It is no secret that the Vietnamese favor their own people, and rightly so. I would equally favor an American, but when it turns into a Robin Hood act, taking from tourists and giving to the Vietnamese, it becomes a problem. A few days ago I was riding in a tour van packed with 20 tourists, luggage and all. There was not much space, and the four hour ride was going to be less than jovial. A few miles down the road the driver pulled over to pick up a few local women hitching a ride; only one problem, there were no seats left. The tour guide asked three of the tourists the get out of the van, giving their seats to the Vietnamese women and assigning the tourists to the portable fold down seats in the aisle.  

If you want to pick up hitchers with your full tour van, whatever. I know this would never fly in a Western country, but being it was Vietnam I could let it slide. Forcing tourists who had paid anywhere from $60-80 for the tour to give up their seats to freeloaders? Unacceptable. I don’t care which country you’re from—Eastern and Western alike, that is just bad customer service.  

To make things more exciting, the ladies chattered on their cell phones the whole drive and had an especially loud conversation with each other when the tour guide was trying to explain the day’s itinerary to us. After the four hour journey, we were an annoyed bunch. This, however, would not be my only aggravating bus adventure.  

The bus anger was left to brew in my mind for a few days, coincidently perfectly preparing me for a scrimmage with an evil bus driver the following week. I had booked a sleeper bus to the north of Vietnam . It was a bunk bed set up with overly reclined bus seats and I happened to have prime pick of the territory, being one of the first people on the bus. Remembering advice from my travel mates, always sleep on the bottom, I settled on a nice bottom bunk in the middle of the bus. As I approached the seat the bus driver ran at me pointing to the top seat saying I must sit there. I refused, inching closer to my beloved bottom bunk. A British girl next to me—also headed toward a bottom bunk—exclaimed, “why do you always make us ride on the top when the Vietnamese get the better bottom seats? Tell me! Why can’t I sleep on the bottom?”  

This tipped the driver off. He turned into something resembling an angry monkey, howling and flailing his arms, all the while ignoring the British girl’s inquiry and yelling at us to take the top seats. This was my breaking point. I had dealt with enough rude people in this country and wasn’t about to tolerate one more. 

“Ever hear of someone named Rosa Parks?” I asked. He stared, confused. “Didn’t think so. Well I’m about to rock your world.”  
I turned to my bottom seat and plopped down. The driver grabbed my arm threatening to yank me from my seat, and I screamed in protest, “I can guarantee you I paid more money for this bus ride than any Vietnamese person, and I will sit wherever I damn well please.” I shoved my ticket in his face exclaiming, “show me where it says the seat number! Nowhere! You can't tell me where to sit, then.”  

Needless to say, he relinquished. This was the first time I had succeeded in a long list of struggles with the locals and it felt good.  

Hanoi greeted me with a perfectly foggy jeans and t-shirt type of day. It was love at first sight. The city was charming with European style buildings, windy streets, numerous cafes and merchants pedaling French baguettes on street corners. There was a lake in the middle of the old quarter where locals would come to practice tai chi, play guitar or just sit on benches watching the whole scene. I went for a six A.M. run one morning to find the lake bustling with couples cha-chaing to blaring Latin music and teens partaking in a badminton battle. The Vietnamese really knew how to enjoy themselves.

Dao, the worker at my hostel greeted me with open arms asking all about my trip and what I planned to do in Vietnam. The warm welcome was nice after my four A.M. wakeup, flight, and treacherous journey meandering the unnavigable streets of old town Hanoi to find the hostel. I stumbled into my bed for a mid-morning nap.

It wasn’t long after my first stroll through the city that I learned the words on the lips of every tourist were “rip off,” and my rose-colored romanticized image of Hanoi began to fade. There seemed to be an irritable tension in the air among every traveler I met. Outwardly, I attributed this to the ear piercingly incessant motorbike honking. That’s right, I had missed the rainy season, but if the honking was any indication of the weather, Hanoi would surely be flooded and wiped off the map in no time. New York City, you’ve got nothing on Hanoi.

The locals drove as bad as, well, they sounded. One way streets and red lights meant nothing. Motorbikes, sometimes piled high with four people zoomed, swerved, and u-turned through the narrow streets competing with street vendors and pedestrians who were forced to relinquish the sidewalks to motorbike parking. Crossing the street was an animal all of its own. Traffic (obviously) never stops, so one must boldly step into the blender, as if poking a finger into a fan, and walk roughly at the same pace as the mopeds perfectly timing an entry through the spaces between each oncoming vehicle.

