Who’s to blame?

Google, Amazon and Consumers.

That’s the argument novelist Ewan Morrison brought up in his speech at the Edinburg Book Festival.

I highly recommend the article. Ewan definitely has reasons to be scared. The digital shift is inevitable and unstoppable. We shouldn’t question “if”, but rather, how does the shift affect authors?

As someone with vested interests in both writers and Google, I’m a bit split on whether the shift will hurt or help full time writers.

As an Amazon exec mentions in this NYTimes article, “It’s always the end of the world” for someone.

Rather than share sob-stories, I’m excited about the digital age’s impact on story telling.

Here are five publishing predictions for the digital age:

1: Streamed Books and the era of Serialization

Soon, books will be streamed. There will be no point in saving them on a device.

Each page of a book will be no different than a specially formatted webpage, analytics and advertising included.

Analytics will be the closet we can get into a reader’s head.

Metrics such as Time Per Page will become common. More importantly, the author will be able to see where readers slowed down or stopped reading altogether.

Did readers from Chicago give up on your book when the main character slathered ketchup on a hot dog? There’ll be a metric for that.

Publishing a novel in one chunk will become less frequent. Book production will mimic TV shows, consisting of 6+ serialized episodic releases.

If the first few episodes are flops, there will be no need to finish the novel.

This has deeper consequences: it will force the writer to rely heavily on outlining and adapt a new style of pacing.

The opener (pilot) absolutely has to hook. Many readers finish books they start even if they don’t like them. That won’t happen as much.

Also, each episode must contain its own story arc (beginning middle and end). Sound similar to TV?

It is.

1.5: Ads, Ads, and More Ads

If a page of a book is similar to webpage, you can bet there will be ads. Advertisers will also buy up space in the story itself.

Image this excerpt from Harry Potter, a series of British movies that were adapted into highly popular children books:

After class, Ron and Harry began the long trek to Hagrid’s hut.

“Harry I like your new robes,” Ron said. “You must have bought them at WAL-MART.”

“WAL-MART has great prices,” Harry said. “We should go shopping at WAL-MART after we visit Hagrid.”

“I heard he-who-shall-not-be-named shops at Target,” Ron said.

“Voldemort loves Target, that is why I shop at WAL-MART,” Harry said.

2: Death of Literary Novel, Boom of “Universe-Creating” Books

The plot-less literary novel is finally going to get what it deserves: a fiery death.  The old publishing houses shoved these “works of art” down society’s throats for too long.

I don’t like when it takes a character ten pages to brush his teeth. Neither does the digital age. The remaining full-time literary-type novelists will be academics, supported by universities.

I make this predication for a few reasons:

For one, long meandering sentences don’t bode well on digital screens. These high-brow artists will still produce work but it will work within the confines of the screen, not the page (which I explore in #3).

Second, in the digital age content creation (the writing itself) is not going to be profitable. Author advances are going to take a huge hit.

Stealing digital content is too easy. And with the web founded as a free and open portal for information, consumers don’t feel guilty about it. Just as most bands make their money off of tours, authors will make money off of the universe they create, not the book.

This is pretty much case right now.

Think of the most successful books of the past decade (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Twlight). These books create universes that can easily expand into other mediums (film, tv, toys, theme parks, etc.)

Literary novels don’t have that cross-media potential.

Imagine a theme park for Virginia Woolf. “For this ride, you will stare out a window and think about life.”

In the digital-era, these literary types of authors will still be making cash but it won’t be close to what they make now.

3: Dynamic Stories will become a popular gimmick

It’s not to hard to imagine stories infused with code, to produce dynamic changes in the story.

A simple example: Image your book syncing with the weather outside. If it is raining, the rainy description will be used.

Are you from New York? Great, so is the protagonist of every book you read (oh wait, it seems they already are).

The avant-guard artists will push this dynamic ability of the digital age, coming up with new twists.

Will this make story telling better?

No, not really, but it will add some cool twists. Imaging a mystery novel having a different ending every time you read it.

Or a book with complete chapters written entirely by software. The possibilities are endless.

