All Sides of the Border

There’s no doubt that immigration is one of the main issues in the 2016 US Presidential Election, if not the main issue. The Trump campaign kicked off with the unusual idea of building a wall on the Mexican border,  and the resulting dumpster fire has routinely dehumanized of immigrants and refugees. Immigration is also a divisive political topic throughout Europe, especially the Brexit-ing UK, and as far as Singapore. I won't rehash all the notable anti-immigration rhetoric, but I'll just leave here this gem from Fox News displaying their nuanced understanding of Chinese immigrants.

There’s certainly no lack of pro-immigration champions. We have all sorts of arguments for taking in immigrants: they add value to our economy and actually create jobs, they bring in new ideas and cultures, that America has always been a country of immigrants, that it's the compassionate option. If you want a collection of pro-immigration arguments and stories, go no further than Define American created by Jose Antonio Vargas.  However, I find some of these arguments fundamentally flawed and not unified, inadequately voicing a cohesive basic reason for supporting immigration.

I am not writing a policy piece – in fact I really don’t intend this to be political. I just want to lend an international perspective to reframe a dialogue that frankly nauseates me.

As a child of immigrants to America, I have seen much of the American immigrant experience. As an American who has spent 5 years of adulthood living outside the country, I have also seen much of the American emigration experience, which I call (controversially) the expat experience. This piece explores the staggering differences between those two experiences.

In western countries, assimilation is the go-to word in expected immigrant behavior. Assimilation is about adapting your language, choices and activities to fit those of the people around you – you know, changing everything about you. Immigrant children are expected to go to local schools. Eyebrows can raise up when immigrants gather for group cultural activities, whether it's prayer at a mosque, a Chinese lion dance or a cricket game. There are no shortage of stories of Americans feeling uncomfortable in the presence of people speaking other languages, even starting confrontations. The phrase “go back to your country” has likely been uttered angrily to an immigrant, or maybe just a visible minority, a dozen times since you began reading this.

I wish there was good data on ex-patriates and their language skills, but I am not aware of such data. In lieu, I have my personal anecdotes from travels. I’ve met lots of impressive multilinguals, particularly in Beijing and Tokyo, but I’d argue that in no major city do a majority of expats successfully learn the local language. The percentages get a lot higher outside the major cities, but even in the smallest villages, I’ve met expats piss poor in the local language. 

Hong Kong is a particularly extreme example - as a former British colony, English is an official language and still dominates in higher education and the professional world. Among places in Asia, only in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore do westerners put less effort into learning local languages. In my 4+ years in Hong Kong, I met two people who learned Cantonese from scratch to a proficient level. And I met a lot of people. The overwhelming majority of foreigners possess a core vocabulary of "hello, left, right, thank you, shrimp dumpling." 

In Hong Kong there is no shortage of 15+ year long expat veterans who cannot converse in Cantonese. There is no shortage of people born and raised in Hong Kong to western parents who could not converse in Cantonese – I’ve met easily 100 people in this demographic and not one was fluent. The Kadoories, one of Hong Kong’s oldest and richest families, no longer speak Cantonese. Western children are expected not to go to local schools, even though Hong Kong’s education system is great. Very often they’re multilingual in French or German or Mandarin, able to communicate to anyone but the people around them. A Swedish coworker who had been in Hong Kong for 7 years without speaking Cantonese explained unironically of his resentment for Iraqi refugees in Sweden, who lived in enclaves for years without learning Swedish.

The game is pretty rigged for English speakers all over, even in places without direct colonial legacies. There are English announcements in all the subways of Asia, from Tokyo to Bangkok to Changsha, as if there is some UN decree. Nowhere in America are there even Spanish announcements. I literally spoke English every day I spent in Asia and never once did I worry about making people uncomfortable. Often I’ve been that American engaged in loud uproarious English conversation with friends on the public subway, and not once has anyone dared complain or told me to go back to my country. Expats abroad party hard, even when local cultures that don’t, and easily engage in drugs, even when local laws heavily criminalize them. Many expats work for years on tourist visas - not once have I heard an expat referred derogatorily as an illegal immigrant.

The truth is that becoming an expat is a bestowment of privilege. You are assumed to be an educated professional and granted an amount of freedom to make yourself comfortable. The assumption of a white collar  job isn’t necessarily true – there's this white minibus driver in Hong Kong. And experiences may differ by place and ethnicity - many parts of Asia are deeply racist and sexist - but I think most expats will agree that their social status elevated after moving abroad. The reverse experience is precisely the opposite. A non-westerner moving to a western country knowingly engages in a stripping of privilege, often profiled as a job stealer or an uneducated migrant, regardless of background.

You might think now that I wrote this to excoriate expat behavior. Not at all. I was an expat, and I took full advantage of my privilege in Hong Kong.  In fact I mean to paint the picture of immigrants to the west in a sympathetic light. It’s easy to judge an immigrant for their lack of assimilation, their inexplicable clinging to their old country ways. But until you try, you might have no idea how hard it is to assimilate. How hard it is to learn the local language. How hard it is leave your culture behind, how greatly you desire to keep doing the activities that have always made you happy. I lived as an American in Hong Kong, where I have direct ancestry, for four years and I wasn’t close to assimilating. I wasn’t even on the path to assimilation – I could have lived there for 40 years and I would not have enjoyed drinking hot water like a local, I would not have watched TVB programs like a local, and I would not have stopped calling in sick on Super Bowl Monday. I think there’s nothing wrong with that. Sure, I wish that more expats in Hong Kong could be more engaged in local affairs, but I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with a society that has diverse groups of people happily doing their own thing.

