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The City That Never Sleeps In: Fear and self-loathing in expat land
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2012/04/fear-and-self-loathing-in-expat-land.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Wednesday, 18 April 2012. Fear and self-loathing in expat land. This post first appeared on Crikey. And features a couple of observations from previous blog posts. Sorry for the rehash - I hope to post properly soon! To the Vietnamese who live around me, it’s clear where I fit in here: I don’t. The differences between us are as plain as the enormous nose on my big fat face. In Vietnam, I am, and always will be, a Tây. 8221; I would say, indignant and unbearable. Now, my fav...
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The City That Never Sleeps In: Why you should move to Vietnam
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2011/10/why-you-should-move-to-vietnam.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Sunday, 16 October 2011. Why you should move to Vietnam. Two years ago today I stepped off a plane at Hanoi’s luxurious Noi Bai International Airport. It will be two years tomorrow for Nathan, because AusAID payed for my Cathay Pacific flight and Nathan paid for his own China Certain Death Airlines flight that featured a 12-hour layover in Taipei. He was quite literally a trailing spouse. Vietnam has a coastline of 3,444 kilometres. And it's all hedge. If we had spent the p...
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The City That Never Sleeps In: May 2012
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2012_05_01_archive.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Monday, 21 May 2012. Sometimes it's better not to know. In Vietnam there is not much that separates the producers from the consumers. You don’t have to go to a far-flung industrial zone to see where your stuff comes from, you can just walk down the street:. How it had been made which devalued it. This is why in countries like Australia, manufacturers go to great lengths to gloss over a product’s provenance and to eradicate all trace of the human hands that made it com...
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The City That Never Sleeps In: A dose of gross
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2011/05/dose-of-gross.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Sunday, 15 May 2011. A dose of gross. When our friends Iona and Stew came to visit us in Hanoi recently, Stew opened the door of the taxi outside our house, got out, and put his foot smack-bang into our well-appointed neighbourhood sewerage hole. Literally his first step in Hanoi was into the thick, black poo water:. You’ve got to laugh. Right, Stew? Who received mere splashback from the cascade that specifically targeted my head alone – jumped back from their seats, ...
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The City That Never Sleeps In: Goodbye
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2012/06/goodbye.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Friday, 15 June 2012. Well, this is it. We have only a couple of days left in Hanoi. Thank you to everyone who has followed The City That Never Sleeps In, and especially those who commented, or sent me emails, or approached me while I was taking the rubbish out, to say they enjoyed reading it. Keeping this blog has been one of the highlights from my time here. Thank you, Vietnam. But we know it’s time for us to leave. As I have mentioned before. After two-and-a-half years o...
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The City That Never Sleeps In: Vietnam's greatest unsolved mysteries
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2011/06/vietnams-greatest-unsolved-mysteries.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Wednesday, 1 June 2011. Vietnam's greatest unsolved mysteries. My general mindset in Hanoi can be characterised as "wonder" (unless "sweaty" can be a mindset, in which case it's "sweaty"). I'm like the guy in The Gods Must Be Crazy, baffled by every metaphorical Coke bottle that the city throws my way. So I keep a running list of questions in my head, crossing them off as I find the answer:. Question: Why do shopkeepers splash water onto the road outside their store? Vietna...
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The City That Never Sleeps In: October 2011
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2011_10_01_archive.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Friday, 28 October 2011. In the middle of Summer, when I’m cycling down the road wearing a singlet top, skirt and thongs, and am surrounded by motorcyclists wearing hooded jackets that make them look like Kenny from South Park, long pants, and skin-coloured toe-socks, I do wonder who looks the more foolish (answer: them for now, but me, later, when I’m wrinkled and cancerous). For example, do you think you’ve got a pretty clear grasp of how to row a boat? This photo was tak...
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The City That Never Sleeps In: Hanoi Moments
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2012/04/hanoi-moments.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Tuesday, 10 April 2012. I was recently asked to write something about Nosey in Newtown. My old blog, which saw me sifting through its contents, three years after I stopped updating it. I came across these, which I photographed around Newtown. And which are still as awesome today as they were in 2008:. I love, love, love this idea of memorialising the sites of significantly insignificant moments in your personal history, and associating them with the place where they happened.
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The City That Never Sleeps In: So, you're moving to Hanoi
http://www.thecitythatneversleepsin.com/2012/06/so-youre-moving-to-hanoi.html
The City That Never Sleeps In. Wednesday, 6 June 2012. So, you're moving to Hanoi. Thanks to this blog, which must successfully create the illusion that I know things about Vietnam, I've received all kinds of emails asking for advice over the last couple of years. Some of them I'm not well-equipped to answer - like, "Will my hair-straightener work in Vietnam? But for most I at least try to have a stab at an answer. It went like this:. I know engineers who've opened cafes; I know self-sworn singletons who...
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