4: Increased CPC/CPA/CPM , driven by an universal online identity, will help authors (and all content creators)

Whether your digital identity is from Google or Facebook (or a newcomer), you will have one. It will follow you across all websites (and apps and eventually TV), allowing advertisers to individually target ads unlike ever before.

Once the majority of people have a digital identity, advertisers’ dollars will flock to the web. Advertisers will be willing to pay more for ads when they can control the audience on an individualized, personal basis.

This demand boost will help all online content creators, including writers.

5: Quality will be rewarded

One of Ewan’s fears is related to the Long Tail effect. If everyone is an author, how can anyone make money?

As he states: “Amazon can sell millions of books by obscure authors, while at the same time those authors, when they get their Amazon receipts, will see that they have sold only five books in a year.”

In the digital age, there will be no gate-keeper publishing houses. Your crazy uncle’s novel about a dog going into space, teaming up with a moon rock, and fighting other rocks? That will be online. People can buy it.

But they won’t.

Although the Internet is free and open, it is a social force that generally falls under the 80/20 rule. In the digital age, 20% (or less) of the authors are going to rake in 80%+ of the revenue.

Sorting through trash is difficult, but the titans of the Internet world realize this, so they’re developing tools to sift out the rubbish.

And who knows, maybe the story about the dog fighting rocks is a masterpiece. The digital age gives it a chance.

It is 1:30 AM in San Francisco and the freaks are out.

The only thing standing between me and my hostel is the Tenderloin, a crime ridden slice of San Francisco. The next bus is in 20 minutes. I don’t want to pay for a cab. I decide to walk.

I head north. A man stands on the next corner.

“I’m da king of this corner!” He screams into the night, his yells ricocheting off the skyline. “All you watch out cuz I the king!”

“Yes, you are,” I think to myself. During the day, productive society owns the city. But at night, they do.

Call them what you want: homeless, bums, crazies, crackheads, winos. It doesn’t matter. They’re usually alone and male. They’re in Chicago, LA, San Francisco and Champaign, slumped against light poles, awkwardly sprawled on benches, picking through your unfinished lunch.

Back in the Tenderloin, the few remaining people walk hurried, a worried glance punctuating every step. The man’s yells fade as I walk another block north, crossing the street multiple times to avoid packs of bums.

My mind weaves disaster scenarios but before I know it I am back at my hostel. I slip into my dorm room thankful my two annoying german roommates have checked out.

Later in the week, I am walking to the bus stop at 11 PM. Two homeless people walk in front of me in the usual slow trot. Do they ever have somewhere to go?

“If only I had I had that one thing man, I could be happy,” one of them says. Like all the bums, his skin has absorbed the city’s dirt, dying it a dirty brown.

“If only I quit using,” the other one said. “Shit man, if only.”

If only, isn’t that the theme of every one’s life. If only you had that one missing piece.

I hurried past the two guys but the conversation stuck with me. These two homeless dudes were not talking about crack or other nonsense, they were having a philosophical conversation. For a moment, it turned the lump of rags I avoid eye contact with into a living breathing person with doubts and fears.

At work the next day, we created “life paths” as a team bonding exercise.  We had 15 minutes to visually represent key points in our lives. I drew a cheese burger with each component representing a section of my life. It was good fun.

Afterwards my thoughts turned to my late night walks: What did the life path for the crazy man on the street corner look like? How did he end up cold and alone on a Wednesday night in San Francisco, screaming his voice raw to a world who did not care. When did his life take a nose dive?

Those were questions that couldn’t be answered and they touched on deeper issues than homelessness: was this person’s current misfortune the result of bad luck or bad choices (or both)?

“What are you doing?” a girl asked.

What “I was doing” was standing next to a concrete pole in the basement of the Assembly Hall. My floppy graduation hat constantly falling off. In less than twenty minutes, I would be done with UIllinois.

But I knew what she really meant. The words hung on everyone’s lips.  I had been asked the question dozens of times over the past few days.

“So what are you doing?”

“I don’t know yet,” I replied.

I did know. Well sort of, I have a job. But after answering the question so many times I had made an experiment out of it.

