I’m here

Sometime after that dawn bus ride and before the late night landing in a different country, and on a different calendar page. Somewhere since the home I know and this city I do not. In between these things, that’s where I remembered that I forgot to post the answer to the question I blogged a few weeks back, asking where I should go for my next trip.

My next trip is here, it’s this trip.

I woke this morning somewhere around dawn, though I can’t say for sure since my room has no windows. It was light by the time I gave in and went for a walk through the market, where stacks of clothes crinkled in their plastic bags, pyramids of softball-sized pineapples waited to be dispersed through the city on the paired wicker trays that hang from either end of a wooden bar carried on the shoulders of women in conical hats, and colorful crabs from the bay tried to escape their tanks in vain.

Then back to the hotel for the breakfast buffet, centered around a bowl of chicken soup with noodles. Not quite the same as the stuff we all love in the Bay Area and Portland these days. Then a shower with the kind of water pressure we Californians can only dream about. Why not, in a country as famous for rain as this? Why, I remember Tom Hanks saying it has all kinds of rain here, from every direction.

I’m only a day in, but already I can see why so many people come here. I don’t think I’ll make it to the southern city, which I’ve heard is crazier, too crazy. The scooters here are enough mayhem for my taste anyway. And in a couple days I’ll head to the mountainous north to trek a bit between villages.

More to say, but it’s time for me to get outside, so goodbye for now, and chuc mot ngay tot lanh!

(I don’t think this country would block my blog, but I had a helluva time accessing it…had to take a rather roundabout route. If I disappear for three weeks, I’ll catch up when I get back.)