Saigon is a unique place – different from other cities in Southeast Asia and even different from anywhere else in Vietnam. As has been documented by almost every visitor to the city, the proliferation of motorbikes is unreal, far beyond anywhere in Thailand or China because automobiles are generally limited to use as taxis or shuttles.

Here are some more of my favorite quirky things in Saigon:

Electrical work: the photos below are similar to what you see in parts of Cambodia or Thailand, but again the sheer VOLUME you can find in Saigon is unlike anything in other places.

Typically, the repair work on these lines is done by an electrician who climbs the post then sits on the bundles of wire while he works on one of them.

“Don’t throw anything away.” As much as that may apply to food and a predilection for salvaging trash, the best example I have is this apartment building, built on top of an old A-frame brick house. They didn’t even plaster over it to LOOK like the rest of the building.

European architecture. While much of the city is filled with typically compact, narrow buildings you find elsewhere in Vietnam, there are some buildings that still show the French influences. Churches, the Reunification Palace and several of the historic hotels showcase European style.

This:

Oktoberfest: The last quirk to share (for this edition) is the revelation that one of the biggest parties of the year (other than Tet, the celebration of the new year) is Oktoberfest. Massive celebrations in some of the city’s hotels and German restaurants occur every year.

That’s enough for now. Do you have any favorite quirks or aspects you love about Saigon? Share them in the comments below.

I expected to see kangaroos, but I didn’t expect to see dozens of them hopping around in the open fields. At the entrance, they offered bags of feed that I assumed I would toss to animals behind a moat or rock enclosure. Instead, the kangaroos hop right up to you and eat out of your hand.

I ate a kangaroo steak a few days later and didn’t let the cuteness slow me down too much.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from that visit:

Tuoi Tre News

I wrote a little expat piece while I was still living in Vietnam. It was great because it was published in Vietnamese in their print edition, as well as in English and Vietnamese on their website. It’s just a little perspective about the introduction of more fast food chains to Vietnam, specifically Saigon, which currently has fewer than any major urban area I know of. It is probably the most heavily populated country in the world without a McDonald’s or a Starbucks.

Here’s a link to that article:

http://tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/city-diary/fast-food-fixation-1.56013

If anyone wants to read it in Vietnamese, let me know in the comments and I’ll dig up a link.

Indie Travel Podcast

For their podcast on travel to Brazil for Carnival, Craig and Linda Martin included an interview with me about my experiences at Carnival, which included actually getting into costume to participate in the annual Samba parade.

I once swore this photo would never be seen, but what the Hell. And honestly, I am straight.

Here’s a link to their site and some photos. I definitely recommend subscribing to their exceptional podcast while you are there.

http://indietravelpodcast.com/brazil/carnival-rio-de-janeiro/

And for more on Carnival, I wrote a blog post about my experiences a couple of years ago, when I was just starting this site. You can catch up on that one here:

http://freedoniapost.com/2010/02/7-things-i-learned-from-being-in-the-rio-carnival-parade/‎

Until I have photographic evidence to share, I’ll hold off on deeper exploration of the quirks of the city and jump into what I consider the most enjoyable primer on Vietnam you can find. About three years ago, the hit BBC series Top Gear came to Vietnam. The adventure that followed managed to hit almost all of the wonderful elements of this country.

For those who aren’t familiar with Top Gear (i.e. most Americans), the show is a car show but not some drab, boring review detailing engine power and body style. They do get into those topics, but  typically do it in the context of humorous challenges, such as the time host Jeremy Clarkson tried to outrun and outmaneuver a Challenger 2 tank with a Range Rover Sport. Or the time he raced a marathon runner across London during rush hour.

Anyway, for their Vietnam special it’s no cars, but all challenge and pretty much all comedy. In this 75 minute special, they highlight all that is odd, all that is wonderful, all that is frustrating and all that is beautiful in this country.

To avoid spoiling the humor like a Hollywood movie trailer would, I’ll be purposely vague here.

Using the standard mode of conveyance in Vietnam, the trio of hosts is tasked with traveling the length of Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh City to Ha Long Bay. It’s no small feat to travel 1000 miles in 8 days, especially during rainy season.

Their journey takes them through the major icons of Vietnam – Saigon, DaLat, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue and Hanoi. Along the way they eat Vietnamese food, including a shot that features a still beating snake heart. Well, most of them do. The closest host Richard Hammond gets to eating Vietnamese food is a bowl of Rice Krispies.

Even better than the everyday challenges the group faces on their way up through the nation is their tendency to screw with each other along the way.

