BONUS: Down the Rabbit Hole: Steve’s Vietnam Excursion

the premium service. So enjoy and thanks a lot. Thinking Sideways is not brought to you by Hamlet, the series starting Kianu reeves now. Instead, it is brought to you by your local cat and dog shelter, Yeah, which is filled to the brim with wonderful little animals who would love to go home with you, And they really didn't need your help, So really think about going down there and adopting. And if you can't do that, they could always use contributions, whether it's money or just your time.

They need volunteers, So help those little critters out today. Thinking Sideways stories of things we simply don't know the answer to. I don't know down Joe says zee Chow, And welcome to another episode of thinking sideways down the rabbit Hole. I am Steve, of course, joined by Devin and Joe, and welcome to another bonus episode because that's what down the rabbit Hole is. For our premium members this week, we well, we don't have a mystery for you.

We have something completely different. We have a little it's a little bit of a mystery. That's it's a little like were you doing? Is that the mystery? The mystery is who cares? I'm kidding. It is actually really interesting. So here's the deal for for those of you who don't know, I recently just got back from a several week trip to Vietnam and Cambodia, and I had a lot of fun. And I've told these two Devin and Joe about my my experiences and you have but you

haven't yet a liar. I have totally showed you pictures, but you have to follow him on social media. Still coming out. But the point is I one of the things that I did is I had traveled overseas a couple of years ago, and about a year later, I realized that I was looking at pictures and I couldn't remember details, and I wanted to be able to remember

those details. So I sat down and I started just kind of stream of consciousness writing different things that I remembered about my trip, the tiger cages, the torture, none of that. But You've got a right idea so that I could recall it and I could look at it later on and say, oh, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, instead of years later going I remember I saw this thing, but I don't remember anything about it.

And I've shared that with you two, And I could just sit here and wax philosophical for twenty minutes about my trip, and you'd be bored out of your cords. Well, our listeners might be interested, you two would be bored, and that's not fair to do to you because I'm a team player. So I sent this to you. We talked about this. UM, I know there's questions or things that you've found fun or funny. So I'm gonna let YouTube kind of start off the conversation or questions and

then we'll just kind of roll it from there. Does that work for you, guys, Devin, do you have any questions? You had a list of things you saw on scooters well energetic banks, guys that most you haven't traveled a bit in the Third World myself. Modes of transportation are always fascinating in some of these places that egos are yeah they are right, yeah, So yeah, what is the

most outrageous scooter instantent you saw? Okay, so well, let's start with scooters because that is the main form of transportation, because while there are some cars, it turns out the import tax on cars to Vietnam is huge, so only the rich habit and rich are usually high powered political figures because it's a communist country. So way it works, everybody's poor, everybody's equal, So everybody has a scooter or rents the scooter. So Uber is on scooters, by the way.

And there's another one called grab which I liked. But you have to take everything you buy somewhere on a scooter. That's I mean, that's how you get it home. And I have a list of things here which let's just run down this because this is fun things on scooters. Half a dozen pigs in a cage and by that I mean like thirty forty pound pigs from the back of the scooter. There was about a half dozen squeezed in there. I think you guys saw that picture you

two here. Uh, there were families, entire families on scooters. So it would be parent driving the scooter with a child in front of them on some kind of makeshift child seat unless they were teenage, and then they could stand on their own on the floorboard. Child behind that driver parent and then the other parent behind that child the kind of sandwich the youngest one in between them. So entire families, which was awesome. Let's see, oh, construction.

Construction is done using normal materials like concrete and wood and metals and rebars and poles. You see all of that carried by the driver or their passenger. Nothing funnier than somebody with a twenty foot piece of metal running length of the vehicle and they're driving. Stay out. And by the way, traffic is dense as in, there are scooters packed up against each other. So imagine being the guy with the javelins just an accident waiting to happen. That sounds I was someone. I saw one and a

half accidents my entire time there. So they're used to this stuff. Let's see how I love this. People have pets, so they have dogs. Dogs are kind of a favored thing, it appears, and so they have little baskets on the front of their their scooters, so you see dogs in that. But it's great when you see a full sized dog like Malla mute husky, not a scooter on the floor the foot rail, you know, sideways looking forward, tail blowing back. I have the little guys not burning his burning himself

on the tailpipe or anything like. No, that dog, well, no, I think he was because there's a human between him and the tailpipes. It was okay, let's see. Uh oh. I saw a guy driving once holding a door the passenger by the way, you know, like a door to a house, straight up and down. So driver door straight he was holding an episode that it was catching the wind totally, totally like he was in the city. So they were maybe doing fifteen or tw that's a lot

of wind. It's a lot of wind. I think I would have held at the other door, like ninety degrees to that. And then the other thing that I saw there is, of course everybody has a cell phone, just like here. All have cell phones. So nothing was funnier to me than seeing people driving a scooter talking on their cell phone. But even better reading there's texting. The texting get in a car is dumb and dangerous and you shouldn't do it, but it was scary. That was