“Ok,” I thought, “this crossing the street business seems a bit dangerous, but no one would actually hit me. This was just a scare tactic, when it came down to me and the motorbike, the driver would surely stop.” FALSE! Apparently in Vietnam, you pay a smaller fine for killing someone than just injuring them, so it would indeed be beneficial for the motorist to go for the kill. Pedestrians beware!

The stressful street scene kept tourists on their toes. Everyone either outwardly despised Vietnam and weren’t bashful to say it, or tried to convince me it was great, nervously twitching all the while. I was somewhere between apathetic and twitching happy tourist. I thought I liked it. That is until I got rudely shuffled out of a restaurant and a shop for no other reason than I can conceive but being foreign. Before I could even say a word, the respective owners flung their hands at me in an out the door type of gesture hissing all the while.

I started to get the sense that Vietnam was out to get me. I was quoted ridiculous market prices that no Vietnamese would pay (like $.75 for one orange) and the locals refused to bargain even a bit. I went to the supermarket and oranges were going for $.75 a pound! Go figure…I eventually began to forgo the markets. If they clearly didn’t want me here, I didn’t want to give them my money.

My first week in the country went like this. There were ups and downs with overly friendly locals who made me want to love Vietnam, and unspeakably rude people who made me hate Vietnam. Likewise, I was flung through an exhausting rotation of content to irate tourist and all the shades between.

After an exasperating run in with a bus driver, I decided this love hate roller coaster was here to stay and I wasn’t getting off any time soon. I pulled out my bossy shoes, toughened up my skin and figured I could play the same game. And things started to get a whole lot better... 

Any time you're looking for a true taste of local flavor, I would recommend taking a ride on the local bus. I must warn you, it's not for the faint of heart, and the results are either elating or steam coming from the ears maddening, but nonetheless, I guarantee it will be a memorable experience.  

The buses of Bangkok are a species all of their own, coming in all shapes sizes and colors, melding together into a secret sort of code which indicates the cost and destination of the bus. Once you get past the secret code business, each bus is assigned to two numbers (the specific meanings of which still remain a mystery) placed strategically along the front or side of the vehicle, making it a bit of a scavenger hunt to find the correct bus. This just made the challenge of navigating through the city even more exciting.  

My misadventures on public transport started as a youngster, at the age of five to be precise. I rode the school bus to kindergarten each day. Eventually the route got overloaded and being the last stop, I was frequently re-routed, shuffled onto an alternate bus, or-worst case scenario-picked up in a sketchy brown striped suburban owned by the school district and transported to school. It wasn't uncommon for me to accidently board the wrong bus or for the driver to forget about my stop altogether, forcing me running to the front yelling at him to let me off. I hated the school bus. It was hot, the kids were loud and I somehow always got the worst seat next to the fattest, smelliest kid. 

When I got over my traumatic Lil' Tyke bus misfortunes, and before my driving days, I began riding the city bus to my job. It had a tendency for being late or straight up not showing up at all and I had a track record of catching the wrong bus, or missing my stop; a fatal combination. One day I got so lost on the bus, that I had to call my mom to leave work and come rescue me. That was the end of me and the bus.

Beginner's Luck 

On my very first day in Bangkok I was feeling particularly savvy and decided to take my chances on the local bus directions my guesthouse had provided from the airport. I caught a bus filled with fellow Thai travelers and airline employees-this was much too far from the beaten Western backpacker route-and was transported to the local bus station. There I boarded bus 252, as instructed by my online directions with a slew of locals who didn't speak a lick of English.  

"Get off at 89/56 Sukhumvit Road, after about 45 minutes on the bus," read the directions. I reread the sentence. What was 89/56 supposed to mean? Was it 89 or 56? Make up your mind people! I wasn't about to take my chances guessing on one or the other and spending the rest of the day intimately getting to know Bangkok and the other 36 numbers between. I showed the address to the bus driver, who looked clueless, responding that the bus didn't go there. Luckily, I was still at the bus station, so I flirted with the idea of getting off the bus and searching for one that could guarantee me a stop at 89/56 Sukhumvit Road. But, once again remembering no one spoke English, I decided to take my chances with 252.  

As the bus departed the terminal, I started timing the ride. Just as promised, 40 minutes into the journey I saw the Sukhumvit Road sign, and increasing numbers every block. Perfect! I screeched with joy motioning for the driver to stop as we approached 89. I happily departed the bus, and saw number 56 on the opposite side of the road; there was a method to their madness after all. Within a few blocks I was inside my guesthouse, thoroughly impressed with my local bus navigational skills.  