After all of their struggles, humor, relaxation and more than an occasional rainstorm they end up in Ha Long Bay in one of the most beautiful places on earth. And when I say end up IN Ha Long Bay, I mean it. Their final challenge is to get to a bar on one of the floating villages in the aquatic paradise, reminiscent of the atolls of the film WaterWorld (you’re forgiven if you don’t remember the details of that film).

Anyone who wants to visit Vietnam, or just wants to laugh, should check this special episode out. It’s a nice way to get an overview of the country’s varied landscape as well as a hint of the people, food and traditions. It’s available on DVD, iTunes, Netflix and elsewhere. If you’re looking for it, it’s Series 12, Episode 8 but a search on Top Gear Vietnam should get you there, as well.

While traveling, I’ve often whined about things that didn’t go the way I’d planned. There’s a tendency to dramatize the impact of unfortunate things that happen in our lives to make for a compelling story.

This is a stark reminder that there’s a huge difference between inconvenience and tragedy.

If you’d like to donate to those in need, you can do so here: http://www.redcross.org.nz/2011christchurchearthquake

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The hostel had posted notices looking for people to help clear “wilding conifers.” I honestly had no idea what that meant, but with a few days to spare in Queenstown I jumped at the chance. It included a free ride to the top of the mountain via cable lift and a free lunch, so it sounded like fun as well as a chance to help out the community.

My impression was that we would be clearing dead brush to prevent forest fire potential, which is a common practice in Los Angeles. The reality was the complete opposite. We would be killing and chopping down as many trees as we could.

What the hell kind of environmental effort is THAT?

Quite a significant one, as it turns out. Like Australia, New Zealand suffers when the wrong flora and fauna is imported. With few natural predators, some species will grow uncontrollably.

In the case of Queenstown, the culprit is Douglas fir. Originally brought to the city 100 years ago to provide inexpensive material for lumber and firewood, the trees quickly took hold in the fertile soil and began to take over. Creating a thick cover of forest, the trees kill everything native to the environment underneath. With dozens of seeds in each pinecone, hundreds of pinecones in each tree and thousands of trees, they spread quickly and it’s been a constant battle to save the region’s original inhabitants.

Much of the forest has already been given up as lost, so the trees are left because of the difficulty of removing thousands of full grown trees from the mountains and hillsides.

We were charged with clearing a border area to prevent the trees from spreading further. Each area in a border zone needs to be cleared at least every 5 years to prevent new growth from maturing and extending the forest, killing more of the local vegetation.

Most of the effort is not unlike weeding a garden. Small fir sprouts that have just begun to grow can be pulled completely from the ground. Larger trees that have been around for a few months can trimmed off at the base with clippers.

Finally, there are some trees that were missed on the last go round that have now matured enough that they require axes and saws. That was where I focused most of my attention, in full lumberjack mode. In a bit of Paul Bunyan bravado, I considered it my personal mission to attack the trees no one else could bring down.

We worked for several hours, with bits of rain occasionally hampering our efforts. Finally, after lunch it started coming down in buckets so we called it a day and headed back to town.

Not a bad way to spend a morning.

BUT. Now I’m in New Zealand, in the acclaimed “adrenaline capital of the world” where skydiving, bungy jumping, luge and dozens of other activities are a part of daily life.

I decided to jump out of a plane for two reasons – first, I did it as a cultural experience – it’s just the thing to do when you’re in Wanaka, New Zealand. Second, the views in the brochures were amazing.

Yes, I risked my life because I thought it would look pretty.

I booked a jump with Skydive Wanaka, one of the most heavily promoted attractions in the Wanaka and Queenstown areas. They had a good reputation and the photos were top notch. They also offer a 15,000 foot skydive, which is one of the highest available (there is an 18,000 foot dive at the Franz Josef glacier area).

The facility is located a few miles outside of Wanaka with views that are stunning even from the ground. High mountains, clouds and blue sky created a beautiful backdrop to start the day.

First up – the safety video, which also acted as a sales pitch for the photo and video package. Once that’s done, you get to choose the soundtrack for your video (if you’re having one shot).

After getting into the jumpsuit and harness, I got to meet the guy who was going to have me as a 180 pound strap-on, Jon.

“Is this your first dive?” he asked.

“Yep, yours too?” As you may have guessed, my dorky sense of humor stays intact even in the face of certain doom.

We chatted about friends from Los Angeles who skydive and he told me he had worked for a while in California at some of those same facilities.

Obviously no anxiety had set in yet. The others preparing to dive weren’t quite so lucky. Each of us had our own photo/videographer who was following the day’s journey. One young German was being interviewed and held his hand up to show the camera – if you had put a cocktail shaker in his hand, you’d have had a perfect martini.

