Vietnam Day #1
Aug. 29th, 2006 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI find myself rather bemused by this country, where transportation and commerce work just like China, but where I (ironically) can't read any of the signs. The guidebooks wax ecstatic about the Old Quarter; I find it to be a po' man's Fuxingmen. I'm sure this will all chance once I'm outside of the tourist trap areas and into the actual tourist areas.
It is a point of pride and satisfaction that the motorcab drivers leave me the heck alone (when compared to other tourists)--I must not look like a typical n00b visitor. In a related note, I was hit by my first motorcyclists within 60 minutes of having left the hotel. They appeared to be high school students (probably too young and unlicensed) and were much more terrified after the fact that I was. (Aside from the obvious discomfort of unsuspectingly having a motorcycle's front wheel shove itself between my buttocks, I was unscathed--the kids couldn't have been going more than 5km/hr at the time.)
Took a long walk around the city this afternoon to get a feel for how things work before I start trying to buy food/transportation/items. Again, it's a lot like China, but with French colonial architexture, signs in the Roman alphabet, and the occasional palm tree. My suspicions that I am an East--not South--Asian personality grow ever stronger.
At any rate, some picspam:
Random building which is maybe the Temple of Literature. Maybe.
This street is frighteningly free of vehicle traffic. I think I was in an embassy district or something.
That will be all.
ETA: Wrote this entry two days ago but photosuckit refused to load, thus preventing me from picspamming you at the time.
It is a point of pride and satisfaction that the motorcab drivers leave me the heck alone (when compared to other tourists)--I must not look like a typical n00b visitor. In a related note, I was hit by my first motorcyclists within 60 minutes of having left the hotel. They appeared to be high school students (probably too young and unlicensed) and were much more terrified after the fact that I was. (Aside from the obvious discomfort of unsuspectingly having a motorcycle's front wheel shove itself between my buttocks, I was unscathed--the kids couldn't have been going more than 5km/hr at the time.)
Took a long walk around the city this afternoon to get a feel for how things work before I start trying to buy food/transportation/items. Again, it's a lot like China, but with French colonial architexture, signs in the Roman alphabet, and the occasional palm tree. My suspicions that I am an East--not South--Asian personality grow ever stronger.
At any rate, some picspam:
Random building which is maybe the Temple of Literature. Maybe.
This street is frighteningly free of vehicle traffic. I think I was in an embassy district or something.
That will be all.
ETA: Wrote this entry two days ago but photosuckit refused to load, thus preventing me from picspamming you at the time.
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Jealous
on 2006-08-29 09:31 am (UTC)Re: Jealous
on 2006-09-02 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-08-29 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-09-01 07:13 am (UTC)