Usually when travelers post photos from Vietnam, they’ve got all kinds of shots of motorbikes loaded down with people and goods. You can see a few of those here in this Vietnam scooter story and I’ve got plenty more I might dribble out later. But here are a few other fun ones I wanted to share.
This first one is also of a motorbike, but this one is doubling as a place for a nap. In the middle of the sidewalk. Next to a really busy street. This guy has both amazing balance and an impressive ability to shut out noise. I would surely crack my skull if I did manage to fall asleep amidst that cacophony.
Next up, this is still a communist country, in politics anyway. Hotels and internet cafes typically have to use a proxy server or some other workaround for you to get onto Facebook or Twitter and access some sites with non-official news about the country. So you still see propaganda billboards around the country and odd sayings here and there, like this one on a straw container near Ho Chi Minh’s stilt house in Hanoi. What’s doubly odd about it is the illustration: a fat pizza guy who is definitely not from Asia.
This next photo is from the excellent Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. Inside are all kinds of exhibits on the hill tribes and other groups prevalent in the country, with costumes, video, and more. Outside are rebuilt houses and buildings typical of certain areas. This one’s got something to do with fertility.
Gibberish t-shirts are not unique to Asia (see some from Bulgaria here ), but a lot of them are manufactured here, often designed by people who have no working knowledge of the language they are using. The words are just a design element. We saw a dozen hilarious shirts in the riverside night market of Hue, one having the word “pimple” repeated about 50 times and another with a cat pictured but the words saying, “Time file so fast in busy daily life.” This one shows up the best as a photo though.
I believe she needs to quit her job and go to Hawaii. Or something like that.
Next post we’ll return to useful and practical cheap travel info. Until I feel the need to post that photo of what you can’t do in a Bangkok cab…