We climbed into the little plane and took off from the facility’s airfield.

The flight itself was fantastic. Unlike a passenger airline, the plane doesn’t travel in a generally straight line. It just circles in tight little rings. Up and up and up like climbing a spiral staircase to Cloud City, with views that get better with each rotation.

Two of the women on the flight were hopping off at 12,000 feet. Up rolled the airplane door and as though they were being evicted by Noah, they got ejected two by two. We then had to put on oxygen masks because the air gets a bit thin above that elevation.

3,000 feet more and we were ready to rock. My ears were popping, the door on the plane opened up revealing nothing but sky for nearly 3 miles beneath, yet I still wasn’t nervous. I don’t say that to act all macho – I think it’s just confirmation of all those claims that I’m an emotionless void.

I was fully linked up to my dive partner by now. The photographer pushed out of the plane’s roll-up door ahead of us and dangled from the side of the plane, holding onto the rail on the exterior of the hull.

We slid forward until I was sitting on the edge of the aircraft. Here’s where some emotion leaked in. It wasn’t fear, so much as a feeling of “holy fuck, this is actually happening.” Before I could think of anything further, out we went.

The first part was the most intense. End over end, toppling with no ability to get your bearings. My stomach turned like it was the craziest roller coaster ever and, not for the first time, I wondered what would happen if I puked on the way down. Where would it land? Or would it just blow back toward me like spitting into the wind?

But within a few seconds, the guide chute deployed and we were in freefall. I had two sensations during that 90 seconds of uncontrolled submission to gravity: it’s really windy when you’re falling at 200km per hour and damn, it’s cold!! Temperature drops 5.4° F for every 1000 feet you climb, so there’s a decline of 80 degrees from the ground temperature to the point of the jump.

Time distortion made the 90 seconds seem to last for 5 minutes on the way down. I mugged for the camera a few times, the chute deployed and we started a slow, gradual tour of the area gliding gently with the wind.

Jon showed me how to control the direction of our descent by pulling the chute cables so we did a bit of zig-zagging and took in the scenery for the final few thousand feet.

It was a clear wind-free day, so we had a gentle landing although we came in at too much of an angle to pull off the feet first, stud landing that would have gotten us style points. Instead we slid across the ground and came to a stop right in front of the photographer.

The package include a fully edited video, featuring the songs I had selected. They have a list of approved songs – fortunately I found three of my favorites to include.

Enjoy! You can skip ahead to 2:30 or so, if you want to skip the preamble and get to the dive.

It’s honestly not something I would have thought to do if I had been left to my own planning without their input. As a lifelong hater of snow and cold, I’m not sure I would have seen the appeal. However, after our chat, I started to look into it and it did look like an amazing experience.

There are two main glaciers set up as hiking experiences for tourists – Fox and Franz Josef, which are fairly close to each other on the south island of New Zealand.

I think I chose Franz Josef because Fox reminds me of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.

Next up is to choose which hike. There are a few different companies with a few different offerings. The basic breakdown is: half-day hike, full day hike or the helihike, which includes a copter ride over the glacier, a landing on the top and a short hike around that area.

My first inclination was to shell out the cash to do the helihike, but I changed my mind for a couple of reasons. The expense was one. It would have been worth it to see the stunning views from above, but knowing that I would be paying a ton of money to skydive a couple of days later, I decided to only splurge once. Second, I wanted a longer, more in-depth experience. The helihike only lasts a couple of hours.

So I chose the full day hike. More to see, more to do and a bit of a physical challenge.

The day starts out pretty early, meeting at 8:15. A bit of a pain because few of the restaurants and coffee shops open up before 8, so making breakfast in the hostel is the way to go. I did find one place open at 7:30, so I wolfed down eggs and toasts to have enough strength for the day ahead.

The first hour or so is spent getting equipment. The tour company gives you overpants, rainjacket, boots, crampons, hat and gloves. I was fortunate that I only needed the boots and crampons – it was a sunny late summer day, so the rest of the stuff was in my bag “just in case” but never used.

After a bus ride to the national park, the hike carries through the woods and river bed for a few kilometers.

Distances are incredibly deceptive when you look at the glacier. What looks like a half mile walk is actually over a mile because of the scale of the thing. It’s like being in Las Vegas and thinking “oh, look, the Stratosphere is right there!” and then ending up walking for 3 miles.

Once we got onto the ice, we put the crampons on, our guide giving us lessons along the way. How to walk uphill, how to walk downhill, how to walk up steps, using a ropeline. Whatever was necessary.

As we walked, the guide told us little bits of trivia about the glacier: e.g. did you know there are over 3000 glaciers of varying size in New Zealand? But most of his time was spent using his pickax to chop steps or smooth out the walking surface.

