how i love thee

before i get too immersed in my new vietnamese way of life, i have to write about my thai peoples lest i forget all the things that made me love them so much. here is a list of generalizations that jessy and i came up with. understand that our analysis is based on like .01% of the population. but they still made an impact on us.

thai people:

1. are not good at following context clues. there have been numerous situations when jessy and i tried to communicate by sign language, acting out the sitch, pointing, etc. for example, we both ordered coconut oil massages. it took repeated attempts pointing two fingers in the air, then one at me, then one at jessy, then pointing at the oil, etc. in a cycle that still ended with jessy getting an oil rub and me getting a skin scrub.

2. are scared of traffic and if there's the slightest threat of there being a traffic jam they will not take you or take you and be unhappy about it. similarly, they are not good at estimating the length of time that it takes to get to and from; we were told it takes 2 hours to get to the airport in heavy traffic and it took 40 minutes, and that it takes a quick 1 hour on the ferry to get to phi phi when it took over 2 hours. you just never know.

3. are not aggressive bargainers. we learned this early on. the thai person would say "500 baht," to which you can reply, "300 baht," and then he or she would say, "ok." then you kicked yourself for not going lower. but the prices were so affordable most of the time that you felt kind of bad for bargaining.

4. love soft rock. it was constantly playing; in the taxis, in the minivans, the airports, jai's mp3 player, etc...

bye thailand i can't wait to come back.

grapefruit salad

 

this was the BEST.

pho

 

this was good, but i did find a hair in my soup.

first dinner

 

there were people in this restaurant, i swear. vietnamese ones.

pho time

we just got to saigon/ho chi minh tonight and had to immediately go out and get some pho and whatever else we could get our hands on. we're staying in district 1, right in the middle of everything and tons of food choices and food stands. we ended up getting two bowls of pho, a grapefruit salad, two beers, and two waters. i think the total was a little over $8 usd. crazy! the pho was pretty good and grapefruit salad amazing. we walked around a bought some steamed pork buns, which were very delish.

phuket

we’re in phuket now and are flying to saigon tonight. we arrived here yesterday and spent the day in pool and beach mode; ate at an outdoor restaurant last night and got massages. we asked the receptionist to recommend a place to eat, so we took a taxi to the restaurant she told us. that was a mistake because it turned out to be a super fancy restaurant at the very top of the hill about a mile and a half away. essentially we paid the taxi driver to drive us away from where we wanted to go; we ended up just getting out and walking all the way back to some outdoor food stands we saw about a mile back. that’s pretty much it.

dessert

 

din din

 

outdoor dinner stall

 

sunset

 

balloon ride

 

phuket beach

 

phi phi don

2 major things happened in ko phi phi: something mysterious and extremely bad happened to my back, and we met the most amazing person in the world. ko phi phi is a small relaxed touristy beach bum island, super cute and fun. the first day jessy and i were waiting for our room to be ready by the pool and was on my way back walking from point a to point b when a small twinge started in my lower back. by the time i got to my room it was like crippling pain and i could barely get up from the bed. we called in room massages and by the time that was over i was walking at like a ninety degree angle. so that day jess and i just went to eat at a really good restaurant but had to hobble home right after.

the next day i was feeling kind of better. we went to breakfast and our waiter trainee offered to take us to the viewpoint, which is the highest point in ko phi phi that you hike up to watch the sun set. his name was jai and he offered to be our "tour guide". so we met in front of the hotel at 5:00 and hiked alllll the way to the top, and jai turned out to be the sweetest most genuine person we’ve ever met. he’s in an intern program in phi phi and is studying english to be an immigration officer. he works so hard every day for around 80 baht, which is not even $3. he was so funny and would say totally contradictory things like, i hate cats and love dogs. then would pet all the stray cats and exclaim, I love cats! he also said that he had a really big family, but when we asked how many people were in it he answered, one brother. when we got to the top he asked to borrow jessy’s camera and took like 50 pictures then when he was done told jessy that he hated taking pictures. he also said the best thing: “I am practicing my english, so if I say something wrong feel free to protest me.” we would never protest jai! anyway the viewpoint was super beautiful. on our way back to town a guy hit me with the wheel of his rickshaw and jai was so sad he kept apologizing and was so upset. he was honestly the nicest most selfless person ever. it’s hard to describe how great he is but jess and i are in love with him. he shared his favorite song with us on his mp3 player, which was "you say it best when you say nothing at all." i think that pretty much describes how sweet jai is.

