party scene always at night no matter the day. It was fun the first couple of days and then I got tired of hearing people party till 1 in the morning outside my dorm. However the staff were really nice and location was unreal, right on walking street. The things I got to do in Pai was go to a Jungle party, walk through the market on Walking Street for some food, and visit some cool nature sites. The Jungle party was pretty cool, they do one every Saturday so me and my buddies all went to that and got pretty tipsy. They send a Tuk Tuk to come pick you up and then you go off an hour to middle of the jungle where they set up this stage with electric house music and lights everywhere. It felt like a cheap small music festival but hey it was still fun. Walking Street Market is another thing you have to do here and it’s just a street that you walk, with some food to grab along the way. Everyone loves the food on this street but again I’m a pretty picky eater. One thing I recommend doing in Pai is immediately getting a scooter. I didn’t get a scooter until day four and it would of changed my whole experience if I would have had one day one. The thing that was holding me back is the number of moped crashing injuries I have seen. There are some people that go fucked up on a moped from sliding through gravel or falling off it, breaking legs and arms. I just bit the bullet and said yolo and got one and boy it is amazing. It’s seven dollars a day for this thing and you can go anywhere with it and it brings down the cost of hiring a Tuk Tuk everywhere. If you do get one be very careful. I never get too cocky and always slow down before my turns or if the going gets rough. One of the sites that is a must do is Sunset Canyon. It’s a canyon (obviously) that cuts through the land and you walk on a very narrow strip throughout the whole park.

Here is one of the many trails I did. It is scary if you are not used to hikes but definitely exciting with amazing views.

You pick a view point like the one above and then you just kick back and relax and wait for the sun to go down.

On the fourth day I got most of my nature stuff in. There were about eight of us that all rented scooters and went to key waterfalls that everyone says you have to go to. The waterfalls were truthfully alright. They were nothing too special.

Pretty dang average. If you want to see real waterfalls though Laos is the place to be. The view though going to these places on moped is stunning.

Views like this are all along the way and worth a couple seconds to pull over to the side and take a quick glance a this scenery. So that’s basically it for Pai, things I wished I would of done is go to the hot springs and the caves but oh well till next time. Mind you though if you’re going to Pai be warned about the ride up there. It is about four hours and has 760 turns. One person threw up on the way up and two people on the way down, it’s a hell of a drive.

So now I am in this country named Laos, never even heard of it. The waterfalls and the nature hikes are all god damn amazing. Like seriously way better than Thailand, if these are two things you like to do then go through this country. I landed in Luang Prabang five days ago from Chiang Mai by airplane. The things I did there is again go to the night market and find some cool shit like the snake and lizard whisky and weird shit in that nature. Then go to this mountain in the morning and see the city come alive. Also before going up to see the sun rise watch all the monks get handed out food in the morning, a tradition that happens every day for hundred of years here. Here is a picture of the sunrise I got on the mountain top.

It was pretty cool but over here in Asia everything is hazing a shit so the quality of the picture doesn’t come out too well. The sounds of the city coming to life though is the best part.

The best though is seeing waterfalls in this place. They were just stunning. Probably top ten waterfalls I will ever see in my life. There are two main places to see waterfalls. One of the places, and I am sorry I don’t know the name is called “small waterfalls” to the locals. The other is “big waterfalls” or Kuang Si Waterfall. Here is a couple pictures from the smaller waterfall site;

The nature hike is really cool and you see multiple waterfalls areas like this one above. The hike is about 2 miles long through the jungle and there is barely anyone there at the park. I felt like I was in an enchanted forest with magical blue pools and buddha was somewhere resting underneath a tree.

The bigger waterfall was pretty amazing as well. Probably the best waterfall I have seen in my life. However since it is so amazing there are a lot tourists that want to see the same thing. Still worth the time if you are in this city. Here is a shot I got of this beauty.

That’s a goddamn post card picture right there if I ever seen one. But in all seriousness definitely worth seeing.

Sunsets in Luang Prabang are just as good as the sunrises. A buddy and I had a couple beers to finish the day out by the river and started getting ready for the markets at night. It is really cool to see all the slow boaters come in for the night and local people roasting a fire and sharing the same experiences and moments as us foreigners.

I am now in Vang Vieng known as the party city of Laos but the nature again is breathtaking and the best I have seen so far. Huge mountains are around this city with beautiful clear water that you can tube or kayak down. I have rented a scooter and drove to a couple blue lagoons 30 km away yesterday and the lagoons weren’t worth it but the views were.

