Noura and I traveled all around Southeast Asia trekking Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand for nearly 2 months. I learned a lot of life lessons from backpacking and met people from all over the world that truly touched me.

Those were some of the best days of my life with Noura. I never knew how adventurous she is! Notwithstanding stereotypes aside, my Syrian friends in Brunei were pretty impressed that she had the aptitude and athletic prowess to backpack with me. She’s definitely a guy’s type of girl.

If you missed it, you can catch all of my backpacking adventures organized here.

What blessings are you thankful for this year?

Dirtiest border patrol I have ever dealt with. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot in Vietnam.

Here is my travel diary experience entering Vietnam through Lao Bao…

I got the full show. First, the immigration guy sneezed on my passport. Then he “accidentally” dropped my passport (3 times). Then after picking it up, he snorted mucus up his nose and hocked his throat while giving my passport a dirty look and looked me up and down like a 2 cent hooker. Then he picked his nose while flicking through my passport pages with the same dirty finger. I was like a rare game in lucky hands and I was treated like shit.

After 30 minutes of questioning about my intention to have kids and other communist trivia, a group of immigration officers started to form. First they made me smile for about half an hour to see if my picture matched that of my passport’s. My mouth got sore smiling and that has never happened to me. I mean this was a smart and creative way of torture, I was thinking. How smart of them – I could never really report this because they did not give me evidence to substantiate any significant wrong doings. It was just baseless humiliation. Then I thought, who do I report this to? I’m in there country. Technically, they can do anything they want to. I had put Vietnam on the map as a tourist destination and I was going to support their economy and this is how they treat me as a first impression?

By this time, I’m aggravated and wanted to turn back to Laos. For several hours, I was the entertainment of 7 lonely officers touting and squinting at me as if I was an alien from another planet.

After running out of jokes, the immigration officers came up with another torture idea. They made me sign a billion blank papers to hopefully prove I forged the signature on my passport. This was insane and retarded. Cooperating with a smile, I did so. Then I was asked to show 3 other forms of ID and they were still not convinced. In the end, the accused me of counterfeiting my passport.

After pleasing like a peasant and showing them my wedding pictures, I was able to slide by after hours of appeal. I bet they enjoyed seeing an American suffer and beg. That was probably the whole point of this saga.

But even then it wasn’t over. In agonizing pain, after being painstakingly convinced my papers were all in order…the officers turned their backs to me and spent 1 hour serving all the locals that had just walked up to the immigration counter. This whole while I stood in attention, in the cold, waiting. Even our bus driver tried to intercede but he was sharply reprimanded to get the hell out of the building with the carefree whisk of Hitler’s hand.

Now that we’ve crossed the border, I’m thinking what Americans did here during the war had a deeper impact than I had thought. I’ve got tons of Vietnamese friends in Houston. I’ve never seen anything like this from them towards me. What was happening here: can someone give me an explanation?

Stripped of every intention of creativity, people mean business here. Differentiation is important because goods and services are plentiful and redundant. But people move so quick here, emotions and details don’t seem to matter in this big city. It’s name recognition and putting products in your face that sells.

In Laos, I noticed men mostly sit around and do nothing. Here in Vietnam, women work as hard as men do and even more. It’s like the whole society is working 24/7. It’s crazy like that!

Some parts of the city (non-central districts) are gray with smog, noisy with rattles of machinery, honking horns, yelling workers, and buzzing with 18-wheelers steamrolling the gravel all day long in the haze of pollution and randomness. The entire society looks converted into factory workers – the kids, taxi drivers, women and men all look like construction workers plowing in the industry. Manufacturing of steel pipes, fittings, cranes, and automotive parts – this is what surrounds you as you enter the big city.

Once you get to the heart of Ho Chi Minh, it’s completely different and highly modernized. All over though I must say people are very sincere and mean good intentions. We have met some on the nicest people during our travels here.

Motorbikes, overcrowded, and power lines running into each other. That’s Saigon for you with 8 million people bursting at the seams of this bustling capital city. Busy as hell is the name of the game here!

Government touches everything and processes are very serial, hierarchial, heavily bureaucratic, and corrupt of course. The common distribution of wealth idea does not work based on the buddy systems I have seen – people revert to bribes and having good contacts to get things done and from what I have noticed, that makes lower class people even more disadvantaged. Socialism is hard to implement with even distribution and minimal defects.

On the bright side making sustenance Men, women, and children here have convinced me that the Vietnamese are people of strong will, hard work, and relentless determination. They will make the impossible happen; if you just watch people you can catch their energy in their hustle and flow. People in Southwern Vietnam are very business-minded always trying to make an extra buck or two. As soon as your pockets give, smiles dissolve and the predator’s eyes lock-and-load on the next target. These soldiers have the soujurn swagger of a famished fighter on a battlefield fighting for a pinch of life. The energy is infectious. A bit like the ambitious “can do” bug you get by visiting New York City and seeing small people in a big city get by.

Wheeling it to Danang to get a visa extension. There better not be rain there or I’m going to kick somebody fat and ugly. Come ye Sun!

Oh yeah, no more temples. What a scam. I feel like they’ve built all these temples in Southeast Asia to boost tourism and steal backpackers’ lunch money. Nobody’s even using them for religious purposes – common folks never visit them. They’re even reconstructed without regard to the original structures. I rather watch the Discovery channel for high quality footage than riding a boat and hiking for 3 hours each. There’s just way too many to see and not enough time!

By far, Mr. Hung’s foodstall (near the river) is the best place to eat hands down. You can enjoy the best food here in all of Vietnam.

This is the most touristy town yet. But it is a good touristy town because the shopping, food, and people were great. We got some fake Lacostes, mini North Face backpacks, and some perfectly cut tailored shirts and pants for $10 a pop and we’re talking fabric and service with high quality. The party’s at Phuong 1 on 7 Tran Phu street.

It’s been a lively stint but I think 2 days is enough damage because shopping is the biggest pull here. As Lonely Planet jabs, all of a sudden backpackers after Hoi An are looking spiffy with their collared shirts and custom-made trousers. Now I look less like Gandhi and more like a tourist again. Mom, you’d be proud of me if you saw me right now.

Nha Trang! On a 12 hour sleeper bus, here we come…

People are genuinely happy here. Just today we found throngs of people picnicing on the beach eating rice and chicken for 50 cents and poking jokes with friends laughing from the tonsols of their throats. Are they happy? These people have absolutely nothing – no iPods, no cars, and no fancy clothes. They’re just roughing it and it seems from their outlook on life, they’re living a “good” life with friends, work, and family.

In America, we want more, more, more. Here, they have less, less, less and it’s working for them. All I remember from America is stress from work, stress from bills at home, stress from traffic, and stress struggling against the wake of mainstream being a Muslim. For me it’s truly more relaxing living here in Southeast Asia where you can be yourself and live a simpler life within a more wholistic society that possesses a balanced and blended value system.

I will upload past journal entries since the beginning of January along with pictures as soon as I get proper www in this country. Facebook is banned in Vietnam by the Viet Kong. Yes, they still exist and they stole my lunch money! Just kidding man.