First up was my farewell Saturday night, with a
little help from Tams, Remi, Owen and Annie. I had a
fantastic time, and it was well worth the 5:30am finish. Tams and Rem took me
to the airport, and I only just managed to hold it together. Fast forward 8
long hours, and we (Andrew, James and myself who were flying from Syd) got put
up in a 4 star hotel in Singapore. My thanks to you all for paying taxes so I
could get a cushy hotel room. BAHAHAHA!
First impressions of my new home:
Hot. The heat hits you like a solid wave of warm wet air. You have a shower and
10 seconds after getting out you need another. The hot water in my room is not
working, and it's fantastic. I get the feeling they turn off the water heaters
to save electricity bills, knowing full well nobody is going to complain about
it.
Chaotic. 4 days in, I am beginning to get the impression that the people have,
if not a reason, at least some underlying understanding of what is going on.
But first impressions are of chaos. Traffic is not as bad as I thought, but
still horrible. I am not too bad at crossing the road - you simply have to walk
and trust that they will swerve around you. I think it may take me a while
before I'm riding on the main roads though - I think a nice quiet street will
be a good start for me on my motorbiking adventures. Rubbish apparently gets
thrown where it's convenient at the time, but closer inspection tells you that
the gutters are the bins, with street cleaners employed to constantly pick it all
up.
Green. It's so wet around here. There's trees lining every street, and the
pictures of rice paddies you have seen are so true. The buildings are all tall
and thin, because the government land taxes are based on the size of the
building base, so instead of building out, they build up.
Somewhat smelly. There's a particular smell that hits you. I'm slowly getting
used to it. I asked Tam (another AYAD - his family is Vietnamese) what the
smell of Ha Noi was, and according to him it's burning squid. They literally
sit them in a dish on the footpath and set them on fire. God knows how you get
a fresh wet squid to light up, but they seem to manage it.
Noisy. Standard driving practice is to continually beep your horn. A blind
person could drive around here with no particular difficulty. It's not an angry
beeping of the horn, more a 'here I am!'. Which you need, as there are no lane
markings, very few traffic lights, and the pedestrian crossings are simply worn
white lines on the road of no particular use to anyone. See notes on 'chaotic'
above.