This trip has really been fun though man. The people and the culture and the places I have been, have made it a hell of a good time. Too many people are scared to get out of their comfort zone and go to a place that is completely foreign to them. You just got to do it. That is the only advice I have, and once you do, you’ll realize how easy it is to travel and slowly you will become addicted. You only live once so live it up the best that you can and grow from each experience that you gather. I am looking forward to Vietnam for News Years. From what I hear it is supposed to be the best country out the ones I listed.

The Start Of A New

I’m just going to let my mind flow for this first post and see what happens:

I am a very simple guy. I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, went to Florida Gulf Coast University to get a degree in Civil Engineering and now I am living in West Palm Beach for a job in civil engineering. This is the average route that every parent wants their young son to take growing up and oh were they proud of me…

Throughout college they were skeptical though. I was in a fraternity and every time I came home during the semester’s end I would get hammered and they would link that to me not doing well in college. Little did they know I studied my ass off all the damn time and barely had time to party like most fraternity men. The only time to party and not worry about my Structural Analysis or Fluid Mechanics test, was during holiday and oh fuck ya did I party. Well in the end I graduated and got my degree. The fam was very proud for a little bit until I went to Europe to celebrate with my buddy Junebug and backpack the whole damn place. The beautiful thing about Europe is there is absolutely no hangovers what so ever. You can be shit faced and wake up just tired in the morning it was glorious for someone like myself that feels like he’s gonna die for two days after a hard binder in the states.

At the end of the trip my tolerance for alcohol was insane. I could have 10 tall boys and feel slightly buzzed. We traveled everywhere. Started in Denmark and took a big ole loop around the continent. We went to Prague, Copenhagen, Budapest, Berlin, Osnabruck, Hamburg, Milan, Florence, Vienna, Bolzano, and honestly a lot of other places I don’t remember but you get it. Hell of a time. The ending of my trip though I had to make it back up to Sweden for my Farfar’s (grandpa) 80th birthday in Bastad. I was so excited to see the family. When I got up there I was reunited with everyone, I’m talking about sister’s, father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, my god it was great. The festivities began and this was the best way to end my trip. During these festivities however, rumors started to spread saying, ” I think Devin has a problem with drinking” and the stereotypical response, “oh yeah he’s in a frat.” Fuck that noise. Mind you I was basically sober to all these parties downing eight 12oz beers at 5%. This lead to my family looking down on me and me having to be sober at my grandfather’s birthday party. It would make sense if I was being a retard in Sweden but I wasn’t. I found this crazy because this was my celebration to my one accomplishment I made so far in my life and people were raining on my parade. To put a cherry on top one of my family members called me out and said I would never get a job and no one would want to hire me. Solid ending to the trip.

The point is people have never really believed in me. The evidence was clear throughout college and at the end of Europe. Everyone was scared that I was going down the wrong path even know I just graduated in a pretty hard major that would challenge anybody. But the thing is I always believed in myself and I know I am destined for great fucking things. I am a nice guy, fun, jolly, entertaining, hardworking, loving, and fascinated about the world we live in. I’m a god damn social butterfly that opens up to any body and I’m honest about everything. I love nature and that’s what keeps high when I’m feeling low. I love animals and want to protect and preserve what the upper man has created that we have destroyed. That’s why I chose engineering so I can be the man that could make a little impact in the world to change shit.

Well the family member was wrong. My poor self showed up back in the United States with 100 dollars in my name (because I had to pay for everything in Sweden and I did not account that in traveling expenses) and quickly started to work for an old contractor’s company I worked for as a freshman. I made a quick 500 bones in a week and went off to West Palm Beach to find a job. I love the beach so West Palm seemed dope and that’s honestly the only reason I moved here. Within 5 days of being down here I landed a job at this water resourcing company and my job title would be field inspector/project engineer. I told the company I would love to be out in the field the first few years of my engineering life because I wanted to see how the process through construction works. And I wanted to maybe lean towards construction and see the feel of it. They said hell yes that’s exactly what we are looking for and got hired the next day. Well the company was great the first few months I was out in Belle Glade, Florida looking over projects and working with the foreman and superintendents. I was doing satisfying work installing water main for the people of Belle Glade and giving them clean water from their corroded cast iron pipes that weren’t even an inch thick in diameter for some of their 50 year water mains. Then things went down hill. They pulled me into the office and I had to stare at a screen for 8 hours plus a day, doing AutoCAD work. Imagine looking at fucking screen with no windows and doing repetitious and tedious redline work the senior engineers give you for four fucking months. My god! I was going insane. I chose engineering also because I wanted to be outside on site half the time and see the actual world. Not be stuck in a office every fucking day staring at a screen like most jobs. I complained to the company and the false expectations they gave me when I was hired and they said well see what we can do. So the next week they sat me down and said, “we have a very important job for you to do” and had me on project 16-1107. The fucking manhole assessment project. A project for no engineer, no man or woman for a degree in college, a hard labor job for someone that’s trying to make it back at life starting all the way at the bottom. These fucks. They said it would only last two months and it lasted for seven, and they paired me with my roommate which me and him had to see each other every day for 8 hours and back home. My god we were like a goddamn married couple but worse. This job was horrible, we started in April and ended in October. The hottest time of the year in Florida and had to pop open manholes everyday and inspect them and measure. Two thousand manholes we had to inspect. We would pop these suckers open, see shit flowing down the channel every day and also condoms and tampons and rats. If you can only imagine what you saw if you opened up a manhole where shit goes, it’s what you would imagine. It was unbearable, hot, and smelly. The worst part is I wasn’t learning anything as an engineer or anything that could help my career. I told myself if I don’t get what I want after this torture for seven months I’m fucking leaving. Sure enough they had me back in the office doing the redlines all over and I quit two weeks later. I never thought in my life sitting in those hard classes in school thinking I would be staring at shit all day with my major in the hot brutal sun of Florida.