the next day we went diving which was good, there was a lot of beautiful coral and lots of fish but we didn’t see anything exciting like turtles and sharks. on our second dive we went to the manmade reef (since the tsunami totally wiped out a large portion of the coral) which was a big cage-like structure. it was interesting but after floating around it for 10 minutes jess and i were like snoozeville.

jenn, jess, and a ham sandwich

 

fire performers

 

another beach shot - i love the boats

 

jai the great

 

the j gang

 

viewpoint

 

viewpoint

 

beach in phi phi

 

mr. red's home

 

our savior mr. red

 

grand palace

 

 

bangkoky

we had the most amazing day in Bangkok! we somehow planned our time to a t; since we checked in late the night before (sunday the 21st) and were flying out at 6pm on monday the 22nd. we woke up early, ate some breakfast at the hotel, and then tried to find our way to the grand palace. this is where we ran into some snafus; first we jumped into a tuk tuk, which is a bicycle/rickshaw, but then we decided to jump out at a light because the driver wanted to take us to some store in the northern part of town to look at some diamonds, which was not in our schedule. apparently the drivers get some type of commission or free gas if they bring customers to peruse. so we ended up walking basically all the way back to where we had just come from and kind of puttered around a mall and ate some popsicles. then we bought a map of the city, and it was on. except we couldn’t find the grand palace on the map and no one understood what we were saying.

we picked this other spot on the map that looked like it was worth seeing, and once we got there some nice german ladies told us how to get to the grand palace. except by that point it was SO HOT outside we were about to faint, so we just kind of zipped through and checked it off the list.


THEN we had to find a taxi driver that was willing to take us back to our hotel area; but since the traffic was so “bad” during this time (it ended up not being bad at all we didn’t see what all the fuss was about). anyway we totally lucked out and got mr. tai as our taxi driver, who drove us to his favorite restaurant where we had probably our best meal to date. it was a fresh fish restaurant that was unfortunately priced by the gram and we of course chose the biggest red snapper and squid on the ice. but soo worth it. it was so good i can’t even put it into words, so i’m not going to try to. we finished off the day with a foot massage and then flew to phuket, where we stayed one night at a very amicable hotel owned by a very friendly little thai guy named manit, he was super talkative and would say things like, “i bought these place mats from…somewhere. i can’t remember.” and jessy and i would say, “ohhh. very nice manit.” and he offered to pick us up from the ferry when we came back, but when we told him what day it was he said, “oh that’s my friend’s birthday. can’t come.” even though we came back at around 11am.

we took the ferry the next morning to ko phi phi island, where we stayed the next 3 nights.

here i am!

sorry for the lack of posting; there has been no internet in our hotel the last 3 or 4 nights. but i've been mentally posting the whole time, so i have a lot to catch you up on. i'll do that later though, since i'm in the lobby of our hotel in phuket now and am starvon so we're going to eat soon. but to quickly recap: we spent one amazing day in bangkok, flew to phuket on monday night, took the ferry to phi phi islands the next morning, spent the last 3 nights there, and just arrived back in phuket about half an hour ago. we fly to saigon tomorrow night. we have had such an amazing time and met someone that really stole our heart (his name is jai, more about him later), went scuba diving, and have been steadily eating some delicious foods and making some pretty funny memories.

i'll post pictures and videos and do a day by day tonight.

