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This morning we took a tour of the northern half of Phu Quoc. We had a taxi driver who didn’t really say much and a young man from the hotel who was our guide.

The first stop was a black pepper farm. Then we went to a floating fish farm that we got to by boat. We stopped at a beach for a warm beer, then went on a little hike through the forest and saw a monkey. We got some vegetarian sandwiches from a street vendor as we passed through town, then went on to a pearl farm where we think they were able to make a small pearl in three months. Either that or three years since we had some trouble understanding our guide.

The pepper farm looked kind of like a vineyard. Phu Quoc is famous for its pepper and we've been licking clean the pepper-salt combo that comes with the bread and butter every night. Hopefully the kilo of pepper I bought will taste as good at home.

The fish farm was a bit of a surprise because we didn’t know we were going to get on a boat as part of the tour. But the small outboard motorboat took us to a floating structure where they were “growing” about ten different types of fish in nets surrounding the rafts and platforms all tied together. Most of them looked like vicious sharks but there was also a very large turtle.

The beach stop was a bit odd…it was nice and everything, but we went on the tour to do something besides sit on the beach. I ordered a beer even though it was 10:30 in the morning and it had clearly never been refrigerated. I walked in the water, then we left for the rainforest.

There was a wide path through the forest that was used by motorbikes for some reason (a shortcut?). Because of this, any wild animals or anything of interest stayed far away from the path. We did hear lots of birds and eventually saw a monkey jumping between trees very high above us.

We haven’t been able to find a tofu Banh Mi (sandwich) anywhere, so we asked our guide if there was a vendor on our way that would have one. He assured us that there was one. Eventually we stopped and were asked if we wanted egg or pork. We got just the vegetables (cucumber and tomato). The mythical fried tofu banh mi still eludes us…

Because we were finishing early, they took us to a pearl farm south of our resort on the coast. There they showed us the oysters that were making pearls and popped two of them open (the first one didn’t have a pearl inside). There was plenty of pearl jewelry for sale.

The roads we drove on were mostly red clay and very uneven, making for a bumpy ride. There are only a few paved roads on the island that we've seen, mostly near town. As usual, the driver was often honking to pass motorbikes (often have 2-3 people on each bike!).

Overall it was a nice getaway. We liked the fishing boats and our little boat ride the best.

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We can’t figure out why, but the sun sets really early here. Around 6:30pm. We headed out around six to take a sunset walk on the beach and check out the neighbors.

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Monday around lunch time we headed into the town of Duong Dong. It’s pretty close to where we are staying, but the street outside our resort is under construction so the best way to get anywhere is by taxi.

We got dropped off on one side of a footbridge in the brutal midday sun. We crossed the bridge to this area where the market is located. It was similar in pace and appearance to the other markets we visited, but smaller in scale and they were less interested in us in general, however we scored on some cool souvenirs.

We left the market and escaped the sun at Buddy’s Ice Cream, supposedly the place for out-of-towners to get info, but it was very quiet. The ice cream was tasty (fruit flavors are better than chocolates).

It was too hot to do much else so we got some help from some locals to find a taxi driver eating lunch to drive us back. At that point, it’s safe to say, we sweated through all our clothes!

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In Phu Quoc, we drove to La Veranda, an extremely comfortable French colonial-inspired resort. We couldn’t be happier to be done travelling for a few days at least.

It is gorgeous here. The island is woodsy: palm trees and evergreens of some sort. The roads are all red clay, most of them unpaved.

Images attached include the view from the restaurant toward the ocean, Beth at the restaurant indulging in lunch, at the pool, the view of the main building from the pool, and your bloggers.

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We left our swanky hotel in HCMC for an adventure through the Mekong Delta around 10am. We planned to stay two nights in Ben Tre. We hired a car to take us the two hours there.

After getting there, we decided to keep moving and get to Rach Gia, the port town that would take us to Phu Quoc. Unfortunately, it was a five hour drive—something we didn’t anticipate when planning the trip from Ho Chi Minh. We left at 4:30. It gets dark here early, so most of the trip was in the dark. Our driver didn’t speak a word of English and we didn’t speak a word of Vietnamese. There is only one road through the Mekong Delta, 1A. It has many purposes: leisurely stroll, bicycling, motorcycling, interstate highway. So we buckled our seatbelts as our driver navigated and honked his way there, never exceeding 60km per hour. He stopped twice to get food. I tried to get a Banh Mi with chicken (Ga), but what I got was filled with something questionable.