I simply told them “I didn’t know” and I judged their reactions. It produced more positive results than being direct.

If they were unemployed, we could share sob stories of a dirt-dry job market. If they were employed, they felt good they had a job and I did not.

After the glow of celebration wears off, graduation is really about uncertainty, an odd mix of excitement and uneasiness.

At the LAS Honors ceremony, the dean read off the future plans of the top 300 or so students in LAS. It went something like this: med school, med school, law school, teacher, med school.

When my brother asked me if there were any interesting careers, I could only remember one: a dude who wanted to open a chain of polish sausage shop.

It takes guts to stand out.

In my business classes, I loved playing up the creative writing major. In my creative writing classes, I loved being the business dude. A purely uniform group is not very interesting to me.

Although I study Rhetoric, I do not identify with the teachers (and most students) in literary academia.

For me, Shakespeare is like playing Golden Eye for N64 when you could be playing Modern Warfare 2. Yeah it’s influential…but also horribly outdated.

I do not quote Freud every ten minutes like my professors. I hate Freud.

Reading the stream of consciousness ramblings of Victorian era house-wives does not make anyone more intelligent. Give me a protagonist with Vin Diesel biceps and a saw’d off shot-gun. Throw in zombies and put an intelligent twist on it. That is exciting.

An education is largely studying the past to prepare you for the future. Thank god we don’t have to reinvent calculus every year. But this backwards looking approach is dangerous when applied to soft disciplines.

Reading a Harvard Business case about someone in an incredibly unique and complicated situation does not make you a better business person, yet playing armchair CEO is the basis for many management classes.

But this post is not about the flaws of education.

I simply appreciate a good story, not for its words, but for the power of narrative.

The problem with most graduation speakers: they don’t tell stories. Instead they quote (insert cliché person) and rattle off a list of self-help confidence boosters. If a speech begins with “This guy once said…” I can almost guarantee it will be flop.

I don’t care what someone once said. I want specific stories from your life.

Earlier this year, someone spray painted on the English Building“Stories are important.” I could not agree more.

Think back on your four years of college. What do you remember?

Stories.

The time I slept outside assembly hall in the middle of December to get tickets for the Rose Bowl. Dropping a giant ice ball in front of my RAs door. My surprise 21^st birthday in Singapore.

The human brain is not a computer. It only stores snippets of the past and then your imagination reconstructs them. That is why you forget huge blocks of dry text but you can explain in detail the plot to your favorite movie.

When you are talking to your kids and they ask you about college, please do not give them clichéd quotes. Please don’t tell them “it was the best four years of your life” because alone that means nothing.

Instead, tell them what it was like to spend four years living with your best friends. Tell them about your quirky freshman year roommate. The boozed fueled black outs at country night. Or puking after taking on the Big Fat Ugly. Tell them about the failed romances and failed classes. The highs. The lows. The “I can’t believe that happened”s.

Don’t tell them it was the best or worst four years of your life, tell them why.

And if you don’t know why, realize that no one truly does, because we don’t actually remember the past, we imagine it.

G.K Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

After my lonely stint in China, I swore I would never travel alone again. I hate it. Absolutely hate it. Yet with my brother at work, I had back to back eight hour days to myself in LA.

Entertaining yourself for eight hours in California doesn’t sound hard. Throw in a red G6 convertible and a fat wad of cash and it sounds even easier. Yet it was a surprisingly difficult task.

The first day to myself I burned at Venice Beach. I rode 24 miles on a beach cruiser, pedaling south until the beach turned into an industrial area. After that, I become king of the handball courts by beating three different Mexican guys, including an older man named “Smoky Joe”.

LA is an amazing city but it doesn’t have many must see attractions. I had spent a whole summer in the area and had already knocked out many of the tourist hot spots.

For the second day, that left me with one option of entertainment: a museum called the Getty.

Good museums are rarer than white NBA players. Most museums are giant vacuums of fun: sky scraper corridors packed with sewage quality exhibitions, ant-sized blocks of text squeezed next to musty roman sculptures of naked dudes.