There are a number of guided groups that go out, a few minutes apart, and they try to organize them into levels of fitness and experience. Advance scouts check the ice along the way for stability and establish the basic path first. The more fit groups then take the lead and their guides chop out basic steps. Each guide who follows makes the step bigger/wider/smoother for the groups that come behind so the groups in the rear ultimately have the easiest time of it, but get the same experience.

Some key things I discovered along the way:

• What looks like rock and mountain is actually ice covered in rock and dirt.
• Waterfalls and streams abound throughout the glacier area – it’s amazing to look down a 30 foot crevice and see water flowing underneath.
• The blue ice is actually blue – it’s not just a photographic trick for the brochures.
• It wasn’t very cold. With the exertion, I was warm all day long. Granted it was still summer so I’m sure winter would be a very different situation.

We made it to a level area about halfway up the glacier by 1pm, essentially setting up camp on the top of a frozen waterfall. After lunch, we turned and headed back down with the heat of the midday sun turning more and more of the ice into water. Small streams formed everywhere, but with ice that is hundreds of meters thick and a couple of kilometers across, there was never any concern with the whole mess suddenly collapsing.

All total – 7 miles of hiking, 1500 feet of elevation gain. Not a walk in the park, but it’s definitely something a person with even moderate fitness can do.

Craig didn’t lie – this was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. And the blisters from those godforsaken boots might actually last even longer than the memories.

If you are interested, many more photos are available in my Franz Josef Flickr gallery.

However, having come from one beach country after another, the mountains and rough terrain of the South Island were definitely to my liking.

One of the prime attractions near Greymouth is Pancake Rocks, its nickname derived from they layered rocks which give it an appearance of stacks of pancakes.

The interaction of water and land make this more than just a marvelous sight, it’s a full sensory experience. Blowholes shoot water and mist high into the air, carved pools roar with waves that run through them, creating an echo effect that sounds like a freight train.

It’s all the fun of a water park without kids peeing in the water.

A bit further down the highway, I was hoping I had found an actual kiwi in the wild, but this little guy was a weka, another flightless bird native to the country. There were several of them along the way, poking around the rest stops. And, true to the road signs, they do indeed waddle across the highway oblivious to oncoming cars.

One of the biggest challenges of driving the west coast is deciding when and where to stop to take photos. Every kilometer offers stunning views – you just need a little patience to wait for the sun to make its way across the sky. As an early riser, I blew a lot of photos by passing by too early.

The Top 10 camping site in Greymouth was only steps from the beach. Unlike the sandy beaches of other parts of New Zealand, this was filled with small rocks, all smoothed by the constant crash of waves on the shore.

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This post is supporting the efforts of Blog4NZ, a blogging effort to promote tourism in New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake. The country’s sights and attractions are open and ready for your visit.

The ferry is an adventure in and of itself.

As is my usual way of doing things, I showed up more than 2 hours early for my 10:25 trip. Lucky me, I got there just as they were closing up the ship for the 8:25 ferry. The attendant asked if I’d like to go early and I jumped at the chance.

I know what you’re thinking – why didn’t I just book the 8:25 ferry in the first place? You really don’t know me, do you? If I had, I would have been there at 6. It’s a vicious cycle, sometimes culminating in my leaving a destination before I’ve even arrived. Yes, I’ve actually arrived so early to places that it constitutes time travel.

Moving on.

The Interislander Ferry is not only convenient, it borders on luxurious. With cafes, tv viewing rooms, wifi, a movie theater and VIP lounges, it makes the 3 hour journey go by in no time, even for frequent users.

But for a first timer, the real attraction is the scenery. The ship has viewing areas in its cafes with giant picture windows, although most venture into the elements to watch the coast from the 10th level, which is open to the sky.

The actual gap between islands is pretty small, so you’re never without a view while you travel. The first 30 minutes or so takes you out of Wellington Harbor, the rest offers views of the South Island coast and then Marlborough Sound as you wind through the waters to Picton.

The views are wonderful and once you leave Wellington, the land appears to be largely untouched other than the occasional boat or remote home.

While touring New Zealand in a vehicle has a lot of wonderful advantages, I rank this experience high on the list. It’s not something I would have done if I had flown from Wellington to Christchurch.

And, best of all? Last on, first off. Sometimes it pays to be so early that you’re late.

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P.S. This post is supporting the efforts of Blog4NZ, a blogging effort to promote tourism in New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake. The country’s sights and attractions are open and ready for your visit.

P.P.S. The title of this post has nothing to do with the content, but it was the only silly pun I could come up with.