We finally arrived at a very modest hotel in Rach Gia with very nice women working there. We woke up at the crack of dawn the next morning and got the last two seats on the ferry, packed in like sardines for two and a half more hours of travel. We did see a lot of cool fishing boats.

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Here are a few more shots from inside the market in HCMC. Check out the Pho!

And a pic of one of the pagodas before we returned to the hotel for a Viet-nap. Suffering from severe mosquito bites and jet lag, Beth slept for at least 13 hours.

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We’re in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon…it’s a pretty insane city.

We have a gigantic room. The biggest hotel room I've ever stayed in with a river view and lots of windows. The bathroom could be a studio apartment. There are two rooftop bar/restaurants and we had breakfast at one of them and the nicest waitress ever who taught us a little Vietnamese and gave us some tips and directions. The breakfast buffet had something for every nationality of tourist…Beth had an omelette and watermelon and cucumber juice. The coffee was strong and delicious. I carbo-loaded with several croissants and fruit.

We walked to the Opera House and tried to get tickets for a performance, but we were denied and it turns out that they don’t really have many performances and no one goes there, they just look at the building. They have a fancy display of what looks like a cool Vietnamese opera that should be showing every night, but…

Then we went to the big market. It was indoors, very large and spacious. There was room for about one person to walk between the stalls at a time and they were organized by what they were selling. It was noisy and they were very eager to sell us t-shirts, grabbing our arms and calling Beth “lady”. Once you started looking at something, the rest of the sellers calmed down and a calculator was used to bargain the prices, they would always ask for our “maximum price”. It seemed important to let them make the final bid…

I ate some Pho Ga (noodle soup with chicken) inside the market and we had fresh pineapple juice. They really wanted Beth to eat some soup but they didn’t have anything close to vegetarian.

After that we took a taxi to the Cholon neighborhood which is where there are several pagodas and Chinatown-type stores. There weren’t any tourists over there. We went to two pagodas, burned incense at the first one.

It’s incredibly hot and humid. I sweated through my shorts. Seriously. Our waitress at breakfast told us that since it was so hot in the morning, it wouldn’t rain in the afternoon (it is the rainy season right now). At the time, that sounded like a good thing…

This morning, we’re going to check out and take a bus to Bam Tre in the Mekong Delta. Our hotel will be on the river and it is supposed to be a more relaxing area where we will rent bikes and explore the watery areas. A lot of the paths are too small for anything but bikes…

We also booked several nights in a beach bungalow on the island of Phu Quoc, which is in the Gulf of Thailand. They keep saying that the island is about to blow up and be the next hot beach getaway, but right now it is supposed to be peaceful with very nice beaches and dusty roads to explore on motorbikes and beachfront restaurants to sit at.

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Flight to HCM is delayed one hour so we came up to the Red Carpet
Lounge. It is really swanky, here are some pics of our snacks as well
as some pics from the coolest Muji store I've seen, it’s got food. ejs

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We’re in the Hong Kong airport right now waiting for our flight to
Saigon. It’s really foggy but there are mountains all around.

The flight here was easy…lots of movies and I think Beth got a full
8 hours of sleep. I didn’t sleep much as I didn’t want to miss any of
the snacks! We also played tetris against each other for at least an
hour…

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I went to The Armory Show last Saturday at 3pm. It was mobbed. There was a line hundreds of people long waiting to pay $30 to get in. As a guy in front of me put it, “This better be the best thing ever. I wouldn’t wait in a line like this for food, and I need that to live.”

I wanted to go to Pier 92, but the “ombudsmen” outside made me wait in a line at Pier 94. After finally getting my wristband and making my way to Pier 92 and up the elevator, they were also selling wristbands there and of course almost no line.

It was just as crowded inside and it kind of felt like waiting in line sometimes trying to move through the space. They even made a line to go down a staircase between the piers…

But the art was good. This photo is from a wall of self-portraits by John Coplans at Bruce Silverstein Gallery.

One would think that this many people spending $30 to see expensive art would be a good signal to a recovery for the economy…

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I thought I was coming home to blue skies and the beginnings of spring, but instead, I woke up to this my first morning back…

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The month is almost over…Tomorrow morning, I fly back to Brooklyn.

It’s been a great month. Berlin is a huge, always changing city. I feel like I've just scratched the surface of what is here, especially because so much is not in guide books and needs to be discovered. I met some good people, learned a lot, and had a month jam-packed with experiences, as well as changing from ledig to verlobt! I feel very fortunate that I had this opportunity. It seems like the month has flown by, but it also feels like an eternity since I was in NYC. I can’t wait to get home…

P.S. I'm going to keep the blog going…

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This post has been pending for a while. I was trying to figure out these chocolates. Katzenzungen means “cat tongues”. The chocolates are little paddles that I guess do look like cat tongues. At the store where Beth and I got them, there were several different brands all selling chocolates in a similar shape with the same name, all with pictures of cats on the boxes.