I would rather walk around Sam’s Club. At least I get free samples while I stare at piles of stuff.

Don’t label me an art or museum hater. I love museums—as long as they’re good. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is brilliant. The Imperial War Museum in London is fantastic.

But most museums suck.

Making a good museum is incredibly difficult. Making good art is difficult. As a writer, I recognize the difficultly of producing a decent book or screenplay. I haven’t been able to do it yet.

Good art forces you to reflect on what it means to be human. It takes the familiar and, with a few strokes of a brush, makes it blindingly fresh. It shocks, stuns, puzzles and entertains.

The Lincoln Lawyer made me feel those things. The glowing white halls of the Getty did not.

The umpteenth painting of bloody Jesus made me want to crucify myself. Is that all people thought about back then? Couldn’t they have painted something else?

Seeing such dull repetition reminded me—

The problem with most art begins before the painter strokes his brush or the director shoots his movie or the novelist pounds at a keyboard.

The problem lies with the initial idea. Too many artists, and even entrepreneurs, invest time in ideas that are doomed to failure.

That’s not to say execution does not matter. It does.

But when you invest time in something, make sure the idea is worthy of the effort. I want the museums of the future to be good.

Alone in a city of seven million people.

This is not how solo-traveling is supposed to be. What about all the guide books that said meeting people while backpacking is easy.

Correction: Meeting people while backpacking is easy unless you are in Hangzhou China.

It started out great. On the plane to China I sat next to a very nice Malaysian man and his wife. He watched as I wharfed down a bag of chocolate M+Ms.

“Is that your dinner?” he said.

I nodded. I have a weird thing about saving money at odd times. I didn’t want to pay for the airline food.

He offered me some crackers and we talked for the next two hours. He spoke Chinese and English perfectly and like most Malaysians was very friendly. When we arrived in Hangzhou, I shared a cab with him and his wife.

He directed the cab driver in Chinese; made sure I arrived safely at my hostel and then paid for my fare.

It was awesome.

But now here I was at the train station and buying a simple train ticket to Shanghai seemed like an impossible task.

I glanced up at the large electronic information screen. It looked like a giant game of Tetris. Everything was in Chinese, and unlike the stations in Beijing and Shanghai, it did not alternate to Roman Characters.

I walked into the ticket office—a large room the size of three basketball courts. Lines ran twenty people deep. Even if I did wait in the line, there was no way the employee would understand me.

I sat down on a ledge outside the station and watched thousands of people swarm around me. Thousands of people I could not talk to. Thousands of people who wouldn’t respond if I yelled “Help.” I calmed down by reading my Lonely Planet China book and came up with a plan of attack.

I found a newsstand and used sign language to ask to use the phone. I had to call my hostel three times before someone picked up.

In English, I told the hostel worker I was going to hand the phone to a random person. I motioned to a pudgy girl, no older than twelve, who was helping her parents work the newsstand. I handed her the phone and a fragmented pass-the-phone conversation began.

Success.

Minutes later I walked next to this little Chinese girl as she led me through hordes of people. She negotiated with a man towards the front of the line and he bought a ticket for me.

Ticket in hand, I ran into a Burger King and soaked up the beauty of American fast food. The pictures of slabs of meat and sweating Cokes comforted me. I ordered a whopper and blessed it with the pledge of allegiance.

A few weeks later in a Beijing train station, I was waiting in a line with a Singaporean friend when a frantic Chinese man cut in front of us. The man one spot ahead of us protested and the two men began arguing.

Spit spewed from the cutter’s lips as he sputtered Chinese like a machine gun. Eventually the man gave up and made the long trek to the end of the line.

After he left, I asked my friend what the angry man was yelling as he walked away.

“He said he hates his life and he’s going to kill himself,” she said.

Chinese train stations are not happy places.

In Bristol, even the traffic lines dividing the roads are painted red white and blue. I’m not joking.

Bristol runs on a shot of blind patriotism. The stars and stripes flutter from every front porch and the local liqueur store is named 1776. The star spangled banner seems to be the soundtrack of this town.

It is the sort of overwhelming patriotism that makes one simultaneously proud and scared to be an American. Since returning from Singapore, I’ve had a mixture of both.

