for those who don't know, i turned in my book friday and then zipped off for 6 weeks in asia. first stop: saigon.
survived the what turned out to be a 41-hour door-to-door trip, clearly losing all my proletarian warrior cred by extending my business-class flight beds and cognac-ing and sleeping my way through much of it. utterly painless, except rereading Great Gatsby which is decidedly overrated, and some vile short stories by DH Lawrence and Italo Calvino, the latter of which also makes the all-overrated list.
also opted for the extra $3/night single room w/ shower vs. dorm and inflicting my apnia snore-croaks on everyone. self-interest once again masquerading as altruism.
woke at 6:30 this morning feeling great. went out and to the central market.
i'm off to an incredible start on the food front.
had the best iced coffee of my life to start things off. then a kind of roast pork banh mi sandwich from the old woman in this photo
but then i found this insane plate of radically unidentifiable things (while being roundly pointed to and laughed at) in the central market
so, 3 bkfasts and 2 iced coffees in, i'm back in my room, intending to go back to this, the central market,
oh, and they also seem to find my now 12 words of vietnamese rather comical. bro, haven't been able to use "tit vit" yet. hopefully soon. it seems the language problems cut both ways though, as i saw a young woman wearing a t'shirt that said "Take" across her bosom.
already filling my journal with excellent oddities. too many to list. my favorite, perhaps, an old man whose toenails i noticed seemed most of the way to becoming black/gray ash.
on that note, off to lunch. it seems that American and "noodle" are homonyms in vietnamese. that's all the hint i need...
love to all, j
when is that picture from? 1980?
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