Hue

We are now waiting out a storm in some small internet cafe named "Jerry Net" (and really one of the things I love about vietnam is that every internet place ends with net, my favorite so far was a small shack in a small town we were driving through called "love net" Is it a requirement that everyone there is furiously refreshing their match.com profile? Is there a higher rate of porn downloads there?)

We have been in Hue for two days now. The first day we basicall wandered around the city checking out the 5,000 colleges and the main drag. We stopped for a snack and a drink at someplace called the DMZ cafe (no surprise, mainly catering to expats) and we given a flyer indicating that it was women's appreciation day. Actually it appeared to be occurring from october 9 - october 30th, so "day" probably isn't appropriate. Women's Apprecation fortnight and then some? Not really sure.

Anyway, we were expectant as to in what way DMZ cafe would honor women. Notes from the Seneca Falls convention? Spoken word pieces on the bravery of North Vietnamese women during the american war? Seminar on sex trafficking? No, just a free super sugary cosmo type drink for every woman in the bar. Carrie Bradshaw your people have spoken!

We spent today with our guide who was very excited to tell us all about the newfound freedom in Vietnam, up until he learned Natalie was a journalist and then he said please don't use his name in anything (not to worry tourist guide x, your secret is safe with us). No seriously he was a really nice guy, his father served with the South Vietnamese with the Americans and he was pretty frank about the various failings of US War policy here. Not the war itself mind you, he thought that was good, just thought we fucked it up in how we conducted it. It's really hard to actually have that conversation without thinking about our current little dalliance over in Iraq.

His whole tour was great, the various tombs, the temple that was home to the monk who immolated himself in Saigon to protest the war in the 1960's, etc. There was only one thing that bugged me from the second I met him.

His hair.

Well not his haircut, that was some sort of standard issue crewcut, but these series of hairs that came out of a mole on the right side of his neck. They were long, I mean from his just below his jawline down to his chest long (not that I saw his chest, again not that kind of tour). They were wavy and blew in the breeze and very hard to ignore (I kind of felt like Chong in Up in Smoke where he meets the guy big red marks on his face who asks him "what are you doing?" and Chong says "nothing man, I'm not looking at your face at all.)

Anyway about 24 hours after meeting him and frantic confirmation with Nat that the hairs were (1) real and (2) creepy, our faithful guide stands on the steps of the tomb of the last great emperor and says "so the hair on my neck, you have noticed this?"

I'm all thinking "how do I say I only see inner beauty in Vietnamese?"

As it turns out such hairs are a blessing of sorts, if on the right side from female angels and from the left side from male angels. To cut them off would be a great sign of disrespect so our guy has let it grow for all of his 37 years.

Of course, all my empathetic self could think was "what kind of asshole angels would want you to run around with all that neck hair?"