So if you’re a citizen of a western country and discussing immigration, please consider the following tenets. Understand the degree of difficulty. Embrace the diversity. Check your fucking privilege. Try to accept immigrants not because they add to the economy, or because you live in a country of immigrants – because this doesn’t excuse discrimination against immigrants who don’t add to the economy or excuse countries without a legacy of immigration. Try to accept immigrants because they are humans, and any one coming with good intentions should be welcomed. On a global issue like migration, we cannot narrow our focus to how it affects us in our little part of the world.  We need to be cognizant of the underlying causes that motivate people to make dangerous and difficult journeys to dangerous and difficult lives in a strange country. We need to address an imbalance where an American college graduate can jump into an upper middle class lifestyle teaching his/her native language in Korea while an Ivorian man with a Master’s degree scrapes by driving taxis in New York. At the end of the day, it really shouldn’t matter where you are born. And yet it matters so, so much. Can we try to push this world in a better direction?

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Asian Calmination - Cambodia

Cambodia

I was excited to cross the border. Besides Hong Kong to Shenzhen, real land crossings have been missing from my life. The process didn't meet expectations though, with lots of waiting time in no man's land and no interesting bits, save the exchange of crisp US dollars. In Cambodia, the ride was very rural until suddenly crossing the Mekong River, urban Phnom Penh arose with little warning. My hostel, 19 Happy House Backpacker, was a couple blocks away from our dropoff point, at #59 Street 13. A wrong turn and a dozen blocks later, I was lost with the early afternoon sun really weighing down on me and my red backpack. When I finally reached the hostel, the staff could not find my booking. Minutes of awkward confusion later, I realized I was at Happy Backpacker, a separate establishment. I circled around even more confused, as Street 13 was somehow between Street 15 and Street 5. I came across #60 Street 13, which was some Malaysians' home. Malays speak English which is great, but they had never heard of Happy House Backpacker despite my protests that it must be next door. Some venting later, I kept walking down the street and finally saw the sign for 19 Happy House several blocks away. I learned the hard way that street numbers have absolutely no meaning in Cambodia.

Spark - eccentric establishment

My first night in Phnom Penh included pickup ultimate with the young athletic Swa players on a barebones mini turf pitch, followed by many beers at a concert hall/beer hall/replica Italian plaza/microbrewery/cafeteria called Spark (complete with sinks specifically designed for pukers in the bathroom) with Asian Ultimate legend Jared Cahners. I learned that the fellow Newton native has been living in and out of Asia since the 1990s, coming to Cambodia for his PhD but quitting shortly before we met, and had various histories of fluency in Mandarin, Vietnamese and Khmer. In between, I met a Japanese/Chinese/Thai Wellesley College graduate Clinton Global Health employee looking for someone to analyze malaria data, a Peace Corps volunteer and some of the pioneers in Cambodian ultimate. I always enjoy entering a new city and observing the makeup of the economy, and the makeup of the foreign population.  Throughout Asia, English teachers abound, but in Cambodia I met many aid workers/NGO veterans. This influx gives Phnom Penh a distinctly non-traditionally Asian feel. The downtown is awash in bars and pizza/Chinese food joints with stories traded in English and French.

I didn't have the best time in Cambodia. Everywhere I felt like locals were constantly trying to fleece the last buck out of me, and it really wore me down. Sure, this vibe was prevalent in all the former communist countries I visited (Vietnam and Laos) but most evident in Cambodia.  Ironically, while I attribute communism for the uninspiring aspects of Cambodia, a better understanding of the rise of communism is my best takeaway from the country. While Phnom Penh dates back to the 15th century, and was called the Pearl of Asia in the 1920s, it doesn't feel like an old city. The French and the Communists had left a grid of dusty and sweaty streets, old architecture too rundown to exude any colonial charm and a skyline dotted by a handful of uninspired modern high rises. There are some golden Wats scattered throughout the city and a major boulevard with a pretty monument in the center, but it struggles to compare to the temples of neighboring Thailand. And though I did not find Khmer cuisine bad per se, my palate was so well primed before and after in Vietnam and Thailand.

The ugly legacies of communist rule, and specifically the bloody genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, are thus still very tangible. The government was brutally anti-intellectual, killing most anyone with glasses, education or foreign language knowledge. The country's genocide caused the deaths of around a quarter of the population, an astounding culling of 8 million down to 6 million. When you lose an entire generation of cooks, architects, bureaucrats and writers, cultural devastation is inevitable.