Map Reading Gone Wrong

During my second visit to Bangkok, I was feeling restless for an adventure and set out to find the Vietnamese Embassy via local bus. The route appeared pretty simple on Google Maps and I could get there without having to transfer buses. I scribbled down the address along with a quickly drawn map of the bus stop and set out on my adventure. The bus came just as I arrived at the stop, and I boarded it confidently as if I had been riding these busses my whole life. I was soon on a journey meandering through the side streets of Chinatown. I was trying to follow the route outlined on the Google Maps page I had saved, but nothing seemed to match up.  

I strained my eyes to catch street names as we whizzed by swerving tuk tuks and vendors pushing carts of fried rice, traveling further and further away from the center of Bangkok. I knew I was lost, but I didn't want to admit it to myself or my fellow Thai passengers. I shyly asked the ticket collector about a specific street we were meant to cross and she along with five other eavesdropping passengers exclaimed, "ooohhhh" in their best we feel sorry for this tourist tone of voice, "wrong way, get off GET OFF!"  

Their urgent cries startled me out of my seat and I was ready to jump off the bus, belongings in hand, as if it were a ticking bomb about to blow. The driver slowed down just enough for me to jump from the moving vehicle before speeding off again. I was left in a cloud of dust and bus exhaust as locals leaned from the bus window pointing and yelling for me to cross the street and catch the opposite direction bus.  

I waited at the stop recovering from local bus gone wrong. Ten minutes, thirty minutes, no bus. Was I at the right place? Had I misunderstood the locals? Frustrated and anxious to get to the embassy, I began to walk in the direction my local bus had come from. I soon found myself wandering through the same circular streets in Chinatown and knew it was time to ask for help.  

I approached the friendliest looking man on the street and was soon surrounded by four Thais chattering and offering me their best local bus advice. Before I knew it, I was on the correct local bus, headed the correct direction and was at my stop, the embassy. Success never felt so sweet after a day of navigational strife. I eventually re-read the Google Map depicting the local bus route I was meant to take, and to my amazement realized I had forgotten a minor detail; Thais drive on the left. Silly me, I had caught the bus on the wrong side of the road. Looks like I won't be repeating that mistake any time soon.  

Backpacker vs. Bus: The Ultimate Showdown

After a voluminous victory and major mishap, I was ready to go all or nothing with this bus game. This time the target seemed simple but Google as I may, I could not find an address, website or location description for the mysterious place I was headed. Sai Tai Mai-the bus station for long distance buses was off the tech radar. Google aside, this challenge was strictly between me and my information gathering skills from the locals, and I was determined to win. I armed myself with a photograph of the alleged Sai Tai Mai, a phonetic spelling and was off. 

Luckily, the first lady I spoke to gave me everything I needed; the bus number, the location of the stop and Sai Tai Mai written in Thai. I waited at the bus stop with 20 Thais. Soon their busses came and 20 new Thais appeared. Locals and bus drivers alike had assured me I was at the correct bus stop, but bus 740 was nowhere to be seen. 

As this cycle continued my anxiety grew. I was always the last one standing, surely someone else had to be waiting for 740, right? Another woman waited at the stop with me for 20 minutes and eventually ran into the street, flagging down a cab to take her to wherever she was going. Maybe I should follow suit. Maybe I had been too rash with my bus skills and was stubbornly waiting for a phantom ride. My mind ran through the taxi vs. bus scenario, then, there it was. A seven faintly emerging from the throng of traffic, a four, and a zero! I ran to the door, anxiously boarding the vehicle and shouting, "Sai Tai Mai," to be confirmed with a hurrah of "chais, yes" from the passengers. Triumph was mine. I had come full circle from my elementary days and defeated the ominous local bus system of Bangkok. Maybe the tables had finally turned and the bus gods were looking favorably upon me, or maybe I had just finally become bus smart. Either way, I ended up with a few funny experiences and I'm sure the locals got a good laugh at the tourist trying to ride the local bus. 

After the Todra Gorge and the Sahara trek, Sam and I were really into the Morocco nature scene. We loved getting off the main tourist paths and exploring local villages and parks, especially in such a diverse country. The Cascades d'Ouzoud seemed like the perfect place to visit. They are the second highest waterfall in Africa measuring 110 meters (360 feet), and were also listed as a "must see" in numerous travel guides.

Thinking it would be fun to get a taste of true Moroccan culture and meet some locals, we decided to take the local bus to the falls. Big mistake. When we purchased the tickets (which we had to bargain for...this should have been red flag number one) the attendant told us the bus would leave around noon, despite the listed 11:30 A.M. departure on the ticket. The bus didn't actually leave until 1 P.M. and then it took 45 minutes to get out of the station because it kept stopping every 30 feet or so for some random person along the street flagging it down.

