Doh!
1. go to www.google.com/
2. click on "maps" (above the search box)
3. click on "get directions" (under the search box)
4. type " New York " in the first box
5. type "London " in the second box
6. scroll down to step #23
posted by soul / η ψυχή της πόλης at 3:31 AM
2 Comments:
Woman’s Vietnam 2
After nigh a week in Hanoi, and now armed with 18 personal pronouns, I felt ready to leave and venture south. In a final touristic gesture to the city, I resolved to visit Ho Chi Min's corpse.
As I approached the mausoleum, two guards jumped at me, shouting and pulling at guns. I stood paralyzed with fear, as a third guard shouted, waved a gun, and the people around me all moved cautiously aside. I finally found my legs and scurried away, making a metal note to add "Don't Shoot" to my list of “Basic-Things-to-Learn-in-Every-Language”.
The following day while wandering about the town of Hue, I puzzled over the incident, wondering if my new Acne Gel might have caused the unexplained offence. Coming upon a tidy, little hair salon I hastened inside. A new look might be just the thing!
After a fairly decent cut, I was appalled when a gang of staff then set about blow drying my chic mop into a curly, voluminous, Falcon Crest style bouffant. I almost intervened at one point, until morbid curiosity got the better of good taste, and I let them go wild with their heated tongs and misguided notions of style.
An hour and a can of hairspray later, they jumped back from their creation, cooing and smiling and with a proud flourish the owner produced a large mirror. “Now, look! You are very in the fashionable!”. “Perhaps in parts of Dallas in the 1980’s”, I thought, but instead whispered, “Yes, very in the fashionable, thank you”, paid my dong, and skulked mortified away.
Later, in the most deserted restaurant I could find, the young waiter told me earnestly that I was very, very beautiful, and then stood waiting expectantly for an answer. “Erm, that’s very nice of you to say?” I ventured, unsure of the correct response, but much cheered by the compliment I regained my appetite for the meal and for adventure. I decided to leave the salons and forbidden citadels of Hue the following morning, and make for magical Hoi An.
Once there, I ambled mesmerized around the historic Old City, dragging my jaw, in awe, on the cobbles behind me. Wending lanes of lamp-lit streets, lined with vendors of silken treats! Tailors waving tape measures at every turn. Handmade silken shoes and sandals. Accessories galore, and all as cheap as chips. Living in Bangkok, I was used to struggling to fit my foreign frame into tiny Thai sizes. Now I was struggling to contain my joy. I had reached shopping Nirvana.
The following forty-eight hours were lost in a blur of fabrics, piping, hems, waistbands, heel height, dress lengths and dollars, dollars, receipts and dollars…Suffice to say the GDP of Vietnam rose several points over that period, and I left with a hole in my budget the size of a walk-in wardrobe.
J.R.
(to be continued)
3:47 AM
This is a greaat post thanks
1:02 AM
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