Hanoi is a massive heart. The city is around the clock pulsating with vibrant streams of life. It's veins are packed with five million family carting, mattress yeilding, box/lamp/bamboo pole/poodle/bucket/business carrying motorcycles streaming in and around each other in the most organised of chaos.
The melodies of the raspy exhaust pipe rattles match the harmonies of the humming horns. They come together with the cat calls of the street vendors to form the symphony of the city.
Everything about this place is beautiful.
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Miraculously, I was run over zero numbers of times. I did see an older lady get hit by a car though. She fell over, but got up and brushed her shoulders off. As you do when such encounters occur.
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The people in Vietnam radiated warmth and were the best sales people I've experienced in quite sometime. I was sitting on a curb when an older woman approached me, placed a pound of unripe peaches in my hand and smiled at me like we had shared a lifetime of warm moments together.
I bought that pound of unripe peaches.
They were green, hard, and bitter.
I'd buy another pound if I saw her smile again today.
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Everything in Vietnam was incredibly cheap. The Dong just has a way of making you feel like what Kanye West must feel like.
A very powerful asshole.
I bought a new wardrobe made purely from silk.
Buyers remorse only sets in when you realize no one in their 20's wears silk to anything ever.
That's cool. I'll be laughing all the way to the bank in about 40 years.
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Smiley the Vietnamese are!
And for good reason!
Their coffee is what I can only imagine taking methamphetamine is like. Instant face lift.
The chairs could be bigger though. Makes a large person such as myself feel like a great dane sitting on a child's lap.
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The pho. The nims. The fish cooked in dill and spring onions. The vietnamese meat and cilantro shoved into a baguette. The homemade spices and sauces spilling over plastic pitchers. The fresh fruit in plastic bags. The honey spread between wafers and sprinkled with sesame seeds.
The LOVE I feel for life when I'm eating.
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The stomach flu. The flight delays. The heat. The vacation hangover when sitting in your office chair.
The questioning of everything you do in life and why it doesn't make you as happy as the peach seller in Vietnam.
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The planning of the trip back...
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