After four hours of this nonsense and a very grumpy Ember later, we finally covered the 90 mile journey to the falls. We found a cute riad to stay at and spent two days wandering around the village, hiking through the canyons along the river and scrambling up rock cliffs. Here are some pictures of our adventure:

Growing up in the United States in the 90s was an easy life. Scratch that, let me rewind. Growing up anytime in the 20th century in the United States was easy. We have created and perfected a system that saves us time and allows for a lifestyle of convenience. We go to Wal-Mart, Sears, Safeway, or whatever other respective store to buy everything we need in one easy stop, then if that wasn't enough we have online shopping, drive through banks and DVR so we have even more time to cram important things into each day. This structure saves us time on menial tasks, so we can focus our time and energy on education and careers which in tern benefits a productive culture. 

Now, imagine a society that has not reached the convenience store stage and is so wrapped up in fulfilling its physiological needs, no one can get to the seemingly "more important" tasks. That's Morocco. I'm not trying to spin this in a positive or negative light, but rather writing how I see things as an objective outside viewer. 

If you were to take Wal-Mart and explode it into 75 little stores and scatter them along a narrow street lined with donkeys and wheelbarrows you would have a makeshift Morocco. Each store has a specialty ranging from egg stores to oil markets and carpet shops. If you were to bake a cake for example, you would have to go to the egg, flour/sugar and spice shops before obtaining all the necessary ingredients. 

The average Moroccan makes $4,800 USD a year, so it is important for them to spend their money wisely and make the most of what they have. Things that would be thrown away in the U.S. such as plastic containers, ripped jeans, a pot with a hole and newspaper are saved, repaired and recycled to be used over and over in many different forms. In addition, many products that would normally be machine or factory made are made by hand in Morocco. 

I was shocked to see the amount of work that goes into handmade products here, and the sense of pride that the Moroccans have for their exquisite goods. From carpets to scarves to tiles and wooden goods, you can always count on a little shop with Moroccans hard at work to produce the finest items. 

During one of our days in Fes we toured a ceramics factory. The factory employed somewhere around 500 workers, and I was stunned to see the complex process to create ceramics pieces. For example, here are the steps involved in creating a fountain:

1. The clay must be shaped into a tile. 
2. The clay is fired.
3. The tile is glazed and hand painted with an elaborate design or glazed one color. 
4. The tile is re-fired. 
5. The tile is hand cut and chiseled into smaller square tiles, or the face of the tile is chipped off to create a design such as a flower or leaf. 
6. The smaller mosaic tiles along with the chiseled flower designs re hand glued into a specific pattern and shape for the fountain.
7. Occasionally, silver is welded onto the face of the fountain to add an additional design element. 

All of this by hand! It takes weeks upon end and many workers to produce a single fountain. 

It took me awhile to wrap my head around this huge cultural difference of handmade goods. I was mostly shocked because:

a. In my mind, handmade items are counterproductive. The time it takes to produce them and the labor costs associated seem like they could not compete with the benefits of factory produced goods. 

b. I felt really bad for the little people sitting at a loom tying knots in a carpet day in and day out or the poor man spending his life chipping away at tiles to create the perfect design. This type of lifestyle seemed horrible to me. 

The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize the benefits of the system and accept the realities. The bottom line is that it is a way to employ a lot of people in an country that is not yet developed enough to mass produce factory goods and with a highly uneducated population with high poverty and unemployment rates. At least these people had jobs they could return to day after day. Although not glamorous, they were in much better shape than the beggars and "guides" wandering around the street willing to do anything for work or money. 

While I appreciate all the beautiful handmade goods, I still don't feel great about the lifestyles many of these workers live, and continue to ask myself time after time why I was the fortunate one who got to be born in the United States. I think there is a lot we can learn from the thriftiness of the Moroccan culture, and a lot that we can be thankful for coming from the easy lifestyles we have. 

My journey to Morocco was about as eventful as any first time trip to Africa can get. It started with me running through the streets of Algeciras in the pouring rain to make my 10 A.M. ferry. Once aboard the ship, with soaked clothes and a drenched backpack, I claimed a couch and settled down for the two hour ride. I put my earphones in, spread my soaking clothes out to dry and started a blog post. An hour into the ride I was approached by a frazzled boat attendant yelling in Spanish that I needed to pack up everything and get off the boat immediately! Shocked and confused, I began to gather my belongings, and she asked if I had my passport stamped by the Moroccan police during the boat ride. I replied no, I did not know this was necessary. In a complete tizzy, she snatched my (soaking wet) passport from my hands and ran to the upper level of the ship before I had a chance to protest or ask what was happening. Once again, I had visions of my passport disappearing and me being stranded somewhere between Spain and Morocco until the U.S. government could send me a new one. 