I never really understood communism in history classes. We studied so much about its deleterious effects that it never made sense how such extreme practices took hold in the first place. I read Lenin in high school and Marx in college and still had no idea. But my second day in Phnom Penh involved visiting the Killing Fields outside the city, where hundreds of skulls are prominently shown, and the S21 school-turned-prison-turned-museum, which documents accounts of the atrocities that occurred there. Walking through history, I learned that Pol Pot as a frustrated failed man, who despite an education in France, rode a populist ideology that villainized the educated elite, foreign influences and minorities. The Khmer Rouge promoted rural ethnic Khmers as the backbone of Cambodian society, preaching self-reliant isolationism. If any of that sounds familiar and scary, reread what the regime did after they got into power and be even more scared.

I had planned to be in Cambodia for a brief two stops, before reaching Bangkok for an ultimate tournament. However I mistook the tournament to be a week earlier than it was, giving me another week to explore Cambodia. I'm not much of a beach person, but I figured a southeast Asian trip was incomplete without one, and so I ventured south to the resort town Sihanoukville. There awaited miles of pristine beach facing the Gulf of Thailand, and a bizarre mixture of expensive restaurants and hotels, dirt-cheap bungalows and hammocks, and a bunch of nothing in between.  Young Europeans who were lazing around the hostels for weeks on end seemed to outnumber any other demographic. They were apparently not my group, for in a backpacking rarity, I actively tried to  go out hard and have a good time and came out with no memorable stories whatsoever. Maybe it didn't help that I spent the day reading research papers in my air-conditioned bungalow and was looking for people with whom to discuss global income equality. Sorry I'm just not a beach person.

I quickly moved on to Kampot, a river town that was much more my kind of place. Just two hours away, the demographics could not be more different, with a local economy grounded on its famous pepper rather than tourism. The city's key attraction was an enormous durian sculpted into the middle of a major traffic circle. A conversation the previous day with friend John Johnson alerted me to an abandoned town between Kampot and Sihanoukville, but it was tough to verify on Google. Exploring a charming collection of expat-friendly riverside bars on the east side of the river, I found some seasoned expats engaged in academic research. I asked them about this abandoned town, and the expats enlightened me about Bokor Hill Station. One of them showed me the Google streetview, and pointed at himself standing next to a church. "I was there when the Google Earth guy was walking around with all the cameras!" I resolved to go the next day. 

Curious about the opposite riverbank, I explored a bridge closed to traffic and found a hole in the barrier, evidently used by pedestrians. I snuck over to the west side and found a decidedly more local scene. At an outdoor club blaring Khmer music, I ordered iced beer and cow entrails. On the way home, I passed by the durian, took one sniff of its imaginary scent, and threw up the entrails.

The next morning I was back on a motorbike for the first time since my Sapa fall. From a purvey of Googlemaps, the trip seemed like a 40 minutes straightshot on one major road. However at the 40 minute mark I reached the ticketed entrance to the mountain road, and I realized that the Hill Station was of course, up on a hill, and that Google hadn't quite charted that winding Cambodian mountain road. I drove up into the unknown, made a sharp turn around a bend and nearly fell off my bike. The mountain sloped into the Gulf of Thailand to the south, and the ocean winds crashed down unimpeded. The winds affected me mostly on the hairpin turns, when I slowed down dramatically. More daring motorcyclists zoomed past me on those turns, but I wasn't shamed out of braking - my nerve had left with my palm skin in the mountain gravel of North Vietnam. Finally I reached the top of the mountain, past the construction of a monstrous modern casino, a budding tourism park, some sanitation pump stations. Hiking up a grassy clearing, I found a solitary stone church. A bench that could have been lifted right out of Paris sat undisturbed in front. The church's stonework was definitely weathered, but otherwise everything was in remarkably good shape.  The doorway arch was doorless and I walked into an eerie interior. The multi-scripted graffiti covering the walls and the flower pots in front of religious statues reflected a dichotomy between disdain and worship. A small Jesus on the crucifix still hung overlooking it all, silently witnessing decades of good deeds and sins.

There were no explanatory plaques, but the area had been settled by the French in the 1920s, providing a cool getaway from the stuffy Phnom Penh. It was abandoned by the French twice, ultimately to the Khmer Rouge, and was even used by their remaining forces after a Vietnamese invasion overthrew the regime into the 90's. Now Cambodia has been stable enough that the area is being developed, and the ghost town may itself ghost away. The lack of historical preservation is understandably not a focus (any cultural preservationist would be busy further north), but it still saddens me that so many stories there go untold. With no public information, I had very nearly missed this site.

I had already spent way longer on this hill escapade, and hurried back, driving past the large abandoned Bokor Palace Hotel that was apparently even cooler. The ride down the steep mountain slopes was interminable and I couldn't wait to never drive a motorcycle again. Returning to Kampot in the late afternoon, I was stunned to learn that there were no more bus options returning to Phnom Penh. Turns out the start of the Chinese New Year affects commerce in Cambodia as well, and buses simply stopped operating. The Super Bowl was the next day and definitely watchable in Phnom Penh. Wikitravel did list one alternate form of transportation - car pool. And so I found a bunch of drivers and agreed to pay $20 USD to join an unknown number of people for the 4 hour ride to the capital. I waited in the park for 2 hours, and finally there were 3 other Cambodians joining. The sedan driver and I made 5, and as we hit the main road, I thought to myself this wasn't so bad - Wikitravel had warned that these carpools often crammed 7 into the same car. As soon as I counted myself lucky, our car slowed down and I had to scoot in for another passenger. And then we stopped again, and two woman were sharing the shotgun seat. As the 7 of us drove down the road, imagine my surprise when we slowed again. I shuddered to think of 5 of us fitting in the back, but instead the driver got out and then essentially sat on the new passenger's left lap. And the 8 of us in this clown car of a sedan made our way up to Phnom Penh for the start of the year of the monkey.

