Travel Diary – Vietnam – Putting Your Best Foot Forward - Chap 1

The day before I left on my trip to Vietnam I went around town looking to buy a new camera. 

As I remembered, Vietnam was filled with colors and sounds and rustling and bustling and hustling crowds, street vendors, and store fronts openly enticing you to enter, and the flow of random masses of street vehicles - trucks, cars, cyclos, motor bikes - dangerously intertwining with each other while competing for limited space on the road with pedestrians.  

Truly a  photographer’s paradise but in the end I felt that a new camera would be a distraction to my visitor experience and so I decided to forgo the purchase. I would rely on my iPhone and make due.

The other turmoil in my life was a newly felt injured left foot mostly on the lateral foot pad. Probably as a result of some shoveling strain from the previous two days; I'm embarrassed by my dwindling constitution. Or could it be my gout paying me an unwelcome and very untimely visit. Either way, even after Celebrex and some last minute prednisone I am still hobbling around the airport barely making it to my next gate, sweating and anxiously thwarting the hordes of people obstructing traffic, diving for the last stretch to arrive in time. Maybe yard work was not such a good idea after all. 

I was looking forward to my Korean Airline flight to Seoul and then to Hanoi.  On the second level of the 747 in business class the service was impeccable, the food excellent but the seats were a little angled on recline. Not quite the miserable partially reclining variety, but nowhere near the flat lie-down seats that are now common on most carriers like Delta. In the end I was sinking and sliding down the seat over time putting more strain on my already injured foot. 

 Korean airline flight attendants must come from Mormon families. They could not look so similar without such a strong dose of genetic concordance. They looked all in their 20’s, wore soft white and turquoise outfits, were tall and had nice slim figures, with hairdos that matched, and with impeccable manners.  Everything was almost too perfect. If anything they looked android and robotic in their demeanor and service.  A far cry from American business class flight attendants who are usually the most senior, markedly older, not quite as fit or slim.  But they are still quite acceptable considering everything. Certainly they have more personality, but I guess you can't have everything. 

Writing this first installment on my flight to Hanoi.  Writing will be a chore because I didn’t take my laptop, worrying about theft and not willing to risk all that it possesses inside its hard disk.  The iPad I took was old and feeble like its owner but it would not be a great loss if stolen so long as I can posthumously delete its content with the find my iPhone app.