Of course, there is a wikipedia page) that says they were first made around 1900 by an Austrian company, Küfferle.

We thought they must have a story…why make chocolates in the shape of cat tongues? Perhaps the shape lends itself to a certain way of eating it? But I can’t find anything. In German, there is a verb just for eating sweet things: naschen. And a person who eats sweets (a sweet tooth), is a Naschkatzen. So there’s definitely something about cats (katzen) and sweets…

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When I woke up on my last day here, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It seemed like a good day for the fußball game, Hertha BSC (the Berlin team…BSC == Berlin Sport Club) versus Borussia Mönchengladbach from the city of Mönchengladbach.

I was pretty sure from what I read on the website that I could get a ticket from the fan shop in Hauptbahnhof, which I've walked through once before. It’s a lot closer than the stadium, so I went there around noon and it worked fine. They even took credit cards. I didn’t have much else to do and had seen fans on their way already, so I headed to the stadium. Somehow, the blue sky had already disappeared and it was grey again. It even started to drizzle a little bit.

The stadium is the Olympiastadion, which has quite a history. Most recently, it hosted the finals of the 2006 World Cup. But it is also where the Olympics took place when Hitler was in power. Somehow, it wasn’t damaged at all in World War II.

When I got dressed to go get a ticket, I put on my new bright green hooded sweatshirt. I thought to myself that there’s a chance the opposing team’s color will be green, but I figured most of it would be covered up by my jacket and with all the colors in the rainbow, chances are slim. I knew Hertha BSC’s colors were blue and white, but everything else was packed for my flight tomorrow. I was wearing my black and white scarf that I've worn every day and I brought a hat a gloves despite the blue skies and somewhat temperate weather. As I was on the subway on the way to the stadium, I kept looking for people wearing green and didn’t see any. When I got to the stadium, all I could see were people in blue and white, everyone with at least one Hertha scarf, some with tons of them all over their bodies. But then I saw someone with a green scarf. I was just mozying around the stadium as the gates weren’t open yet (the game didn’t start for another two hours) and I started to see more green scarves, and they were often paired with black and white. As it turns out, Borussia’s colors are green, black, and white, the three colors I was wearing. I couldn’t believe it…I quickly bought a Hertha BSC scarf to make sure everyone knew I was rooting for Berlin! I was also concerned that the woman who had sold me the ticket put me in the opponent’s section because of what I was wearing, but she didn’t.

They opened the gates. There was a special entrance if you had a flag or banner. I went in and wandered around the olympic grounds. Seeing the outdoor pool made me wish Michael Phelps had to swim outdoors in the last olympics. I went to my seat with 90 minutes before game time. The hard core fan section was already filling up. I had my section all to myself for a while…it was a good seat near the middle of the field, just below the luxury boxes. The section behind the goal opposite the marathon entrance was where the guys with the flags sat. Well, I don’t think they ever sat down. I'm guessing you have to audition for those seats and pass a test where you can sing all the songs and wave a flag and whistle really loudly at bad calls. It’s a huge section and it looked like they had a leader with a microphone who was choosing what the group should cheer or sing. It was also glassed off from the other sections. The visiting superfans had their own section on the opposite side, smaller, but also glassed off.

For certain songs, there was no flag waving. Another one everyone held up their scarf. I'm not sure if it was the history of the stadium or what, but it kind of freaked me out to see all these guys yelling and thrusting their arms into the air over and over. Everyone in my section was rooting for Hertha, but not with any of the vigor of the superfan section. Sometimes they would sing along a bit, but always from their seats. It looked like that was the case all around the stadium. But everyone did go nuts when they scored, which happened twice, and everyone was into the game.

During the game, the only food being sold inside the stadium was by a guy with a wicker basket full of pretzels…he rang a little bell as he walked around. Outside they sold all kinds of stuff…Sausage in many forms and beer, of course, but also crepes, fish sandwiches, and candy.

