Hi everybody! To make a long (long, long) boring flight story short, I arrived in Hanoi Tuesday with my luggage and my physical self in tact. For those of you who don't know, I am in Southeast Asia for 5 months adventuring and such throughout the region. If all goes according to plan I'll hit up Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and China. Wowza. Just thinking about it makes my head spin a little. The first segment of my trip is in Vietnam, where my brother (Scott) and his fiance (!!!) (Alison) have been living the good life since July. I am lucky enough to have rented a room in their house, which kind of reminds me of a West Philly row home, but with half the width and twice the height. It's at the end of what Scott called "an alley" but is really 9 or 10 different alleys. I'm pretty sure of the algorithm by now...first left, then right, then left right straight left right left right. or something like that. Hanoi is the craziest city ever. There are at least 3 motorbikes for every person on the streets. And on top of that, people drive them as if they were pedestrians: in between lanes of cars, through red lights, on sidewalks, into shops and bars. The other thing about Hanoi is the commerce. Because of an ancient property tax where homeowners were only charged taxes based on the width of their house, all the houses are super skinny, but go very far back and high up. Every house, almost without exception, hosts a shop of some sort on the first floor. Each shop sells one particular item and usually blocks are oriented towards a particular kind of commerce. For example, you will have a block that has 5 or 6 paint stores in a row, each of which sells (or at least appears to sell) the exact same brands of paint. These shops, however, will not sell brushes, paint rollers/trays, or painters tape. You'll have to go to the next block to stock up on those supplies. The oddest ones to me are shoe stores that don't sell socks, fruit sellers who don't sell bananas (bananas are only sold from women on bicycles carrying two woven wicker baskets on either side: bananas on one, mandarin oranges on the other), and stores that sell jackets, but not pants or sweaters. My personal favorite store so far has been the oversized plush animal store; stuffed animals smaller than 4 feet not sold here. I'm still getting used to the noise (a sea full of motorbikes involves an extraordinary amount of honking) and the smell of polution (ugh) but otherwise things are fantastic! More to come...
