A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Since it's already noon and all I've done today is have breakfast and drink coffee (at three different restaurants, for social reasons) for 3 1/2 hours, I might as well write a little more about yesterday. Not much though, because I've decided to go get a massage from the deaf and dumb women down the street.

I noticed yesterday that babies here don't wear diapers. If they wear pants at all, they are cut out in the whole business end of the baby -- in other words, assless pants. Kind of like chaps, but made of cotton. All I can say is those babies must be potty-trained a lot earlier than western children, because who would want to hold one when there is a constant danger of infant bodily fluids erupting onto your clothing?

A very annoying thing happened yesterday. My brand new camera, brought over by Heike three weeks ago, has broken. I can still take pictures, and the zoom lens appears to be working, but I can no longer see the change in view through the viewfinder. And I'm not that familiar with this camera that this is not a huge problem. So basically I point the camera, hit the zoom to whatever I instinctively might be appropriate, adn click. I'm like a blind woman taking pictures -- I can't wait to see how these turn out. It's not like I don't aready have enough handicaps in the photography department. I asked our Tibetan guide to recommend a camera repair place here in Dali, but he told me that they will just break it more. So I'm going to be traveling for the next week or two doing photography by feel, rather than by visual, until I get to a big city.

Well that's enough for today. I'm off to get a massage, change money and go shopping. It's a terribly stressful life I lead.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren






posted by Katy at 9:20 PM