Fish Wednesday: Sunday Chicken Soup Edition

By Your Intrepid Substitute Blogger I stood in PCC in Kirkland last Wednesday and looked at the fish. I looked at the halibut cheeks (don’t like halibut), the shrimp (my little guy decided last week he doesn’t like it any more; plus we just had it), the wild Alaskan king and sockeye (I really prefer …


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10 Southeast Asian Trials

Windowless hotel rooms. Icky bathrooms. The bus. Lousy air quality, including second hand smoke. All those zeroes on the currency. Unpredictable coffee. Very Hard Beds. No, I mean VERY hard. Noise pollution. Aggressive shopkeepers. Being on someone else’s schedule. That’s it for the complaining. Everyone gets to do a little bit, it’s only fair. But …


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Going Underground

At the Cu Chi tunnels, you can see where the Viet Cong forces, working with the local people (or not, it’s not clear) dug out an extensive underground complex that reaches from the outskirts of Saigon all the way to Cambodia. You can see examples of the terrifying traps the VC built to snag the …


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I Shop, Therefore I Am

There’s a big mural on the back wall of one of the expat cafes in Hoi An town that’s got Bruce Lee with a big can of Coke in one hand, and on the other side, there’s a Mona Lisa wearing an iPod. In the middle, it says in big letters, “I shop, therefore I …


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Hoi An is a Riot

You know that paint you used in grade school? The chalky stuff, tempera, that when it dried, rubbed off on your clothes and your hands and your backpack and your homework? Remember those dry colors, dusty and dirty but oh so bright? Those are the colors of Hoi An. And because the entire country is …


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Q: Where are the pics?!

A: Our internet connections, while plentiful, have been sooooo slow that I’m quite sure that if I uploaded even one photo, no one in Vietnam would be able to use the Internet until I’m done.