1660 miles and 3 loads of laundry: Evan's conclusions

Hello all, one last post before we come home tomorrow!

Dinner Service in the Delta
A few dinners have been pretty ridiculous in the Mekong delta. When you walk into a restaurant and you're the only westerner they serve all month, they make it their mission to tend to your every dining need, as if we were royalty or something. Can't they see we've only done laundry 3 times this trip? Of course, they speak either no English or poor English, which may be worse. Several times, our dinner has turned into a them micro-managing our dinner table, making our dinner both hilarious at how over-the-top their food service is, and annoying because I can barely drink my beer.

Here's how it goes: we arrive, and the staff jumps into a flurry of action, finding a place for us to sit, getting us menus (which only sometimes have some english words), rearranging the table so there are the right number of plates, napkins (wet and frozen, to be more refreshing?), chop sticks, etc, which usually takes a team of 4 waiters. It' like they're being timed or something, like one of those race car teams that change the tires. wow. First we try to order two beers, usually Tiger. They say ok, then expect us to have our order ready. I usually take a little time to read a menu before ordering, but usually you can't get them to leave until you've made a full order. Some things are easy to mime (anybody want to play Cherades when we get home? we're well practiced) but 'give me a minute to think about the menu' doesn't seem to work for them. So we end up making a quick decision of what to eat, and soon we have two beers, which they put in a glass with ice. While other waiters are tending to other people, we usually have one dedicated to us, just kind of leering maybe 10 feet away, waiting to take care of us if we show the slightest need. If you're beer is more that 1/4 of the way down, the waiter will rush in and fill it up for you. Then, every 10 minutes or so, he/she will come in, pick out the big ice cube in your beer, and replace it with a new big ice cube. Where's the logic in that?? All the ice is the same temperatue! Food comes, and probably 65% of the time it's what you thought you ordered. If your plates aren't arranged in the correct fashion while you're eating, they'll come in and fix it for you. Sometimes, we think everything is cool, they'll just come by for a little rearranging session and 'fix' things, maybe for better Fung Shui or something. If you place your spoon on the table cloth, they'll probably come by and place it resting on your plate. At one point, we had a waiter come by, see the two plates of food in the middle of the table, which we were sharing, and simply switch their places, as if the other way was better. Really???? All of this kind of makes me want to scream. And, when you look around, nobody else gets this treatment- the locals get what I would call normal service.

Sorry for the rant, but it's been a recuring theme lately, on the border between funny and ridiculous.


Conclusions
So, here we are, in Saigon, leaving tomorrow for home. Not to get too philosophical, but of course this is the time when you think of the trip as a whole. Did we really just bike 1660 miles through Asia? Aside from all the culture, sights, and people met, I think the biggest conclusion to take away from this trip is that you don't really know what you can do until you push yourself to do things like this. I had this idea 2 years ago, but didn't really want to tell people for fear of committing myself to something I wasn't ready for. I had this crazy idea, tenatively planned to do it, then we found ourselves getting on a plane with our old mountain bikes after graduation, not knowing really what was in store for us. It seemed kind of surreal leaving on an adventure like this, not really knowing what you're getting into, but you're sure it's going to be interesting whatever the outcome. Some people when they heard our plan thought it sounded scary- land mines, jungles, crazy animals, traffic, people who were once in a war with America, and riding around on a bike that's worth a year's salary. But what we found, especially when 'off the beaten track', was quite the opposite. People are almost always nice. I didn't feel threatened once, even when walking around at night in the cities. Not once did I feel any anti-American attitudes. Usually they were surprised and exctited to just talk to us, and ask and share about life in other countries. Even when we shared absolutely no words with the locals, you can still share some laughs, and maybe a drink- the farther out there you get, the more interesting you are to each other. They are still people, curious about other people, just like us.

After all of this, I have to say that if you've got a crazy plan, don't be scared to put yourself out there and try it. If you rely on the friendly locals, you're flexible, you can figure things out on the fly, traveling off the beaten track is an interesting way to see places. Just smile a lot and people will like you.

What's next? We've talked a lot about what could be the next big adventure, so I'm sure you'll hear about it when it happens. Anybody have a good idea??

If you followed this blog all the way through, thanks for reading as we try to write down some of the things we experience. We especially enjoyed reading comments left on our blog, as notes from friends at home are always nice to hear when traveling.


What now?
Now, I plan on going home and eating a lot of blueberry pie.

Take care,

Evan