As I nervously waited for some kind of a response, I looked around only to notice I was the last passenger left on the ship. Evidently, I had miscalculated the time difference which lead to our hour early arrival, and I had completely missed the loudspeaker announcements requesting passengers to get their passports stamped. I was batting a thousand.

In my anxious state, I looked out the deck window and saw that the port was nothing but a huge pile of rocks with concrete barracks and a line of semi trucks. Welcome to Africa.

The attendant finally arrived with my passport and I was soon on my adventure. From the pile of rocks port (if you can even call that a port) everyone boarded a single bus waiting past the customs booth. I knew I had to get a taxi  to the train station in Tangier, but had no idea how to go about doing that, or even where Tangier was, as I seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I started asking around and the general consensus seemed to be that I needed to deboard the current bus, and get on a new bus headed to the train station that would come in an hour...or maybe two hours, to a bus stop no one could really give me directions to. Not convincing. Alone in Africa, I was not about to wait at the sketchy pile of rocks port for some phantom bus that may or may not come. I stayed on my current bus, and eventually ended up at the official port building where I caught a bus to the Tangier center.  During the bus ride, I stared out the window at the green landscape and painted concrete houses, completly enamored with Morocco. When I was finally dropped off in Tangier, a nice Moroccan/French man accompanied me to the bus station and helped me find the bus to Fes. At that moment, I got a huge whiff of Moroccan culture. The bus station was a complete zoo with street vendors following me, travelers carrying heaping bags of goods, busses pulling in and out, and drivers and pedestrians alike shouting their city of destination to sell tickets. I felt like I was surrounded by the Do-Do Birds in the movie, Ice Age screaming "Fes, Fes, Fes."I had been warned about the Moroccan bus system by both travelers and guide books. Apparently there are direct busses and local busses. Both go to the same place but one stops for every person, donkey, camel, etc. along the road and can take up to three times as long as the direct bus. The advice I received was to avoid the possiblitly of ending up on a local bus, and just take the train. Now I was in a tight spot with my new Moroccan/French friend on one side, and a bus driver shoving a ticket into my hand on the other side. There was no turning back now. I asked how long the bus would take and the driver responded, "seven hours." I must have looked dissatisfied because he instantly correct himself with an optimistic, "uh, I mean five hours!" I accepted the ticket, boarded the bus and hoped for the best. As the bus pulled away I noticed a Moroccan woman in her fourties staring at me. I smiled. She continued to stare, so I waved at her, and she gestured for me to come sit next to her. Considering I was the only white person on the bus and everyone had had their fair share of staring at me by this point, I decided to take her up on the offer. Maybe it would deter attention from me, and it would be a good chance to learn about the culture. I scooted into the vacant seat and she quickly struck up a conversation in Arabic with me. When I proved unrespondant, the man sitting across the isle started a French conversation with me. Feeling like a complete idiot for not understanding either language, I nodded and pretended to somewhat comprehend what he was saying. Probably not a good idea, as this encouraged him to continue talking to me throughout the six hour bus ride. I eventually gave up and made the "I don't know" gesture to everything he said. By the end of the bus ride I had my new Moroccan friends email and phone number, and he insisted that I call him the next day so we could meet up and he could show me around. Considering I don't speak French and he doesn't speak English and we could barely communicate face to face, I decided against the phone call (although I'm sure it would have been really interesting). Disembarking from the bus was my moment of truth. After making several stops and passing some pretty dodgy cities, I was almost positive that my luggage was stolen. I imagined that a bright blue backpack with a United Kingdom flag would be a prime target. Before the trip, I had fully prepared myself for the possibility of getting robbed in Morocco, and was now accepting of the chance, except for the fact that I had left my airline tickets in my backpack. I realized this half way through the journey and replayed scenario after scenario in my mind of what I would do if my backpack was indeed missing. Lucky for me, my bright blue travel buddy was right where I had left him. I was ecstatic, and definitely learned my lesson about what to leave in the backpack. After a full day of traveling, foreign conversations, getting yelled at, stared at and almost robbed, I arrived in Fes exhausted and speechless. I booked it to the hostle, and once inside the doors, a wave of relief came over me. I had no idea what to expect from Morocco or Africa, and so far it had been exhilirating, shocking and tiring. This would later on prove to be a daily cycle. Hello, Africa.