In Singapore, I wrote my final philosophy paper on how one can counter the downsides of patriotism. Patriotism can make people do crazy things. It sends young men to war. It fuels nationalism, an aggorance that leads to ignorance.

After arriving in Bristol, I wondered how this intense patriotism influences the actions of the people. Are these Bristol people better Americans, or are they cashing in on some tourist scheme?

This thought made me reflect on my own patriotism. But, as I thought harder and harder about why I love America my answer became tricky.

I love freedom (with a side of sauce) but I don’t love America for freedom. Freedom is twisted to justify many unjust actions. It has been defended countless times in presidential speeches. I’m still not sure what it means in the context of wars in far off lands.

After returning to America, I realize I’ve done more complaining than complementing: “Traffic sucks, crime is too high, Americans are fat, stuff is too expensive, tipping is stupid, immigration is all messed up, the two wars are pointless.”

Living abroad takes the make-up off the supermodel and reveals all the hidden flaws of your home country. Reverse culture shock is much harder than standard culture shock. You return thinking, why can’t things be like this here?

And usually it is almost impossible to come up with an answer, which is frustrating.

But I’m not going to probe the issue any deeper. Regardless of reverse culture shock, what it really comes down to is this: I love America because the people I love live in America.

Bored? Good. That was to throw the numerous internet stalkers off my scent. Because my blog just passed 1000 hits. I think 30% of those are me re-reading my entries, 20% are my friends and family, and the rest are probably dangerous creepers with screen names like “CRazEeCATluva2000”.

1,000 is a big number. This occasion has put me in a numbers mood.

1,000 hits X 3 minutes per hit = 3,000 minutes

3,000 minutes/60 = 50 hours

50 hours/24= 2.083 days

Humans eyes have spent around two days looking at my blog (although three minutes is generous). Witness the power of the internet, way better than a postcard every few weeks.

But, truly, thank you all for reading my blog. I tried to make it entertaining. Without an audience, I would not have had the motivation to write.

Here are some other statistics of the past few months:

$900: Cost of my housing for four months in Singapore, a big city on a land starved island
$2000: Cost of four months housing in Champaign, a farm surrounded by more farms
$3: Cost of a Big Mac Meal in Malaysia
27: Flights I will have taken by the end of my trip
5: That equals a flight every five days.
6: Days in a row I ate the Malaysian dish Mee-Goreng. Try it!
4: Average number of hours my karaoke sessions lasted. Exhausting but amazing fun.
3: Sticks of my butter an unknown floor mate has stolen and devoured
2: Cases of food poisoning. No more chili crabs or sushi buffets for me. Ever.
1: American Passport needing extra pages from an overflow of immigration stamps
0: Minutes spent playing handball. The crippling flaw of Asia.

One more final then I am off to China (hopefully wordpress won’t be blocked). Then Hong Kong with the fam. Can’t wait!

Trust me, studying is the last thing you will want to do. Studying is a daily dentist appointment that lasts three times as long. It is more painful than the fitness days in your creepy high school gym class. If you have the option of taking classes pass/fail, do it. It will save your GPA and your sanity.

Taking the study out of study abroad took some mental adjustment. In Champaign, I study a lot. In Singapore, I pretended to care. I did my homework—sloppily. I paid attention in class—sort of.

I had slipped into the slacker lifestyle. It was easy. It was comfortable.

I realized the lifestyle of a C student and an A student is drastically different. Even when I did homework here, the lack of effort showed. I’m both excited for and dreading the hard work that waits in Champaign.

Every exchange student has a list. It may be scrawled on the back of toilet paper, in a six page word document or maybe just in your head.

But it exists no matter who you are or where you study.

On this list are things you must do before you leave.

I’ve spent the last week trying to cross things off the list.

Last Wednesday, my friend Ben and I headed to the ritzy Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling. Not on the top of my list, but on Bens.

The radioactive red Singapore Sling arrived at our table for thirty bucks. To save cash, Ben and I agreed to split the drink.