Watching the Super Bowl in a Texas-themed bar in Phnom Penh was an experience, but the game sucked and I moved on to take a minibus to Siem Reap. Here again I was a victim of Cambodian capitalism. The minibus was run by a minor agency and not easy to find, and my desperation at potentially missing the ride was showing when I asked a tuktuk driver for help. He ended up taking me for a $1 ride, and literally drove around the block back to where we started and pointed out the agency. Upon landing in Siam Reap, I luckily had saved my hostel location on Googlemaps and realized it was a 3 block walk. I was harassed by tuktuk drivers anyway, and I gave one the address as a test. A $1 ride would have been generous, but this guy brazenly asked for $5. I was more than willing to contribute to the local economy, but such shameless disrespect honestly infuriated me. I told him to fuck off and walked.

No place on my path was as touristy as Siam Reap. In contrast to the well ordered geometry of the nearby ancient sites, the modern city felt like a disorganized cantina of businesses clumped every which way to mine that tourism gold. Hotels and restaurants catering to tourists of all types face each other with services advertised in English, French, German, Chinese and Korean.

Hostel owners advised me it was possible to rent a bicycle at 5am. Indeed it was, but I had to jump over the locked gate of the hostel first. Though I'm not much of a morning person, I biked the 8 miles out of town and reached Angkor Wat an hour before sunrise. The classic view of Angkor Wat at dawn is usually taken in front of a lake, but a tenth of humanity was camped out on that spot. I thought I could take an equally impressive shot from a different angle, and jostled with a separate large group of people for position. I failed to capture any decent photos from the front, except perhaps this one of the crowds. I raced through the temple and tried to process everything. The palace was immense yes, but each column was still intricately carved, the stonework carefully laid. Statues and murals were so commonplace that negative space was a rarity.

Angkor Wat from the back

Nowhere was I more negatively affected by hype than here. I had heard so much of these ruins and even the previous night, a hostel mate had talked about the spiritual experience of witnessing the sun rise in Angkor Wat. In front of the building, surrounded by thousands of people, I did enjoy the bright hues of the morning sun...but I was not spiritually moved. Perhaps my favorite part of the experience was reaching the back of the complex, the sky still in the later stages of dawn, and looking out into the relative peace of the jungle. Whether I like it or not, preconceptions heavily influence my enjoyment, and it is no surprise that some of my favorite experiences on this journey were ones that I had no expectations of at all.

The whole set of ancient temple complexes is often collectively referred to as Angkor Wat, but Angkor Wat is only the biggest of the temples in the Angkor ruins (Angkor means capital city, Wat means temple). Angkor is undoubtedly the largest and most famous of the many temple ruins attractions in Southeast Asia (of which this trip included 2 others), all with a Buddhism-appropriating-Hinduism shared history. Dating primarily from the 12th century, the city is believed to have been the largest pre-industrial city in the world, spanning 390 square miles, before essentially being abandoned and lost to the jungle for centuries. Angkor Wat is so impressive, reaching the height of a 20 story building, and so revered, being the only building in the world to be featured on a national flag.

I biked over 40 miles that under that brutal Cambodian sun, stopping for coconut water whenever possible. I saw a temple in a marsh, a temple with a giant tree growing through it, and the temple that Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie had run through. By the early afternoon, I was unable to appreciate the ancient wonders around me - I had had my temple run.

There were plenty of temples I didn't get to on my one day of biking, but I didn't go back out the second day. Sure I felt bad, drinking beer in a cafe in the vicinity of some of the worlds' greatest treasures, but I was so tired it was a no-brainer of a decision. Even worse I was cognizant that my lack of appreciation of the temples was a product of my western education. I've learned enough about gothic arches and flying buttresses to admire European cathedrals, but I don't know the first thing to look at when staring at the Hindu/Buddhist temples. I don't know the difference between a temple dedicated to Vishnu or Rama, and the murals tell stories that make no sense to me. Clearly the course of action is to study this history, but I prefer to blast the parochial scope of my education. I explored the rest of Siem Reap that day, and was surprised to find a functioning town with some non-tourist economy, and a very touristy street creatively called Pub Street. Wandering through town, I got hassled nearly every block by a tuktuk driver offering to take me to the temples. Unable to find a respite, I walked straight to the bus station and bought a ticket to Bangkok the next day.

Asian Calmination - Vietnam

The giant red backpack is completely deflated. At its peak it bundled 30 odd pounds and imprinted its shoulderstraps onto my body.  Long hauls in bus hulls and nights on dirty hostel floors has bruised the polyester casing. Somehow it held up and protected my laptop, my clothes and my sanity over the many miles.

