Sweat Swiper

It is summer in Vietnam and it is hot. Nevermind what you think of as hot; this is hotter .. and more humid. They don’t even dicker around with “real feel” temperatures because it would probably indicate that we are boiling. Given these circumstances, I don’t think it is shocking to admit that I sweat. Especially when I am in the jungle. Vietnamese (at least those from the northern mountains) don’t sweat. They get warm, but they don’t melt. So there I was, melting, when a young Vietnamese woman came up to me and swiped my sweat! She didn’t jar it or do anything really strange, but she came up, looked at my glistening (or is it glowing) arms, and ran her own palm along mine to draw off the sweat. She stood there looking at my body juice on her hand and I stood there thinking “she must actually think this is my body juice!” There weren’t throngs of screaming fans, or people fainting at my feet, but I kind of know how Elvis must have felt.

Ho's Great Adventure

HoChi Minh is a rock star here. People line up for hours to go through his Mausoleum (actually, it is just the Vietnamese people who have the long wait; visitors have no more than a 20 minute pause). The government has turned his house on silts, his palace and yes, the ice block in which he lies, into Hanoi’s version of Disney Land. Streets are lined with vendors hawking “I (heart) HoChi Minh” T-shirts, embroidered pillowcases of Ho at various functions, and ice cream are among the big sellers. I couldn't find any funnel cake so I guess there a limits to what you can sell in a sacred place.

2 very different Hanoi Hiltons

This has nothing to do with Paris. I promise.

The “Hanoi Hilton” aka Hoa Lo Prison (aka Maison Centrale), once home to Senator John McCain, is a tourist attraction. Kind of in the way that the Tower of London are: people like torture stories. The interesting side note to the prison is how nice they make it out to be. They show the harshness of being confined here, but when it comes to the telling of the way the soldiers of the “American War” were treated, they showed smiling soldiers, pictures of them cooking in the kitchen, pictures of them receiving presents from their families. All with the disclaimer that “they came here to kill us, but look how well we treated them.”
You would think that the last place the Hilton family would want to build a new hotel would be Hanoi. Sure there’s the name recognition, but would you want to go to a Camp Auschwitz? Right off the banks of the Red River, and next to the historic Opera, a new Hilton stands. I held my moral ground and didn’t go in. Even though there was a ladies night special.

Life is like ...

I am out in a jungle. I meet some people on a tour and follow behind. Inside the group are two English speakers, they happen to be American. They happen to live in New York, better yet, in Brooklyn. One of them looks familiar, and we begin the process of figuring out how our faces have been seen before. She mentions she is “in cheese.” I mention I love cheese. She says she works as a muckity muck at one of NYC’s greatest cheese shops. I ask whether she was ever a counter girl. I tell her I can picture her in an all white uniform with shorter hair. She nods, is contemplative, and asks me whether I like “stinky cheese.” Bull’s eye! So here in the jungle, I meet someone who 4 years ago served me up some excellent stinky cheese. Forget the box of chocolates; life is like an excellent cheese aisle.

Ling Squared

Two young girls approached me and asked whether I would mind practicing English with them (as far as I knew, my English didn’t need the work, but you can never be too overconfident). I heard the stories of people getting swindled as young girls ask innocuous questions while their counterparts pick every pocket available. I wasn’t going to be that easy, but they were so cute and young and honest looking so I agreed. After they practiced their English 101 questions (how are you, how old are you, where is the library), they loosened up and spoke of how beautiful they believe Vietnam to be .. the most beautiful country, second only to Singapore. When I asked how many times they have been to Singapore, they giggled and admitted to never being out of Vietnam.
They introduced themselves as Ling and Ling, mentioned they were both in high school, Ling #1 wanted to go into hotel hospitality, Ling #2 wanted to be a clothes designer, although she has never touched a sewing machine.
Their big reveal came when I asked them what Vietnam needed to do to compete with a Shangri-la like Singapore. Without missing a beat, they said that Hanoi needed to purge itself of the men who play chess in the streets. Now, I’ve been here less than a week, but I haven’t seen the kind of rampant street chess the Lings believe are taking their city down.

Hanoi's road rules

This is a typical street scene on a calm day. Thousands of mopeds share the road with cars, bicyclists, and the hapless tourist. Forget all you think you know about crossing the road. Don't bother looking both ways; if you wait for green, you might be waiting forever; and if you presume the pedestrian has the right of way in the cross walk, you'll do the rest of your presuming from a hospital bed. Here is the best way to cross the street: take a deep inhale, step off the curb, and walk. Walk in a direct line, walk slowly and deliberately, and walk preferably with someone larger than you acting as a shield. Once you are over, I suggest taking a taxi to cross back.

Lost With No Translation

Tokyo, Japan is reminiscent of New York City in a variety of ways. Neighborhoods are classified as the shopping, eating, drinking, dancing, etc. district, and there are subways that move people between those districts. But what it lacks is a real second language. Purists might think, “Great! All the better to get submersed in the culture!” I thought this ... for all of 10 seconds (the time it took me to be thoroughly confused when trying to buy a subway ticket).While most of the signs and instructions are in Japanese, there are key English words to sucker you in to thinking you might actually be able to get somewhere in conversation. Those key words are: Lunch, Soup, Sale, and Sexy Girls. These pictures show a typical restaurant scene: plastic food plates designed to attract customers in, and a sign with some English, but all the key details are withheld behind the Japanese word fortress.

The best advice I can give to anyone seeking time in Tokyo is to let it all just happen. Walk into that restaurant, point at anything on the menu and see what happens. For the adventure traveler, be sure to try this gastro-blindness at one of Tokyo's many sushi spots. If worse comes to worse, you can always find a sexy girl to keep you company as you pray to the porcelain God.