 

 

 

 

sawatdee kaa!

that means hi in thai (rhyme). we're in bangkok! the flight wasn't that bad; surprisingly the first 13 hour leg of the trip from newark to narita, japan was relatively painless. we had a short layover in japan and ate at a small sushi restaurant in the airport. it was probably better than most sushi i've had anywhere in new york. in tokyo we ran into two of my classmates (brett and aaron) who were on our flight to bangkok. they're the best. i guess that's about it. we're going to sleep now so we can wake up early and spend the day visiting the street markets before heading to phuket tomorrow night.

relief

how flippin' relieved am i that jenn cracked the mysterious taste bud case! i dont know if you all are aware, but ol' henny here has a tendency to share every mundane detail about the illness du jour. very relieved to know that the wrath of the pine nut is no more.

hi world .i'm the jess part of jenn and jess. i'm equally as stoked for our adventure (which btw kicks off in oh about 12 hours or so). one thing I'm not looking forward to... 24 hour travel time, yowsa.

we've updated our travel destinations. for the time that i'm there, we'll be spending the majority of our time in thailand. fine by me, with only a week to adjust - the original plan seemed a little over zealous to say the least.

okay, i've done filled my suitcase w ambien, a few bikinis and 5-hour engery shooters. I'll wake tomorrow w an open mind, some morning breath, and an empty stomach. watch out asia, here we come.

to all of our followers out there (you two know who you are) - we'll touch base soon.

pine nuts - not a safe food

i think i cracked the case - after doing some research online about what could possibly be the cause of this strange and horrible malady that i've come down with (all food tasting bitter) i found this article:

http://journals.lww.com/euro-emergencymed/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2001&issue=03000&article=00036&type=fulltext

and come to think of it i DID have pine nuts. this past sunday with my friend jen who was visiting (please come back) when we split a salad. she says there were no pine nuts in the salad but i distinctly remember eating some and thinking that i hadn't had pine nuts in a while.

when i was studying in spain years ago i think one of the other students got swindled into buying what he thought was a bag of weed that instead turned out to be a bag of pine nuts. haha! so i have a soft spot for them even though they've turned my world upside down this week.

things are tasting better today though. so we're still on for the food tour.

ruh roh

for the past two days something has been awry with my taste bud set. i usually have a very keen sense of taste and even keener sense of smell (don't poo around me). but yesterday everything started tasting kind of...bitter. it's really weird and I'm starting to get worried that this is going to be quite the issue when I start my worldwide eating tour. basically everything tastes not so good. you would think this would make me eat less, but in the reverse fashion I've been eating more to see if I can find anything that still tastes good. so far chocolate and gummy lifesavers are the winners. soldier on, taste buds.

the deets

i want to talk more about our trip. i'm so excited! ok first we are flying out of new york and going into bangkok. from there, we spend one night in bangkok and the next night in phuket. the morning after we're going to the ko phi phi islands to do some major amazing diving. THEN we fly into vietnam, spend one night in saigon, and go to me nui beach, hopefully to get some more diving in. it will be so MUCH FUN.

the following week i'll be back in saigon and jessy goes back to new york; i have to be there for a school project, but after that i will continue my eating quest through vietnam, one city at a time. i'm making stops in nha trang, hoi an, hue, halong bay, and hanoi.

the weather has been the worst lately and i'm also feeling very uninspired. am so looking forward to this trip.

a little bit about us

hellloooo and welcome to jenn and jess eat vietnam! thank you for visiting.

we decided to start this blog because we have a big trip coming up. we are going to thailand and vietnam and we know we goin' to be grubbin' the whole time. and we want to make some documented memories. one afternoon whilst toiling away at an elliptical and enviously watching anthony bourdain eat A FRIED CHEESE SANDWICH WITH MAYO in the streets of Berlin, inspiration struck and ta-da here we are.

jessy and i have been bfs and were roommates for almost 10 years before i left new york to go to business school in d.c. and she upped and got freaking married (as you can see from the picture above. it's kind of a weird picture to intro our blog but it was the only one i could find on this computer and then i couldn't figure out how to delete it once i pasted it in there). now i'm almost done with school and jessy and i will forever be together again. and bryan (jessy's husband). i had a bf named ryan but we broke up so there went that. anyway big j and little j have taken a few big trips together (dominican republic and greece) and basically all we do when traveling is eat, drink, have reading parties, and sleep.

this is just the mini intro, the real fun begins next saturday when we depart for bangkok.