NUMBER #1
I was riding my bike to the supermarket when this guy on his motorbike started following me. Like I'm sure any other person would I didn't properly realise this at the start, and when it became blatantly clear I ended up saying "WHAT DO YOU WANT", to well, try and figure out what the hell he was doing. That and western culture means you kinds give someone the benefit of the doubt and time of day.
Then he didn't go away, then he kept talking to me and saying 'dep' which means beautiful and THEN doing this weird tongue thing and saying "hotel".
DO I LOOK LIKE A PROSTITUTE? The pink bike with flowers and a polka dot dress say no.
I considered stopping near a policeman to try and get them to shoo him away, but realised this is a flawed plan as they wouldn't actually care and may also be on his side.
I stopped and called Tabitha who I was hoping would tell me it had happened to her and it was normal. It's not.
He went away and when I breathed a sigh of relief he was back. And kept following me. My asian-ness kicked in and I ignored him like I've never ignored anyone before. About 4 blocks later, once I had recalculated going to the supermarket and decided to go straight to my crowded, western, lunch venue instead, he went away.
So. Awkward. Weird. Creepy.
NUMBER #2
After I thought he'd gone the first time, I looked over to the side of the street and saw a mother holding her 2 year daughters legs up to pee. This, I've seen a thousand times and can possibly be deemed 'bearable'. But she didn't pee. She shit. She shit directly on the street. I saw it come out. On the side of the road. Do you think they put it in a nice little plastic bag disposed thoughfully of it? No. There is human shit on the streets of Vietnam folks.
On the upside, I bought cake tins today. Johnny is away in Cambodia for four days so I thought I'd also treat myself with this bag and dress too.
Next weekend we're in Bangkok for three days! What has everyone else been up to?
Hilarious. Poor Jojo. Hugs.
ReplyDeleteCome visit us in Jakarta? no shit on streets here... not that I walk on streets. But no shit in malls.
3 gunshots were fired just 100m away from our place yesterday night... they shot a guy in the foot. Then there was the police, they closed our street for two hours looking for the cases.
ReplyDeleteIt's 'funny' because when we heard the shots, we thought these were kids playing with big fire crackers, and Nico told me: I wouldn't be able to tell if these were gunshots or fire crackers. And I said that these were fire crackers, it sounded like things I had heard before. And we had this discussion going on for 5 minutes, and in the end we just concluded that we had never heard shots before, so we wouldn't be able to recognise them anyway. And then the police trucks arrived and the policemen were dressed up as if they were going to war, and we realised that we hadn't heard fire crackers!
But we still wouldn't be able to make the difference between the sound of shots and fire crackers...
That was my week end until now! We also went to the Oslo Designers Saturday, and bought Hello Kitty stickers for a presentation Nico is doing at work... don't ask me why!!!!
I know I shouldn't laugh, but the kid shitting on the side of the street is hilarious.
ReplyDelete#1 CREEPY just be careful next time. i wanted to buy a pepper spray, but portia's friend who is a police apparently told her it's an illegal item.
ReplyDelete#2 in the border of gross and funny. don't they have toilet in hanoi, i don't understand!
good that you treat yourself, you totally deserve it after all that!
Weirdly, I also saw a child being held aloft a gutter to shit in the street for the first time just yesterday, but at least his grandfather had put newspaper in the gutter first. Maybe it's SHIT IN THE GUTTER SEASON (yay!).
ReplyDeleteAs for your cycling stalker, what did he think was going to happen? After five more minutes you'd be like "Your tireless pursuit has given me some time to think about it and now yes, I realise it's a great idea. Let's go straight to the hotel right now"?
@Cara I would love to come visit you in Jakarta but I'm pretty sure there's shit on the streets too. That and I'm a poor housewife.
ReplyDelete@Riss It IS hilarious, just in a "at least i'm some distance away" hilarious. I pity anyone who may step in it or get water splash back.
@Laura THE DRESS DOESN'T FIT
@Tabitha I think I'm going to go shit in the gutter now. Maybe had I done it earlier I wouldn't have had the stalker problem.