with her left hand, the waitress is holding the beer i just ordered as she carries it to my table. with her right hand, however, she is openly inching her finger so far up her nose that i'm afraid she'll scratch her own brain. she's just a few feet before she makes it to our table when she pulls something sizable out and wipes it on the table cloth, just as she sets down my beer (25 cents, the cheapest yet!).
this is customer service in vietnam. if you can get a waitress to come to your table, and that's a big if, she'll make you wish you'd never set foot in her place of work. it sometimes feels like they're yelling at us. thank god the food's great, and we could care less about who brings it to us.


we're in hue now. hue is great, so far. we've only been here for less than a day, but we're enjoying it immensely. we took a walk to see the sights and we're followed by a pesty cyclo driver, looking to take us on a tour through the old city. a cyclo, by the way, is a cycle-rickshaw seen all over in vietnam. we tried to explain that we didn't want the tour, that we were actually out for the exercise, but he persisted and we caved. the catch was, though, that while he borrowed a friend's bike, i took the driver's seat and pedaled ashley around from monument to monument. the amount of attention we received was, honestly, a little embarrassing, but still too good to give up. people gawked it us like as though we were monkeys pedaling a bicycle around. lots of hellos, and lots of waves kept us both giggling like morons for hours.
tomorrow we're taking a riverboat tour that our hotel staff insists is "always terrible." that alone has us interested. we'll be sure to let you know.

before hue, we were in hoi an, a very charming town that, for the first time, really let us know that we were in vietnam. the streets are narrow, and filled with old moss covered rooftops, and teak buildings with hanging lanterns. it was so uniquely vietnamese, and yet so saturated with tour groups that it has the vague feel of a movie set, but not so much that we didn't enjoy ourselves. we had our best meal in weeks, which is saying a lot, and even found some tolerable ice cream. last night we went to a performance of traditional vietnamese music and dance that we both really liked, and before that, visited some ruins nestled into nearby misty mountains. it is a testament to the spectacle of angkor wat that we were largely unimpressed by this particular set of mysterious jungle ruins. we're obnoxious, i know, but ruined by angkor wat.

on an unrelated note, i think it's worth mentioning that ashley can now see a rat or giant cockroach in the street without hardly a flinch. we spent five minutes on the street last night cheering on a lap dog as it chased a cockroach aound in circles. it was good fun.

i think that's all i've got, for now. if we don't get a chance, happy thanksgiving to everyone who reads this. i think we've figured out our phone, so we will hopefully be talking to many of you soon.