The Mung Home

The sense of private property is quite lax in the Mung village. The Mung are a poor and underdeveloped population who live in Sapa. They wear black outfits and try to sell trinkets to tourists. They also farm rice. The Mung are so poor that many of their kids don't have pants. They do have shirts though. Also, they are really short - prob 4'8 on average.

Let's get to the visual aids.


Danielle is wary when she is about to enter a mung abode...


...with good reason! There were bags of hanging innards there.


Some of the women knit too. Weave? Sew?



There's one of the little tykes in traditional mung attire, along with our tour guide, Kroon.

Location:Jalan Klia S4,Klia,Malaysia

Raybans

I got a pair for $12. Do you think they're real?




Probably! My face looks gaunt there.

Location:Jalan Tun Sambanthan 4,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

Slogans

Whenever a group of travelers get together, inside jokes an repetitive phrases abound. Here are some notable highlights from this trip.

1. "You/we really screwed the pooch on that one!" we say this a lot, mostly because we get lost a lot. Walking in the opposite direction of your destination = pooch screwing.

2. "Foul Val." This is our pet name for danielle's friend Valerie. It's not a very nice nickname.

3. [Censored for being too uncouth for blog] but if you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm it basically involves reciting the joke that Marty Funkhowser told Jerry Seinfeld in the penultimate episode of the most recent season, as well as discussing the rash that Larry contracted in selfsame episode. I have never use the word selfsame before and may have used it inaccurately, but it is a cool word.

4. "In general in particular." Chris likes this one and it has caught on. It's not really funny per se but we say it so often that it has become something of a running gag. For example, I liked The Golden Sun Inn in Hanoi in general and its service in particular. See? Its really not comical at all, yet we laugh at it!

5. "Gaunt." As in Danielle looks gaunt today because she doesn't eat much food on account of being a vegetarian. No one ever tells chris or I that we look gaunt, although we wish they did.

Thats a good start. I may update in the future.

Location:Jalan Tun Sambanthan 4,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

...

Nuff said

Location:Jalan Thambipillay,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

Portraits

It occurs to me that most of my loyal followers do not know my cotravellers, Danielle "Michelle Pfeiffer" Petrilli and Christopher James "Everything I Say Is Spoken With Excessive Inflection" Capuzzi. Over the next few days I will be unveiling some brief portraits of who they are and what they are about.

Let's start with Danielle.


Danielle is 26, I think. She is an alumnus of Duke University and Georgetown Law School, two schools to which I wish I had attended. She has numerous nicknames. Some call her Danni. Others (her mom) call her Pussface, which is really just weird. I usually just call her Danielle, but today I started calling her DL, which doesn't make much sense. I also decided that her Asian nickname would be Dun Yill but that hasn't really caught on.

Danielle is a prolific traveler. She's even been to Alaska, where she was caught in a hailstorm with her boyfriend, Juan. I was also recently caught in a hailstorm with my sisters in Yellowstone. I love Yellowstone.

Back to Danielle.

Danielle is quite socially conscious. She used to work for the Atlantic but loves the New Yorker even more. I share the sentiment! She spent a lot of time in London and South Africa. She has been on a safari, and I remember clearly when she told me about it bc I was so jealous (it was after the Mets-Yankees game last year in a jazz bar in the West Village).

Sometimes, Danielle gets ideas in her head. These ideas usually bece "stuck," such that she can't really contribute to conversations beyond discussing these ideas. Invariably, these ideas relate to food, usually something in regards to snickers or mentos, the freshmaker. For example, she will repeat "I want a snickers." If none arrives, she will make a Snooki "waaaah" sound. Strangely, Danielle often eats an entire pack of mentos in one sitting. She really loves them.




Danielle sometimes looks really giddy in pictures. I like that look. Other times she looks quite cross. I like this look too because it is so angry-looking.


See?

I think that sums up Danielle in a nutshell. Final thoughts: she is definitely the maternal figure of the trip. She generally finds chris and my antics amusing but occasionally scolds us. We deserve it. She also planned most of the trip which I respect. Normally, I wouldn't feel comfortable deferring to someone else's plans, but I trust her.

Lastly, she loves elephants, but because they are cool, not because she sympathizes with Republican policies.

I hope this profile was enlightening. I wrote an earlier one that was much funnier but it was lost to the harsh whims of the internet.



Bye!

Location:Jalan Thambipillay,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

Took that midnight train to sapa

We recently took a midnight train to Sapa, a village in northern vietnam along the Chinese border. The southern tip of the Himalayas reach Sapa! I'm excited about that.

Getting on the train was an adventure. First, Val, who is 5'0 and has a heavier backpack than me, rested her pack on a table. This was rude, and an equally short Vietnamese woman ran out and slapped her! It was pretty hilarious.

Then we proceeded into the train "station" which was actually just the tracks themselves. Led by our fearless Sherpa from the Golden Sun Inn, we braved the bustling tracks and leapt onto our car.


The car was small and cramped. There were four beds in each stall. Fortunately, chris and I bought some whiskey for the ride, which smoothed the edges off our discomfort.



By the end of the night, we were all pretty chill. We wound up debating/discussing fiscal and developmental policy until the wee hours of the morn. This upset Val, who found our respectful disagreements to be emotionally unsettling. The rest of us had a great time though. Unfortunately, Danielle didn't sleep much that night due to her uncomfortable bed but she was a trooper the next day.



I apparently slept fine.

Location:Sepang,Malaysia

Fedoras

I bought a fedora from a street vendor. In fact, we all bought fedoras.


Aren't I fedorable?