That was actually not that long ago. I was here in Wright in Portland and it was behind some kind of scooter and he's just buzzing along and all of a sudden I see it into his pocket and pull his phone out, and he's looking and looked down at it. I think. I don't think he wasn't actually texting back

and he was checking. Yeah. I know it's crazy, but you know, that's one of the one of the fun things about traveling in some of these places is like the transportation, and like one of my one of my favorite things to me that when I was in Bolivia some years back, everybody down there has if you have a car, which very few people have, but most people have those Toyota Mini Mini bands, you know that like a volks same size and shape as a Volkswagen bus,

like seven people. Yea seating arrangement, Yeah, except in Bolivia. It turns out people are people are much smaller in Bolivia and have shorter lakes, so they actually squeeze an extra bench in every one of those, and so there's sort of a privatized transportation system in the city is like in La Paz and stuff. But I caught this ride to Lake Titty Cock was my friends and it was I was crammed into the back and we had all of our stuff strapped to the top and everything.

And at one I counted the number of people in there and they were including the driver in the past and in the front faster. There were seventeen people inside that and also some boxes and a dog inside that thing. Yeah, I'm not cool. And it was the most uncomfortable ride of my life because the bench in front of me was so close that when I got in, I shifted my my booth of my legs were tight together and I shipped them to the shifted them to the left. There was no moving my legs and I was done

and they were squeezed tight together. So I was seriously wondering if I was going to be sterile after it was the worst, the most uncomfortable ride ever. And I've been on others that was that was just the best or the worst, depending but yeah, that's that's one of the fun things about traveling and some of those parts of the world. Though what since Devin, I think you asked the first Ye Joe, what's what's the next question? Out of the ramblings of Vietnam? Oh, my god, the

ramblings of Vietnam? Did you see any cool any any cool war stuff? Like did you see some of the cool tunnel complexes that they built? So I did not go into the tunnel complexes. You could go to a place where you you literally had to crawl on your hands and knees, and I wasn't interested in that. I did go to the Vietnam War Memorial, which is a three story building. I said, you, guys, photos of the aircraft outside. There were U S aircraft that have been

left behind when they left uh Saigon. Which is funny is they renamed it Ho Chi Minh City, but everybody still calls it Saigon except on paper, which is hilarious. But but I went to that and that that was really really interesting because I went in not having this sense of American guilt. I didn't go in thinking that, and I didn't come out thinking that either. But what I did find really interesting was the way it's it's your typical museum, giant text placards and images. I did

see Kappa Robert Kappa. He was his image and his story was there, which was interesting, along with dozens of other photo photographers that died in the war on both sides. But what I did find really interesting was the way they described things. So all of the North Vietnamese that died in the war were repeatedly referred to as patriots, which for the winning side makes sense except where it

was used so prevalently. Uh, there was the puppet government which was referred to as the South Vietnamese Government that was set up by the US. By the way, in English as well as totally it was all in English, it was not in Vietnamese. It was set up for Western tourists, so there was, but there was the proper government. There was. I think the word oppressors was in there was. There was some very strong worded language that wasn't inflammatory, but it was very interesting the way it was written

that it definitely was saying you people came in. The Americans were terrible. The French suck too, but the Americans were horrid, but it would The French were pretty hard too, but they were right. They did some bad things, but it was very interesting. It was a three story complex. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the agent orange room. Uh, that was surprised. Yeah, the fetus in a box, yeah, amound the hide box. Yeah that was sounds kind of gross. But but other than that,

so that that was the worst stuff. And then they had, like I said before, I sent you guys photos of planes and the helicopters that had been left behind. They put those outside. If you travel around the city, though, there are fighter planes and helicopters in different military equipment in Hanoi and more so in Saigon, actually mostly in Paigon that is on display as kind of je unrule memorial stuff of look what us, well, look what we did. Although it was just the fifty year anniversary, so a

lot of that stuff was really prevalent. It made sense that they'd probably been putting those installations up. I'm guessing the tanks have always been there, but the placards and the billboards and stuff like that seemed to be newer. Yeah, it sounds to me like they're pretty much over it, though I wouldn't say they were over They were celebrating that they had they had, they were victorious, and they freed their nation from you know, these people who came

