Coffee, Weather, and Travel

One small benefit of France's colonization of Indochina is that Vietnam has AMAZING coffee and baguettes. In these parts, everyone drinks this super-strong espresso-ish coffee in the morning.



So, you pour a little condensed milk into the cup, laythe filter on top, put in fresh coffee grounds, and fill it with boiling water. Then, coffee dribbles down, and when the cup is full, you add as much ice as you like to regulate temperature and dilute the strength of the coffee as needed. It's sweltering here, so an iced coffee every day hits the spot.

Let's talk about the weather in Hoi An a bit (a fascinating topic, I know). Apparently, this town gets hit w/ 8-10 typhoons every year. They flatten a whole bunch of fences and small buildings, and they the Vietnamese just stoically rebuilt them again. Yeesh. I suppose the commercial and tourist value of this city (it's the tailoring capital of Vietnam, where you can get a high quality, hand-made suit for $100) makes it worth it, but still...everywhere I go, there are sounds of jackhammers burrowing into the ground.

As for the heat: it reminds me of the opening scene of that movie Sexy Beast (where Ben Kingsley plays this mad-dog gangster). The main character, played by Ray Winstone, is intentionally getting sunburned by the pool, and he's saying in a rough British accent:

"Aw yeah. Awww yeah. I'm roastin' here. Really roastin'. Boilin'. Bakin'. Swelterin'. Aww yeah."

The only difference is that he's enjoying it, and I'm not. The sun is like a hammer, and the instant you step into it, you're covered in sweat and your shirt sticks to you like glue. On the other hand, there are some amazing sunrises in the mornings:


This was taken on my bus from Da Nang to Hoi An, after I got off a rather horrific sleeper-train ride where my cabin was filled with this sewage smell and the train rocked back and forth and slammed my head against the walls as I slept on my dirty bunk. Ah well. "All part of the experience" as they say.

Believe it or not, I still perversely enjoy traveling cheap, especially when it's a bit rough and uncomfortable. That said, how I travel is still light-years more comfy than how the average Vietnamese person travels. But it's all relative, so I'm gonna give myself a break on this one.

btj