Asian beds

Lots of new pictures just loaded into the album.

I have been meaning to write a post about my 4-month stiff neck and how its major cause is the strange Asian prediliction for beds and pillows that are like cotton-shrouded bricks. Last night we stayed for one night in a relatively luxe hotel on Cat Ba Island near Halong Bay, as part of a mini-tour... the bed was California-Emperor-sized, or something. But, just as in the most flea-bitten budget guesthouses, the mattress has all the give of a stone floor and the pillows are 5" thick and remind me of a couch my grandmother owned that was stuffed with horsehair. This morning I woke up thinking fondly of my own bed and a few weeks of physical therapy. The rest of the family is begging for massages and I'm being the bad guy and saying No, they're too expensive here.

Halong Bay in very very brief: the first day we cruised in a junk, and were stunned by how beautiful it is. The second day we kayaked, and were stunned by how polluted it is. As in all of Asia, there is plastic trash EVERYWHERE. The sad thing is that the Vietnamese just don't see it, as far as I can tell, and a conversation with our guide (who is a great guy, with excellent English, but who didn't quite seem to see what we were fussing about) suggests that the main source is not increased tourism, as you might expect, but local people who have always thrown everything into the sea but have come to rely on plastic products only in the last 20-30 years.