in and took over. I mean, I mean, was the word insurgeon. It wasn't, it was a pressor. But the French they kicked the French out, and then the American looked terrible they were and well, we can't not going to vietn These our motives, our motives for coming into the country were a little different than the French, where the French actually did colonize the place, whereas we came in and took over for the French, just because by that time, you know, the communists are trying to take

over the country, so our motivations were a little bit different. And maybe attend at this place, but this isn't a portable forum, so we can talk about that again sometime. But the Yeah, anyway, so I feel like, well, I was just gonna say, I feel like I was thinking about like the pictures you posted and stuff, and I was feeling like there are a lot of people wearing the like you see in Japan as well, the masks, the face masks. Yeah, like the medical line, yeah, the

medic yeah. But yeah, so so yeah, Devin is talking about in the late nineties early two thousands, around the time the bird flu happened. You would see those photos of people in the Asian world wearing those masks, presumably to stop catching the flu, which is stupid because they don't work, because unless it's hermetically sealed your face and

you're breathing fresh air, that doesn't work. But the point is is that people now in Asia are running around all the time with them, and it's totally because of how dirty the air is. I was there in March and it was getting to be warm and so it was dusty. It is smoggy because they don't have emissions controls. As I can tell. Everybody's runn around as scooters, which are at the cleanest burning vehicles in the world. But

the mask are hilarious for a couple of reasons. One because people wear them everywhere, not just on their scooter, but you will see them walking around. You'll see them in buildings and businesses, and yeah, it's kind of I put it on. It's like wearing a hat. I put it on and I forgot it was there, and so

I'm just wearing it. The other thing is that there's the basic medical style, the papery ones with the elastic band, but you see a lot of them that are fabric and I get the feeling that they might have some kind of like charcoal liner in them, and they have fabric on them that is different Prince, so Hello Kitty, or dot patterns or ad patterns or anything that you can think of. It's a fabric pattern on these masks. And so you just see people rolling around in them.

I think like a skull with teeth would be kind of cool. Yeah, I bet you. If I had looked long enough, I would have seen that. You know what, it's really surprised. I didn't see everybody wears helmets. Like everybody has helmets on and sometimes they're not the best help in traffic or pedestrians to traffic when they're driving scooters, but an open, open topped vehicles. They also seem to wear helmets as well, like dump trucks that don't have a cab top on them. I saw guys wearing helmets.

But what's funny is that they're not all motorcycle or scooter style helmets. Some of them are obviously bicycle helmets as in the law is you have to have a helmet, right, it is better than nothing. What I was really surprised was is that here you see kids and young adults always running around with the helmets that have the Foae

mohawk on them. I didn't see one anywhere, And I'm pretty sure I'm gonna make my fortune in Vietnam by showing up with a helmet with bristles on it and selling them on the street corner, and they're gonna go like hotcakes. Yeah, it looks like a Roman centurion or something. Yeah, or who was it? I guess it was the Trojan said with the war, those funny those cool little helmets with the red Yeah, okay, yeah, it's cool. You know, if you can wear a hell like you might as

well be stylish about it. Yeah. That was a big thing back in the day. Crazy helmets. Oh yeah, for sure. Tell you such apart. Yeah yeah, Hey, let's let's I'll take a break from all this talk about helmets and safety and have a quick word from our sponsor. What do you say, guys? All right? When a young girl disappears in rural Windgap, Missouri, reporter Camilloe Preaker is sent to investigate whether the case is linked to an unsolved murder.

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But but you were talking about like traffic, and when I was like, you know, in Latin America, I honestly, relationship between drivers and pedestrians it's much different than and I think it's that way most of the because even and that's it's like probably developed country, the attitude is what can I do for you? What can I do for you, wonderful pedestrian over there? Over there, it's get

the hell out of my way. Actually, frankly, even most places in America it's like that as well, probably West Coast, but any pedestrian friendly. Yeah, but like in Latin America is especially more so. It's like you're your fair game. If you're still on the street when the light changes,

your your fair game. So the funny thing is is that, well, okay, so my my boss had been to Vietnam about four or five years ago, and when I got back, she said, oh, so do they do they actually uh followed the stop signals? Do they actually follow the lights or just keep going? Because when I was there, nobody paid attention to the lights. When I was there, people paid attention to the lights. But there appears to be more cars on the road

because they're reducing the teriffs on vehicles. But as a pedestrian, the rule is once you start, you don't stop, and you stay at a consistent speed, so you have to look. You have to make eye contact with everybody coming at you. But if you keep moving at a steady pace forward don't if you were in your behavior, they will go around you. And I have waded through streets that were bumper to bumper scooters inside and they just kind of

make room and you walk through. And I had a friend though that she's like, I have to close my eyes and just go. And at one point I was next to her and she looked up and she saw scooters coming and she stopped and I had to reach out I was behind to put my hand on the small of her back and give her just don't stop, don't stop, don't stop. Got to the other side of the road. So they are they're they're good about it.