It wasn’t sold out, but they announced that there were 48,000 fans there. These teams are in the Bundesliga, which is the premier league in Germany. During the game, there was no commentary from the loudspeaker guy except when there was a substitution or when someone scored. Besides that, it was just the fans. They would project on the screen when there was a change in score in one of the other games in the league going on at the same time, which caused cheers or sighs throughout the stadium. Before the game, Hertha BSC was tied for second place. Borussia was in last place. Despite being in last place, they seemed pretty good and it was a close game. Hertha scored two goals in the first half. In the second half, Borussia got a goal on a penalty kick. After that it was very tense as Hertha fought to hold its lead. They did and won the game, and were at least temporarily in first place.

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I wanted to seem some electronic/techno music before I left, so I went to Maria am Ostbahnhof last night. It was very close to Radialsytem V in East Berlin, right near the wall. The address (Stralauer Platz 34/35) is irrelevant…you go along the road as if you were going to cross the bridge then follow a path that would go along the river to the entrance. I'm sure it’s a converted something-or-another, but now it’s just a big concrete space. Incidentally, it was one of the places where Berlin Calling was filmed. I saw it one night at Moviemento.

The show was “ECHOCHORD SHOWCASE”…I'd never heard of any of the artists but one of the magazines here said it was going to be good, so I picked it. It started at 11pm and I was already nodding off on the couch to Eurosport before I left, but I still went. I got there around 11:15 and was the second person there. A DJ just started when I got in, playing Jamaican dance hall music for no one. I nursed a beer forever, sitting on a couch watching people slowly trickle in, see that no one was there and retreat to the smoking lounge.

As this continued, I set a deadline of 1am for leaving if things didn’t improve. On my way there, I passed some other club that had a sign written in English that said they were open from 11pm until sundown. I thought to myself, “It’s sunrise or sunup, people, not sundown”. As I sat there in a nearly empty club nodding off despite the thumping bass, I realized that they probably translated it perfectly and that this show was probably going to go on forever as well. I saw a guy that looked like the guy from the advertisement come in and briefly set up a macbook and a midi controller on the stage, though, which looked promising, so I stuck it out past my deadline.

He kept coming back on stage and bought the DJ a shot and setting up more but still the DJ kept going. He had now transitioned to more techno music and about three people were dancing intermittently. Finally they switched to the guy with the computer…

It started off well and I liked it and the crowd came out…but after a few minutes, this guy came up and picked up a microphone and started sort of singing and absolutely ruining it. I thought that he might just be temporary, but after about 20 minutes when it became clear that he was going to keep singing, I left and went back to Schönleinstraße. I'm sure if I had stayed another 5 hours, it would have been great, but…

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Two of the S-Bahn lines make a complete ring around the inner city of Berlin. I got on at Hermannstraße and took it all the way around, clockwise. It’s not really that scenic as you are basically going around the outskirts of the city, but it is cool and the S-Bahn trains are really nice and relaxing. It took about an hour.

You do see Flughafen Templehof, which is the airport the U.S. military used for the East Berlin airlift, and although it is deserted, there is still an old U.S. sign up. I've heard various reports about this airport, one that they are rebuilding it to make it the main airport for Berlin and another that it is going to host a Woodstock-like event in 2010.

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It took my eyes a long time to adjust to this…the sun coming out.

In other weather-related news, either I'm getting used to this cold, it’s getting warmer, or it’s just not as damp. I think they should show the damp-chill factor in the weather report in a similar way to wind-chill factors.

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I went to the Stasi Museum today. It’s in the former Stasi headquarters in the DDR. A lot of the museum is very similar in presentation to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum: pictures and text on the wall. If you’re German isn’t too hot, most of it will be unintelligible. There are a few English placards, but only a few. But one floor they have left as it was when it was offices, and that was pretty interesting. They also have a lot of the devices used to either secretly record conversations or take pictures. The camera in the picture was mounted to the back of a button.

The best part was the old lounge area of the office. They have left it the same and now they sell drinks and snacks and have a TV playing contemporary movies about the Stasi (they weren’t playing it while I was there, but I'm sure they show The Lives of Others). I ordered a Coke and a Snickers, the guy (who seemed like he might live there) got it and then told me he didn’t have change for my 20 euro bill (this was at around 4pm and presumably he had been collecting money all day and the lounge was crowded with people all eating or drinking something, but…). I didn’t have anything smaller. He told me to just take the food and enjoy it and not to tell the office downstairs. I wasn’t sure if I was understanding him correctly (I thought he might want me to go downstairs and get change), but he was insistent and just gave it all to me. I gave him all the change I had and thanked him.

I would have stayed and had a coffee, too, but I couldn’t really ask him for anything else for free…but I did have him write down the name of the movie, Die Klärung eines Sachverhalts.