The longest trip I've ever taken feels very epic to me and my little world. By plane, train, boat, bus, motorbike or carpool, I made my way through the unfamiliar. I had my resolve tested deep in the jungle, survived hairy motorbike experiences, crossed five land borders, crashed an aviation annual gala, squished into a clown car, bathed an elephant, soared over the rainforest, drunkenly floated down a river, climbed a waterfall, prayed in an abandoned church and refreshed my trove of good stories. I ran into a college teammate in Bangkok, explored the best coffee shops in Luang Prabang and was offered jobs in Phnom Penh and Chiang Mai. I ate street food everywhere but miraculously never got food poisoning, or even had a calamitous toilet encounter.

I had been thinking about a trip like this for a while. I'd enjoyed traveling before I moved to Hong Kong, but 4 years in a great jumping off point fed a growing travel appetite. The more of the world I saw, the more of the world I realized remained to be seen.  Many cities were accessible by short flights, but plenty of fantastic less urbanized areas were beyond the reach of the weekend warrior. If I were to leave Asia, I had always planned on allowing for a lengthier trip to visit some off-the-path areas. And at the beginning of 2016, I made the decision to leave my job and make this trip happen. I targeted places I hadn't yet been able to visit, mainly Vietnam, but I didn't set a real itinerary. I had some vague routes that made geographic sense, but honestly had no end date set. Along the way I hoped to see cool sights, get off the b have fun, learn more about the world and global income inequality, visit friends, and also take "travel breaks" to learn the professional skills to transition to becoming a data scientist. I hadn't intended on this being a soul searching odyssey, but that happened regardless.

The trip weaved in and out of different phases. I departed Hong Kong for Hanoi on January 15, a week after my last day at work. I backpacked through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, while I was more of a digital nomad in Bangkok, Malaysia and Singapore. The portion in Xinjiang felt like a separate trip altogether, after which I embarked upon familiar lands for a friends seeing tour. I returned to Hong Kong on March 28 but continued living out of my luggage for another two weeks there before arriving in Boston (via San Francisco) April 12, making for 35 stops in 96 days. These three months were some of the best days of my life and I tried to never forget how lucky I was to have this whole opportunity.

I get some flabbergasted responses when I recount the whole expedition, as if the whole idea was nuts. I get some nonchalant nods as well - while this may have been my most epic trip, there are plenty of ultramarathon voyagers who sneer upon my measly wanderings.  Some of these expert travelers were great sources of knowledge and inspiration to me. These include Tim O'Rourke, long time Hong Kong expat who tried to bike from Darjeeling to Ireland through Pakistan and Iran in the early 90s, Dave Learn, the long time Shenzhen expat who traveled around the world for over two years, John Johnson, whose Instagram photos have a cult following, and Sam Axelrod, who needs no descriptive appositive.

Vietnam

The instant I landed in Vietnam, I became a millionaire, with more Dong than I knew what to do. I immediately caught an overnight train north to Sapa, a mountain village I had only heard about a few weeks before.  I was in a nervous daze the entire ride, arriving in the chilly darkness into a remote train station an hour away from the town. It wasn't until a local bus took me a main-squarish place that the discomfort eased off and discovery took over.

And I discovered that I'd picked a hell of a start. A simple walk out of town led into gorgeous green valleys with rice terraces carving up steep slopes. The clear weather provided an incredible backdrop to what was probably the most beautiful place on my entire itinerary.  I took a chill hike down the valley to neighboring villages, and on the way back up to the town, I stopped by a cliffside coffeeshop / bar. Sipping egg coffee and beers, I watched as the fog rolled in and out of the valley outside my window, evolving from one sensational view to another. It was as pleasant a beginning as I could ask for.

Sapa was part of a rural mountainous area settled by at least 6 distinct ethnic groups. While it was difficult for foreigners to reach during a long weekend, Sapa was well frequented by backpackers. I quickly began to learn the demographics that made up the southeast Asia, or Banana Pancake Trail, backpacking crowd. There were few professionals based in Asia like me, and far more students in a gap year or about to start work, mostly from Western Europe and Australia. Likely due to greater student loans and a less prevalent traveling culture, Americans were few and far between.

On my second day, I summoned the nerve to rent my first ever motorbike to visit some waterfalls an hour outside town. I immediately braked too hard and fell. I came out of that fall alright and quickly got a grip, and was soon exuberantly cruising along mountain roads. Then the road turned to gravel and I came to a patch mysteriously being hosed by a man. I braked before reaching the puddle and suddenly found my bike skidding and my hands hitting the gravel hard. Emergency thoughts rushed through my head. "Is this how it happens? Is this how people die in accidents?" Half a minute elapsed before I could feel sure that nothing was broken. The man with the hose helped me up and an old man raced down from the hill. He led me to his hut and placed my skinned palms into a bowl of water and watch the gravel sift out. My palms, the right one especially, had little remaining skin. I was wearing long pants, but they had torn apart and left my left knee pretty scraped. I had to get my bloody palms back on the handlebars and finish my ride to a waterfalls. Luckily when I returned to my guesthouse to patch up my wounds, a German couple there revealed themselves as nurses and helped dress my wounds. The damage on my right palm, while superficial,  hindered my ability to carry bags for another month.  The good start to my trip had turned bad quickly.