If you're good about it in in Southeast Asia, just don't get like, you know, I have an encounter with that guy that's carrying long piece of pie, because that would suck e well, that guys to go slower, yeah, you know. And and it's funny, is the way traffic appears to be is that I worry about the people that are in front of me and directly to my left and right in my my field of view, and I don't give a crap about the people behind me. So if you are gonna turn, you blinkers don't count.

You just start turning. But you you start turning and going rather slowly, and then the traffic behind you all pools around you and gets that and you're able. So the guy with the law on board starts making a right hand turn and he just slowly he slows down, but he goes and the stream just opens up around him and just behind him. That is the thing is, you know. And um, you know, here in America, driving on the streets is very very regulated. There's tons of

signs everywhere, tons of rules. You know. There's actually been a few European cities that have tried taking away traffic controls, signed lights and everything that actually works out, because it turns out people can figure it out, just like just like in some of these places in the Third World, they're very few, like you honest, I was in Mexico many years ago, like and uh, and there were no lights or stop signs or anything at these city intersections.

And what would happen is is that all the traffic would just go. There'd be the stream of cars, and meantime at the cross street, all those people they're just sort of accumulate. And then eventually it sort of thins out the stream, it turns out, and and then somebody just sort of forces his way out into there in

that stream. And then those guys, first the first stream has to stop when everybody else goes, you know, and then when that starts to thin out, then these guys forced their way through and it just yeah, and and you don't need lights. It just works, you know, So yeah, and people figure it out. Yeah. It My favorite was that when we were pedestrians, and we were pedestrians the whole damn time, but walking across an intersection in Hanoi that was a six way intersection with it was three

streets came in. There was about a hundred foot stretch and then they split into three directions. So you never walked through that hundred foot stretch because it was too dense. Instead, it was easier to go to each of those three and make your way across. Yeah, but it was totally fun. Um. I know, we're getting close to the time. The only other thing that I want to share is that I'm amazed that nobody's house just spontaneously burns down because of

electrical fires. There I showed I think you guys have seen the photo, but power polls these concrete deals that go up. They look almost like cinder block towers, but it is a literal spider webs, rats, nest of wires going in every direction and there are multiple power boxes on the pole. And it turns out the reasoning for this is that they it's called in this country, and

they all own it and they all help. So when Devon's power goes out, Joe and Steve get together, crawl up there and we figure out how to wire new power to Devon's apartment. But we don't know what causes the short and we also don't know which of the other four boxes on that poll are live anymore. Letton which wires our power or communication wires, And so it just becomes this, I kid you, not dense web. There's

an artist out there. She does these really crazy installations where she uses fishing nets like shrimp nets, and you see it and I think I saw it in one of the airports, but she's got the installations all over the US, and she makes these crazy amorphous shapes by putting these fishing nets in in you know, it'll drape down in kind of a w shape and then pull back up on itself and then pull back out, and there's all this complex layering and you look up and

it's just strings going everywhere. That is what it looks like when you look up at just about any intersection in Vietnam, because there are so many wires everywhere. Is there is there also power pirrating going on, and people just sort of like, I'm sure that there is I only I saw guys in um in jumpsuits that obviously were the power company four times working on things. But there was a ladder. It wasn't, you know, as if they were working up high in the nest. They were

working low on a box. But I'm sure that people are stealing power and they're stealing cable all the time. Yeah, no doubt. How are you going to track it though you're not. It's such a it's such a freaking messy knows where the line goes anymore, So it doesn't really Yeah, well, the thing is, the thing is too is you really can't bust everybody. I mean, millions of people are doing and I'm sure so you know exactly. Yeah, sounds like close times you guys have any other random little question.

It sounds like he had a good time. And I was like, I know that I was. I was for a while. I was. I was sort of planning a trip to Southeast Asia and there's this one place. It was just outside of pant On, pen Yeah, and they had you probably didn't go to this place, but this place I found in the only planet guy, and it's like it was cool. They had like a lot of leftover relics from the wars. Then there's not besides the

Vietnam War. Of course, there's Cambodia. Yeah, yeah, So you can go there and you can shoot a fully automatic ak for a price, and and and if you want to pay even more, you could actually maybe toss a live hand grenade. You know, there's all kinds of cool stuff.

