After 7 days over Christmas back country motorcycle touring in Vietnam, 4 days on Koh Panang for the full moon party, and 3 days in Bangkok i’m back, i’ve actually been back a week but have been unable to construct the summary blog post. My vacation has left me speechless and a little humbled, the people that i’ve met and the circumstances of their lives had quite an impact on me. Vietnam especially left me in awe of people in the countryside who live extraordinarily difficult lives but were so incredibly hospitable and happy it just blew me and my friends away. Believe it or not once you get outside of the major cities westerners are few and far between, I think we saw 3 westerners in 6 days, so every village we stopped in we were an oddity, people would come out of their houses to look at us, and even some of the most pensive faces would crack a huge smile if you just waved your hand and said hello. Here are a few of my fav pics from Vietnam, feel free to check out the rest of the Vietnam pictures here and the Thailand pictures here. If you are interested in a trip like this you should check out Off Road Vietnam. Vietnam is growing at a tremendous rate at the moment and like China has discovered free market economics, it is suggested that if you want to see rural Vietnam as it is now you will need to do it in the next 10 years.
Oh, and we also really got to eat very well… here’s some video of me eating a fertilized duck egg for breakfast
(i’ll be uploading more videos to karllong.blip.tv and hopefully me and my buddies will put a proper edit together of our adventures as we have a tonne of footage)
From a t-shirt perspective Thailand had an awful lot of them, but the vast majority were nothing new, just mass produced knock-offs of college humor type shirts. I did happen to find one gem on a side street, which was this one guy who hand screened his own shirts on movie related themes, I picked up two of these including the City Of God and The Big Lebowski:
Red Bull is quite a theme in Thailand:
Some of the run of the mill in Bankok
I hope to get back on the blogging schedule again, loads of people emailed me while I was away and i’m sorry I can’t get back to everyone, I really appreciate the suggestions, tips and notes, seriously, thank you!
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13 Comments
Karl,
Awesome to read about your trip, I am working my way through the rest of your photos and media right now.
I spent 3 weeks in Southern rural Vietnam in 2004 and it was an amazing experience. I can’t wait to go back and experience even more.
Look forward to seeing more shirt entries as well. Glad you shared about your trip.
Josh
Glad to see you enjoyed your trip, I’d been following along on Flickr, seems like you had quite the adventure. Now get back to important business and start writing about t-shirts!
LOL, thanks guys, don’t worry i’m getting back to the important work of a t-shirtologist
Welcome back!
Yeah – come on -get my RSS feed all full of posts again
That trip looks awesome – tres jealous! It looks like being a long time before i get any adventure trips now – so i’ll just live through other peoples cool adventures
Neat photos – will check out more @ home later!
Absolutely awesome pics! Thanks for sharing.
Welcome home! I don’t think I could eat a fertilized duck egg… I’m impressed!
Hi Karl,
Remember to send me the comments and reviews about the ride. I will upload yours at http://www.offroadvietnam.com/eng/22-65-18.php. Include a photo so I can use for your reviews.
Thanks and see you again in Vietnam. Thang wanted to say “hi” to you all.
Great photos…and nice video. Haha. I agree with you on Vietnam & Thailand though…I backpacked through both a few years ago and it was one of the most amazing trips of my life. Highly recommended to anyone and everyone!
Anyway, welcome back.
Welcome back. The pictures look awesome, especially that first one. I’m jealous.
Karl,
Great to have you back! I’ve been looking for posts in my reader for awhile now. Until your trip, I didn’t realize how often I read your blog.
Thanks for the great work, and glad you had a great time in Vietnam.
Wow, it looks like an amazing trip and something that has inspired me (or should I say, it’s inspired me even more than I was) to take a similar trip. It certainly seems the case that when you “have” less you certainly are happier with the amazing things you still have, be it health, family, nature, anything!
I am surprised that so many of those shirts are printed in English. All the t-shirt references to American culture have to be aimed at the tourists, right?
Thanks for the kudos on the pics everyone, I am a bit of a camera nerd, but I’m so glad I took the SLR, it makes such a difference. Although quite a few of the pics were from my N95 (including the first one on this post).
@Blake yeah, I think those shirts are all aimed at tourists of the “pharong” as they are called in Thailand. One shirt I did pick up was the red bull shirt in Thai, it looks very cool although everyone was wearing them in Koh Panang
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