On my bus from Sapa to Hanoi, I had the luxury of choosing assistance from the Dutch nurse or the Australian medical student to redress my wounds. Hanoi was a hectic city, with its unordered motorcycle madness crazy even when compared to Chinese cities. In terms of crossing the street difficulty, Hanoi is to Beijing as Beijing is to New York City as New York city is to Random Little Town. Within that chaos however, I was able to find lots of chill time within the city's many interesting cafes. The coffee was so good, oh so good, and the food maybe even better.

I stayed in the city's Old Quarter, not far from the west lake with its giant tortoise. Unbeknownst to me, this tortoise died while I was in Hanoi, leaving only three of its species left (am I such bad luck?). The area breathed of the narrow alleyways and makeshift market places, organically winding streets free of the bird's-eye decrees of urban planners. There was plenty of griminess - Hanoi is still in a developing country, but it's a capital with an illustrious history. The Hoa Lo Prison, or the Hanoi Hilton, was despite its dark nature probably the most interesting place I visited in the city. Though the war is long over, the prison/museum is full of propaganda trying to convince viewers that the American prisoners loved it there. I had known enough about John McCain's imprisonment there during the Vietnam War to question these accounts. Though the museum walls now seemed harmless, they were just eerie enough for me to imagine the horrors of McCain's experience being dragged down the same corridors. It was more fun to imagine how Donald Trump might have fared had he not dodged the draft. 

The storied Halong Bay was next. I visited in January, way out of season, and the bright green water and clear blue skies that so many photos had hyped up were nowhere to be found. Both sky and water were generic shades of grey. I joined a two day one night cruise with an interesting cast of characters. People often ask me, "who is the craziest person you met on your trip?" I think it's difficult to uncover the depths of another's depravity until you really get to know them, which doesn't happen too much while backpacking. However on that cruise, there was an old white haired, white bearded American who probably last shaved during the Reagan administration. Upon boarding, he immediately inquired about weed, which endeared him to the younger backpackers. He soon got weird. He was in his 60's and had not been in the US in over 30 years because it was too sinful. He was a Bible Literalist, believing every single word to be divinely inspired, and actually withstood scrutiny of hypocrisy. Another American girl Brook talked about her last name Long and how cool it was that Long means Dragon in Vietnam, and that Halong itself means Descending Dragon. Bible Beard then spoke about how dragons were the flesh incarnate of the devil and how terrible it was for the Vietnamese to worship them. Talk about buzz kill. Luckily the tranquil seas and green islands of Halong Bay were fun enough overall to drown out Buzzkill Bible Beard and the grey skies.

Next up was Da Nang and Hue, and the memorable bus trip and aviation party which I've documented already. Hue was cool and palatial (Hue Forbidden City) and I could have spent more time there exploring, but instead I chose to escape the rain and drink. Da Nang might seem like a boring modern city, but I enjoyed the chance to see a functioning industrious side of Vietnam. From Da Nang it was a short ride to Hoi An, a charming old port city which had eschewed the modern commercial duties to Da Nang and emerged instead as a touristy lantern-lit ode to a historical era. I loved Hoi An and how the tight Chinese-Japanese-Vietnamese urban architecture intermeshed with the gorgeous river scene. Though the town was small, I could have wandered around those pedestrian alleyways all day. The trip was greatly supplemented by a long bike ride to the beach with a French girl I had just asked to take my picture, and another ride out from town to the Terracotta Park, a random museum with clay models of world wonders, which I had learned from Mya at the aviation party. The liberated joys of backpacking - meeting fellow travelers and finding hidden gems - reached new highs in Hoi An. 

This high was soon to crash down. Sometime on my next voyage, a 16 hour bus ride to the mountain coffee town Buon Ma Thuot, I lost my phone. I spent about 24 hours mostly feeling sad, but I fit in 5 delicious cups of coffee, observant walks through a tourist-free city economy, and a great goat meat dinner with a retired Canadian couple.

Skipping the resort city Dalat, I headed straight to Ho Chi Minh City to a new phone. I was lucky to be offered housing from Sam & Quentin Axelrod, though they were both out of town. Their US consular housing provided a pitstop of luxury, with AC, TV, gym, wifi and an immense jewelled tiger (that Sam loves and Quentin hates). I also was able to connect with some ultimate friends and a Georgetown classmate who based his startup there. I learned that Saigon, or HCMC, is a surprisingly great city for startups. For a city of its level of development and quality of life, the cost of living is bizarrely low (sidenote: its abundance of skybars are also an urban outlier). A steady local graduate corps of programmers are readily and affordably available, and several co-working spaces have sprung up to make HCMC a go-to spot for location independent workers.

