I Guess Not

Well, it turns out that we are not taking a tour today – although for the first time in days, it has stopped raining for the last few hours. Who knows how long this will really last, but regardless, it appears that we have some extra time on our hands. My hair is doing that corkscrew curls thing again because of all the humidity, which is interesting. But it’s good – low maintenance. Honestly, when I’m out here, I don’t do much primping, and barely use any makeup. I feel kind of stupid, knowing how much the makeup I like costs, and knowing how little the people I’m talking to have – it makes the differences seem all that much more extreme.

The rain seems to have decided to let up today, as we haven’t had a drop since morning. I kind of wish I was doing something more productive with my day, but I’m actually feeling a little under the weather. I’ve got lots of work I want to get done, so much as I would like to go out (I think there are a few things the group might want to check out), I know we’ve got a long week ahead so another day of down-time is probably going to be a good idea. The sun finally came out for a bit this afternoon, so I went for a short walk along the beach to take some pictures, soak up some of the scenery. A guy followed me down to the beach to tell me that he was selling paintings. I told him that I wasn’t interested, and he said “how do you know if you don’t look at what I have?” At that point, I just kept walking and I would imagine that he gave up and went elsewhere, since he was no longer following me. It was nice, though, I got my feet wet and sandy, took in a little ocean air, hopefully got some purty pictures. I saw a few people running on the beach, which was tempting, but, as I said, I’m feeling slightly under the weather so I gave it a pass.

Dinner was nice, but we’d been to the same restaurant five times, and I was kind of hoping for something different. At dinner, PM was talking about American politics, which I kind of found exhausting after a while, and then started to tell me about how he’d cheated on his wife a few years ago after he brought up the whole Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky saga. Then he said something about how it was so confusing for him to flirt with foreign women. The first thing that sprang to my mind was that if he was married, then perhaps he shouldn’t worry about flirting with foreign women, but I didn’t feel like getting into it. I figured it would just make things more uncomfortable, and I really just wanted to change the subject entirely.

I’ve got some more work to do, which I really want to get done tonight, otherwise it will pile up next week. I got a major project out of the way last week, and now I want to enter all my notes for my trip report so far, because I’ve got about 20 or so pages of hand written notes. It’s not that it’s going to take me so terribly long, it’s that if I let it sit, it’s going to double by the end of next week – and that might actually take a while. Since I’ve only got one week in Hanoi before we head out again, I don’t want to get stuck. I know I’m a natural procrastinator, but I do learn eventually.