I took a sip and I wondered if Singapore Sling was code word for cherry cough syrup. The bar was packed with other white people nursing their Slings and munching on the complimentary peanuts.

I tried calculating how many peanuts I would have to eat to get my money’s worth. Conclusion, I’d need to become an elephant.

But I don’t regret it. Study abroad makes you do things you normally wouldn’t do. The Sling could’ve been the most magically delicious drink I’ve ever had.

It wasn’t, but at least I tried.

So why study abroad? Why leave the routine of your home university with your friends and your favorite bar where sometimes you get free pitchers of keystone because you and the bartender are tight like that?

I remember leafing through the reviews of the students who returned from their study abroad programs. Almost everyone read “Ten out of ten! Best experience ever! You must go!”

And I thought, is it really that good? I mean, I know I’ll like it, but best experience ever?

I have three days left to decide, but I know there will never be another time in my life when a normal weekend is climbing a mountain in Borneo or SCUBA diving in Malaysia.

And when I’m snowed up in the creeky old libraries of Champaign slaving over midterms I know my mind will drift to the blinding beaches of Thailand and the green glow of Northern Vietnam.

I finally have something to compare my life in America to. I’ve tasted Asia and it tastes good but American is still my favorite dish, served with a side of freedom.

But on a serious note, I’ve come to appreciate the diversity of America. The people, the land, the ideas, nowhere else can match it.

No matter who you are you can find your niche in America, which cannot be said about many of the countries I visited.

Yes, America is violent and sometimes our government makes bad decisions. But that is not unique to our country.

My entries usually raise more questions than answers, but finally I have an answer.

Why do smart people do stupid things, like spend $30 on a nasty drink or go to the casino so often you get a “problem gambling” text from the Singapore government?

Cause it is on the list.

Start making yours.

(To those Americans who have studied abroad or traveled extensively. Did your experience make you appreciate the US more? Please comment, I’m curious.)

May 9 to 18: Shanghai and Hangzhou
May 19 to 24: Hong Kong and Macau
May 24 to 26: Penang
May 26 to 29: Singapore
May 29 to June 2: Phuket
June 2 to 9: Phillipines

Sign in Hanoi Hilton where they have John McCain's flight suit.

My first attraction in Hanoi was visiting a sacred lake in the center of the old quarter. Legend has it a few thousand years ago a king dropped his sword in the lake. Now, tortoises protect the sword.

I looked into the lake at murky radioactive green sludge. The toilet in a Dump zone had cleaner water.

“The turtle probably mutated into Godzilla by now,” I said to my friend David.

Hence, the beginning of the most awkward city I have ever visited. In Hanoi, nothing works as one expects it. Conversations with the locals twist and turn into uncharted territories of weirdness. Cab drivers rig their meters to charge you quadruple the price. Shop owners get emo when you bargain too hard.

In Hanoi, there are no tall buildings. No fast food chains (except for a few KFC’s). No western music. The city is a glob of three million people dressed in fake Lacoste polo’s and Armani jeans.

It makes a great travel destination.

Let the chaos begin.

Every street looks similar—-On the corner, three unemployed men offering “moto my friend moto” rides. Ignore them and step over a family of seven eating noodles on the sidewalk. Climb over a cluster of motorbikes which block the sidewalk. Don’t even think about talking to the slick young guy who says “I am student. Can I practice English?” Then wave away the man trying to sell you books. Finally, stop and look at some cool knock off clothes. Then cross the street and do it again.

On the first day, I stopped at a small book stall on the street. They were selling counterfeit lonely planet travel guides.

“Do you have any Hong Kong?” I asked.

The book seller’s head snapped up. Without saying anything he sprinted across the street, dodging traffic. Then a few seconds later, he sprinted back, holding a Hong Kong book.

“How much?” I asked.

“250,000 Dong,” he said.

“80,000.” I offered.

In most countries, this is called bargaining. But in Hanoi, this is when things got crazy.

The man hissed at me like some possessed monkey. Then he cursed in Vietnamese and punched me in the arm.

It did not hurt. He was small and old. But he had definitely broken a barrier. I was confused, what did I do wrong?