I planned my days to involve at least 2 coffee outings, interspersed amongst tourist site visits. My 5 days in HCMC were chill, with sobering trips to the Cu Chi Tunnels, the War Museum, and Saigon's Chinatown. I went into the tunnels confused about how a rag tag underground (literally) bunch could beat the US army machine, but left with an idea of the terror any American soldier must have felt entering those narrow dark trap-filled death corridors. I went into the war museum prepared to deflect the Vietnamese propaganda, but left aghast and abashed. Even if the Agent Orange exhibit inside was incredibly exaggerated, the US atrocities during the war were unfathomable. I felt deep shame for my country and my ignorance of this event. The Chinatown experience was less sobering, but still war-related. I walked around District 5 and found my way into a housing estate where I heard Cantonese. In the courtyard, a pair of adjacent stalls sold dumplings and tea respectively. I sat down and awkwardly started a conversation with a 50 year old enjoying his lunch. His vernacular was odd, with an unfamiliar word to be found in every sentence. He used a formal term for a soldier's march in lieu of the verb for walking. He went on to describe how the whole area used to be in Chinese, and how 4 in 5 residents left during or after the war. I asked him why he stayed, and his calm demeanor belied the sadness of his answer. "Most of them died leaving. The Chinese people have forgotten us. Few Hong Kongers like you want to visit us. But it's ok, life is pretty good here."

The rest of my Saigon experience consisted of expensive drinks at skybars, to the extent where I nicknamed the city Skygon. My first country and main impetus for the trip surpassed my expectations. The pho, banh mi and coffee defied the laws of economics in their quality and price. The foods that hadn't been popularized worldwide, My Quang and Bun Bo Hue and Banh Xeo, rocked my world. I had tasted enough of the food and learned enough of the language that when I entered a Vietnamese restaurant in Bangkok weeks later, I felt surprisingly at home. There was never a dull moment outside either. Cars didn't own the roads and pedestrians didn't own the sidewalks. Everywhere the motorbike was king. The system seemed to be in a state of dynamic flux, never at any equilibrium but somehow never breaking down.

These Golden State Warriors

I don't write much about sports anymore, mostly cause I don't really have an interesting perspective to contribute. But I want to write about these 2015-2016 Golden State Warriors just because I want to. Many words have been written about this historic 73 win team who sadly will not be remembered as the best team ever because of their Finals loss. Despite that failure, what I find fascinating is how unique and well put together this team is, with so many players playing interesting roles. Before the championship disappointment, sportswriters were trying to rank this team among all timers. Unlike the showtime Lakers and the '86 Celtics, the Warriors are not stacked with all timers at every position. The Warriors are more flawed, with a real vulnerability in rebounding, than those teams and the Jordan Bulls, but more than make up with their incredible shooting prowess. This imbalance enhances the team's likability - they're less like the big playground bully and more like a kid that somehow always wins at rocks-paper-scissors.

Here's a breakdown of the players on the first non-Boston team I've ever cared about, and an ode to why their greatness should not be diminished:

Stephen Curry
When I fantasize about being a superstar basketballer, while being short, I basically imagine being Steph Curry. He has maximized the scoring potential of a 6'3" shooting guard, raising our peak expectations of the position from a Steve Nash or Allen Iverson. Not only is he the best shooter of all time, but he's so much better than the second best, shattering 3 point records in a ruthlessly Ruthian manner. But it's his amazing handle, the way he can get one step away from his defender who knows not to let him shoot, the way he drives to the hoop and makes difficult layups and floaters look automatic, and the flashy passes he delivers when teams overload on him and forget he's a true point guard. He's not perfect - Curry is sloppy, turning it over more than he should, and with his slight build he occasionally gets exposed on defense.  But with the way he was overlooked coming out of high school (3 star recruit!), going to the small conference Davidson, and even after scoring all those buckets in college (including 30 to knock out Georgetown) being drafted behind 4 guards, and spraining his ankle 5 times, Stephen Curry has overcome so much. Pablo Torre's article on how all his ankle rehab work has made him better post-injury made me realize just how hard Curry has worked. He is this incredible culmination of a phenomenally coordinated athlete with a naturally great shot and an insane work ethic. Through it all, he's managed a very likable mix of self-confidence and humbleness en route to winning 2 MVPs and becoming everyone's favorite player.

Klay Thompson
If Curry is an otherworldly shooter, Thompson is simply a best-of-this-world shooter. At 6'8", his highlight reel includes some blocks and dunks in addition to all those 3's. To have both these incredible shooters on the same team at the same time defies probability and implies that they've pushed each other to shoot better. They're both also sons of former NBA players and relatively unheralded coming out of high school. Klay was the 11th pick in the 2011 draft. Unlike Curry, who was famous as a freshman, I hadn't heard of Klay until the Warriors were starting to get good. When Klay gets hot, he gets really hot, with an insane record-breaking 37 point 3rd quarter this past year. He probably couldn't lead a team consistently like Curry does, but goodness is he deadly on this team.

Draymond Green
Listed at 6'7", Green somehow spends most of his time playing either the 4 or the 5, and among the Warriors starters, is the only good defender. He's the biggest mouth, the most boisterous, and the one with the biggest chip on his shoulder after getting drafted 35th coming out of Michigan State. He does so many incredible tasks on the court, from quarterbacking the defense to rebounding to incredible passing to making hustle players to draining 3 pointers. He was 2nd in the league with 13 triple doubles in the regular season. While his offensive efficiency is low for this team, Green is such a great glue guy that the Warriors really can't win without him. In some ways he's as unique a player as Curry and as important to the team, even getting 2 second place MVP votes this year.