You didn't do any of that, you know, when I when I was in Cambodia, we went to uh seem Reap and went to Anchor Watton three or four days touring those thousand years room, and then we went to Sinookville or Sanokville which is on the coast, and hung out on the beach. So I didn't do any of that, but I know that there are all kinds of things like that. But there's all kinds of things like that

in loose in Vietnam. Well, I don't think you can shoot guns and blow stuff up in Vietnam Is easily, but I'm sure you could in Cambodia and Thailand Is. I haven't been to Thailand. From what I understand, it's kind of the weirder darker. Everything happens kind of place in terms of I mean there's tons of backpackers, and I found tons of backpackers, I mean the backpacker alleys. But it seems that that's more of a wild West

in Thailand. It's kind of anything goes place. It's definitely know the place to go if you want to catch AIDS. Yeah it is. Yeah. I mean if I don't know that that necessarily is true anywhere that you go, that you're being foolish and not protecting yourself for sure. Now I guess, but apparently it's it's a big like sort of sex tourism destination for a lot of people, a

lot of Europe. Well, I guess what I meant by the wild West was more of people just go and they get wasted, and the locals consider all tourists as march. I mean, it was this kind of like undiscovered paradise for a while. It's my understanding that more and more, like with every passing year, it's becoming more and more touristy.

It's really westernizing a lot. So you know, things are getting marks because for a while it was like you could go, you get an airbnb for like literally fifteen U s. Dollars for an entire month, right, that's your whole rent. And you just live right on you know, everything is super super cheap. You live right on the river. You live this like crazy Instagram life and it's super cheap, and you know, totally dreaming. You can't do that as much.

It can't last, you know, you know what, honestly better better for Thailand probably probably. But the thing when you but I can say is that when I looked at the cost of the currency exchanges and the cost of things when you're this is a funny denomination thing. When you're in Cambodia, they use the real which is four I think it's four thousand real to an American dollar. When you go to Vietnam, it's the viet dong, and the viet dong is twenty two thousand to one U s. Dollar.

You can it's it's it's wow, it's so cheap. But it turns out real estate is absurdly expensive there. But even even though I mean it is like mill it is millions of Viet dong per square foot, it's actually not that much. It still turns out you can rent an apartment and nice two bedroom Western is apartment not in the heart of Hannoy, but like on the outskirts

for five d dollars a month. Trying to find a nice two bedroom apartment in the city of Portland for two for five hundred bucks and let me know what happens. Even if you found a condemned two closets, it would still cost more than So it's so it's understandable why this is appealing. But if you ever get anybody YouTube or anybody listening, gets the chance to tour Southeast Asia,

take the opportunity. Do your research. I would recommend there are services out there that will set up your visa for you, because a lot of them are visa on entry, meaning you can't apply for visa beforehand. You gotta get it when you get there. But you can hire a company provide your docs and just show up with your paperwork. You privated your documentation electronically, and when you show up, they got lou placard, says your name here, and you say that's me, and they say great, set over there,

stupid guy. And then they say come with me, stupid person, and they lead you to a line to a customs official with a completed package. And then they stamp, stamp, stamp, and all the way you go, and it takes it's very cheap, and it takes a lot of stress and worry out of your travels in a allows you to enjoy your travels. I personally would be going back soon. I enjoyed it a lot going back to Southeast Asian. This episode not brought to you by Southeast Asia by

the Vietnam Tourism Board. Yeah, yeah, I definitely that together. I really want to go to Hong Kong someday since I'd love to see Hong Kong, I do I really the next big adventure, like me figure out how to get there and how to navigate is I've always had this stream of traveling to Japan because there's something about the Japanese culture that really fascinates me, and so I

go there. I just want to ride on the Tokyo Subway. Well, you know what's really funny is I have a friend that just came back from a two week vacation in Japan, and she said the great thing was is because they have the high speed rails, you tour the entire freaking country and it takes twenty five minutes to an hour to get to somewhere way far away because the trains are so lightning fast, rather than hopping on a bus or trainers or a regular train or an airplane. So

that's another one that I'm thinking of. Uh, but we are run along on time here, So for all of our premium members, thank you for being premium members. We really do appreciated. A Stitcher is a great place and we're happy to be here with them. We will again, as always, be giving you down the rabbit hole, even though I know this one's a little bit different, but hey, something different and fun and personal is always fun to share. So do you do have anything else that you want

to share for today? No? No, not really. Thank I'm trying to think of a good snappy alive from the Deerhead or something like that, but I can't think of anything, so okay, yeah, I guess Bye bye Hunter. I want to know why the deer just does Okay, thank you, guys, and it's been fun sharing this little bit of this extra special episode and until next month. We'll talk to you later. Hi, guys.