Later in the day, David tried to buy a backpack at the market. The negotiations ended when the woman threw a calculator at him.

“Why are these people so mean?” I asked David.

We couldn’t come up with an answer. Even the babies were mean to us.

On our last day, I spotted a KFC tucked in an alley. In other countries, I call KFC and McDonalds “American Embassies.”

We ordered Zinger Chicken Burgers. As I licked a succulent glob mayonnaise off my finger, a baby sat down in the open seat across from me.

It sat there and stared as I ate my meal. The father snatched the baby away but it kept running back. At this point, I was a little frustrated with Hanoi and in a feisty mood.

“Yeah Vietnam Baby. You like to see an American in his natural environment, huh? Watch me shove this chicken in my big American belly. ”

After about five minutes, it was feeding time for the baby. The father took the baby to a booth ten feet away.

The baby chewed a fry, spit it out in its hand, and whipped it at me. He did this multiple times. The dad did not care.

We booked a junk boat cruise of Halong Bay for the third and fourth days. Halong Bay is a misty patch of ocean where giant limestone cliffs ascend from the water.

Our boat.

It was low season and only ten people were on our boat that could fit forty. There was a Taiwanese couple who did not talk, a cool old Australian couple, an old French couple, and then a young white US Marine with this Vietnamese girl who spoke no English and wore high heels everywhere.

The travel agent said the cruise was for young people. Still, the boat was beautiful and best of all, it had a Karaoke machine.

At the dinner table, conversation was strained. The French couple did not speak French and my French is very bad. I converse in French by blurting out random facts about myself, such as:

“I like fish.”

Then they would unleash a blur of French. I would nod and laugh when they laughed. It was a lot of fun though I wish I had a shirt that said “Speak to me like I’m severely challenged.”

We sailed out to a cave and got off the boat to take a tour. Half-way through the tour, the Marine and high heel lady mysteriously disappeared. No one asked any questions.

That night, David and I got the Karaoke machine rocking. The older couples sat and watched us uncomfortably. When I offered the microphone to the Australian couple to sing “Paint it Black”, a look of pure horror washed over their faces.

One thing I find odd is although Asians are stereotypically more reserved than westerners, they are not afraid to sing in public like westerners. This was demonstrated by the crew of our boat, who joined us for Karaoke.

One of the guys kept turning up the volume to unbearable levels whenever he would sing but it was cool hearing Vietnamese songs and not Lady Gaga.

On the last day we stopped for fruit smoothies at a restaurant called Happy Smiles. It is a non-profit organization that hires street children.

We sat down at the table and instantly I felt uncomfortable. The employees had the creepiest smiles and they hovered around our table.

There were four people in the restaurant and about eight of them. The street children were about to form a street gang.

I took a sip of my pineapple juice.

“Is it good?” one street girl employee asked.

“Yes.”

Then a minute later. Another sip.

“Is it good?”

“Yes.”

We finished our drinks and left quickly.

Even visiting Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum had quirkiness to it. Against his wishes, Ho Chi Minh’s body has been preserved and is on display in a giant soviet looking structure. Even three years it is sent to Moscow for a touch up.

Before entering, security stripped us of our camera’s and backpacks. Signs warned us to be very quiet while inside the tomb.

We filed past two security guards, one who was struggling to stay awake, into the ice cold Mausoleum. We were part of a huge procession of people. Inside the Mausoleum you cannot stop walking, you circle the tomb then leave.

Right as we entered, the wettest, flabbiest, fart erupted and shattered the silence. I looked at David, he was innocent. The sound seemed to come from right in front of us, but the only person in front of us was an eighty plus year old Muslim woman.

Everyone pretended not to hear the sound.

We walked deeper into the structure. Now we were in the same room as Uncle Ho.

“PLABBBFLUBAFLUBAPUTTTTTTTTTZ!”

Mount Fartamonjaro erupted again, louder than the first.

Unlce Ho lay down in the center of the room, covered with an eternal wax like glaze. Did he have a dead person fart brewing for the past forty years?

No, not possible. It was the old lady again.

Welcome to Hanoi.