Andrew Bogut
Do people remember that Andrew Bogut was a #1 overall pick? The Australian who played college ball in Utah was sorely missed in the last 2 Warriors losses. He never really fulfilled #1 pick expectations, but he didn't fail either, peaking at 15.9 points/game and 10.2 rebounds/game and 2.5 blocks/game in 2009-10. His stats look low this year as Bogut doesn't feature much in the Warriors' offense and isn't part of their lineup of death, but he does start for a reason. When Green plays on the wing, Bogut is their only real rebounder. His passing, picks and veteran savvy are very noticeable, and on the other side of the ball, Bogut is a main reason this team of shooters is well above average defensively.

Harrison Barnes
Barnes was the guy most valued coming out of high school, winning the Morgan Wootten award (top high school senior) and named a pre-season All-American at UNC before he even played a game. Two solid but not amazing college years had him drafted 7th onto this Warriors' team, where he's never been the major offensive threat. Barnes is the prototypical athletic slashing swingman, the kind of player who led most teams in scoring in the 2000's. He has updated his game for the era, transforming into a 39% three point shooter. So often he's the guy who gets buckets when the Splash Brothers' shots aren't falling. However Barnes played badly at the end of this finals, and he's probably the most expendable starting player of this team.

Andre Iguodala
I find Iguodala's story so compelling. Here's a great athlete who'd competed in the dunk contest, a no. 9 overall pick from Arizona who was once the star player with the Philadelphia 76ers. Touted as the AI to replace AI, Iguodala averaged 19.9 points for a mediocre team in 2007-08. Commentators noted though that if Iguodala was your best player, your team could never contend. Amazingly Iguodala may have listened, transforming his game from a volume shooter to an all-around player and defensive stalwart. The Warriors' fortunes really rose when coach Steve Kerr switched Iguodala with Barnes and let him come off the bench. He anchors their reserves, outclassing opposing bench players and his one-on-one defense frustrates great players, from Russell Westbrook to Kevin Durant to LeBron James. Furthermore, I have been so impressed by his incredible passes. A mediocre team has Iguodala as their best player, but a transcendent team has him as a 6th man. When Iguodala replaces Bogut in the lineup, he completes the Death Lineup, the small terrifying group who can all shoot 3's, making them immune to double teams. Iguodala has been so important to this team, and it's been amazing seeing him change from a ball hogging shoot-first guy into the consummate professional.

Shaun Livingston
Livingston's story is a bit like Iguodala's, a once highly-touted star athlete who has found himself as a valuable chess piece on this Warrior's bench. Livingston was the 4th pick of the 2004 draft coming out of high school. I remember the comparisons to Magic Johnson for this 6'7" guy who played point guard with rare court vision. However his story is unique due to his comeback from a gruesome injury. The disastrous landing that took out every joint and ligament in his knee is one of those graphic injuries that requires a viewer discretion warning. He basically missed the next 3 seasons and bounced around the league after that. His place on the Warriors' the last two years as Steph Curry's backup could not be more redeeming. He's had two injury-free seasons making great passes and occasionally stellar plays, participating for the first time in games that matter. When he shines, he looks like a 30 year old athlete who somehow has 12 years of NBA experience, and you forget all about his injury. Who knows if he really could have played like Magic without that injury - he's never even scored more than 25 points in a game - but the way he's overcome setbacks and contribute to this great team is inspiring.

Steve Kerr and Luke Walton
There are other bench players worth mentioning, like Leandro Barbosa, Marreese Speights and Festus Ezeli, but I'm going to skip right to the coaches. It's no coincidence that the greatest 3 point shooting team of all time is coached by two fantastic 3 point shooters. What they've done with this team has affected the whole NBA, with old school philosophies tossed aside in favor of 3 pointers and "stretch fives", centers who can also shoot. The creative play calls that Kerr employs to get Curry open and open up backdoor cuts when defenders overplay the perimeter has been amazing to watch. Above all, I'm impressed with his willingness to stick with the 3, which has always been thought of as a live and die gamble. The 2002-03 Boston Celtics under Jim O'Brien were the first team I ever watched, and they set 3 point records at the time, firing off almost 24 a game. Rodney Rogers and Walter McCarty were early stretch fives. When they were on they could beat great teams, but they only made 36% of their 3's overall and often got blown out when their shots didn't fall. This Warriors team shoots almost 32 3's a game and makes 41.6% of them. Sometimes they are cold and fall way behind in games, but Kerr continues to trust in the game plan. In Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Blazers, Steph Curry was 0 for 9 from 3 coming back from injury. I couldn't believe he was still shooting after clearly not having it, but he kept going and caught fire with 4 minutes left in the game. He then scored an astounding 17 points in overtime and the Warriors won.

Kerr and Walton might not have helped Curry become a better shooter - he was always in a league of his own. But behind the scenes they must have done well with players like Barnes, Green, Iguodala, Barbosa and Speights, who almost surely wouldn't be as deadly from long range on other teams. They've shown that optimizing this fundamental skill wins championships. Alas it wasn't enough this year.