hanoi, ho chi minh (man, not city), hoi an, ho chi minh (city, not man) and siem reap

visited ho chi minh mausoleum on my last day in hanoi. you have to dress formally to see him. no shoulders. one boy was wearing a vest. the person who worked there, instead of advising the boy discretely that his attire was inappropriate, began berating the youngster with a megaphone infront of around a hundred people waiting in line. i don't know if you've ever heard anyone shout in vietnamese but if i were to translate the tone into english it would go like "what the fucking hell are you doing wearing that fucking rag here to see our great father and liberator, you filthy scum sucking spewtum!" or something along those lines...

hoi an is a wonderful town but has too many tourists. they do good suits. i bought two. and two coats. then i bought another suit. and then two shirts. they have that effect on you. also went to my son (pronounced "mee sun"). was really good.

then flew to ho chi minh to change planes to go to siem reap. apart from we only had one hour 30 minutes to get our connecting flight. and from hoi an to ho chi minh is a domestic flight we would have to collect our bags and check in again. the girl who sold us the tickets smiled as she told us we would have enough time to pick up our bags and make it through immigration. she smiled.

our flight was delayed. by an hour. we told the stewardess on the plane. she radioed someone. we got a special car to the baggage claim with that someone. we told the baggage staff our problem. that someone told us to follow him. we ran, through security checks. we reach the check in desk. the guy argued with the other guy about letting us on. we still didn't have our bags. the plane was leaving in 20 minutes. a man with glasses behind the desk tried to help us. a man with a blue shirt kept shaking his head. we waited. glasses kept typing into his computer. blue shirt kept shrugging his shoulders. we waited.

baggage claim guy ran toward us with a trolley. on it was our bags. baggage claim guy talked to blue shirt. baggage claim guy put his arm around blue shirt. we waited until blue shirt nodded his head. we dumped our stuff on the belt; ran through customs and security and to our gate with baggage claim guy leading us all the way. we shouted thankyou to baggage claim as we ran through the gate and onto the plane. he shouted good luck. 5 minutes later we were off the ground and going to cambodia.

siem reap airport. visa application form. tuk tuk to hotel sleep. that was last night. today... hasn't ended yet, but it involves angkor wat.