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good morning,
vietnam!
--Dec 5, 2004
[After Hong Kong, we spent a few days in Bangkok,
but we’ll be going back there briefly a month from now,
so we’ll add that section to the site later.]
Our first night's sleep in Vietnam last night
wasn't so great… tap tap tap tap… we groggily awoke
to the same mysterious noise that was going all night… tap
tap tap tap… we both imagined that it could be any number
of things, so we were anxious to pop out and see what it was…
tap tap tap tap…
We were surprised to discover that the noise
was caused by people carving gravestones. They carve each one
by hand, and it is just our luck that our hotel is on a street
full of gravestone vendors.
We would soon learn, after wandering around
for the day, that many streets in Hanoi are like this; there are
multiple vendors of the same type right next to each other, often
selling exactly the same stuff (some of the streets are even named
after the type of vendor, e.g. Pho Hang Bac = Jewerly Street and
Pho Hang Bun = Vermicelli Street - yum!). In some ways, this is
very convenient since, as long as you know where the kitchenwares
street is, you can do all your comparison shopping very quickly.
But heaven forbid you want to buy anything else while you’re
on the kitchen wares street… no dice. We found the shoe
street, the metal works street, the Buddha statue street, the
musical instruments street, the decorations for wedding celebrations
street etc. With the exception of the metal works street, any
of these would have been better places for a hotel. Our situation
was further exacerbated by the confusing fact that at least a
few of the gravestone tappers seemed to work all night. There
was a brief respite in late morning, but other than that, it basically
never stopped.
So far, we absolutely love this city, but we
have to find a new hotel or we’ll never get any sleep…
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