I do not know what the reader thinks of this but I’m sure everyone goes through some kind of struggle that can relate. My outlet through these rough times was going out in nature and finding moments in time where something magical happens. If you sit still out in nature long enough, you’ll see something. If you don’t hunt I’m sorry, but the best part of the hunt is just sitting invisible to the true world and seeing marvelous things in the four hours of sitting, it’s truly therapeutic. I feel so connected to nature and the woods, everything just makes sense. Out in the woods I always saw really cool shit and I would say damn I wish I would of captured that moment. A light bulb popped in my head and said buy a camera and start taking pictures of these moments. You have an eye (I think) and certain way you look at the world and share it with people. So I started doing this and it has become quite a hobby and a passion. I usually just go out on a nature trail and enjoy myself. Whenever I think is a moment of happeness, I like to call it, I get out the camera and start taking pictures. I do other things to keep my mind at ease like working out and socializing with people over a beer. I also have an obsession with free diving and would swim a quarter mile out off shore with some fins and just stare at all the sea life Palm Beach has to offer on the corals. It’s a whole other world down there and it keeps my mind wandering with amazement.

This blog is a cluster fuck of ideas that I just need to play with and make this slowly develop. The idea of making this blog was to give you guys a story of a simple guy like myself facing the world at age 24. One year out of college, just quit his job and now has some money to finally do wanted he wanted to do. Go traveling and experience new things. Find myself and find the true meaning of why I am here and take pictures of my adventure. Show the reader the beauty of the world and a little of my own outlook on it. After I left my job I started to plan. The plan is as of right now to go to Thailand for two months and then Australia to land a job. I leave for Thailand December 5th and land in Bangkok. I plan on backpacking the whole thing alone and showing you guys a day by day (or maybe every few days) of the journey. Pictures will definitely be included. Speaking about pictures, let me show you so of my nature pictures that I take from time to time.

Here’s a picture of a little blue heron out in wetlands of West Palm Beach mid way in chomping down a fish in a puddle.

woodpeck

Pileated Woodpecker on slash pine.

deer

Curious doe

westpalmsky

Fire Sky out in West Palm Beach intercoastal

plant

Plant in the light

These are just a couple and I have a lot more that I’ll post from time to time. The paragraphs before were just a scramble of my life in the past year. No real detail or precise story, just frames of memory in my head typed in this blog. A certain look into my recent life a somewhat of a feel of what I’ve been going through, so I’m sorry if it is sloppy.

The world is a beautiful place and too many times you have influences like your family and expectations that they want to see in you. They want you to take a path that has already been paved an easy route to a destination that you already know. They get concerned when you start walking a wobbly line. Veering side to side to slowly getting off that paved road. Pestering you to stay on track or else you’ll get lost. Sometimes though in life you need to get lost to be found and find something that you would have never known unless you strayed from the road. Go into the woods and explore a world that you only saw from the window of your car. There is fear and there is uncomfortableness in these woods, but with this lies opportunity and life lessons you will need in order to be successful. A new route that will be formed and a beaten path that people might respect and dare to take. Be yourself and follow your heart. Let know one tell you what to do. Listen to people and hear what they have to say, but in the end the world is yours and go find your destiny. Come with me on my journey and let me show you the world through my eyes. Starting now sitting in my apartment in West Palm Beach typing this, to going to Thailand to with an open mind. I have been a bird trapped in a cage with restraints and now I am free and will start to learn how to fly.