Vietnam

The last time I bought a screen protector in a cell phone store in the U.S., I think that it cost $17, plus I had to apply it myself. Approximately 17 air bubbles and an equal number of contributions to the swear jar later, I finally got the damn thing on.

Then I went to a cell phone shop in Asia. Oh, my. What a difference.

This morning I popped into a local cell phone store, and asked them to replace the screen protector on my phone. The nice young lady at the service counter pealed off the old film, used a cleaning solution to clean the front and back of my phone and my cell phone case, expertly put on the new protector (with absolutely no air bubbles), and handed it back to me.

The cost: 50,000 Vietnamese dong, about $2.20. Plus it comes with a three month guarantee. They will replace it for free if it gets scratched.

A big bridge in the city of Da Nang, Vietnam is decorated to look like a dragon:

Here’s what the head looks like:

And if you have a dragon, then it should breathe fire, right? Right?!

Right.

Every Saturday and Sunday night at 9:00pm, the dragon breathes fire. Fake dragon, real fire:

It also squirts water, but we didn’t get close enough to see that. Maybe next week.

Or maybe not.

There should be absolutely no question about the caffeine content of this coffee.

A new 7-11 opened on the street that I walk on to and from work. I saw a guy in a slushie costume dancing outside the store, to attract customers. When I walked home after my language lesson, 12 hours later, the poor bastard was still out there.

And you thought your job sucked?

“…in families that don’t have violence.”

One of the really great benefits of this job is the opportunity to learn about the host country’s history and society from a different angle. This week the Consulate sponsored an historical tour of what used to be the presidential palace of the government of South Vietnam. It’s now a museum.

The tour was led by a professor of history at one of the local universities. The republican period is his area of specialization, and so he has an incredible body of knowledge about that period of history. For a history nerd like me, it was a treat to get a tour from an expert.

I feel like we got a much more rich experience than if we had taken a “regular” tour from one of the museum’s guides. The professor was glib and unfiltered in his assessment both of that period of time, and the way it is currently presented by the government. It was refreshing to hear a more objective viewpoint.

Best of all, because not a lot of people wanted to get up early on a Saturday morning to take the tour, we got an almost personal tour.