LDWorldWide

I think I just saw a gopher.
And I have reason to believe that, under all that ivy, pineneedles, and fallen leaves, there lurk some copperheads.

It is on a cul de sac. You can walk to a park, a pool, and a sandwich place. It has a tire swing. It has a large yard, but no lawn — just lots of trees and pineneedles. It was built in 1962 and has no wall-to-wall carpet. It has a […]

Take-off from Hanoi to Hong Kong tonight (maybe it was last night — my time zones are all mixed up) was delayed by a serious thunder storm, but, under a sky alight with dramatic bolts of energy, the pilot took off anyway. Then, the flight from Hong Kong to New York, which stops first […]

The first was a “Thai Massage,” which implies, I believe, a lot of therapeutically applied pain. One hour; loved it. The second was a 30-minute back massage, applied with the requested maximum pressure, just before I left Can Tho for the flight back to Hanoi. Also blissful. Both for just a fraction […]

Drove with my team for four hours today, from Ho Chi Mihn City to Can Tho, the coastal city in the Mekong Delta. Saw the hustle-bustle of small, medium-sized and larger businesses for nearly the whole ride, with the occasional water buffalos grazing in the front yards of factories. Also observed: Not one, single […]

It is surprising, really, how little English you see and hear in Vietnam. For a country that has integrated its economy so effectively into the world trade regime, you would expect more. My experience in Egypt led me to believe that English has indeed swept the planet as the inevitable Language of Business […]

Well, there are a few, maybe, but the ground-zero district for shopping struck me as verrry thin on Western faces today. Also, a tour that some of my colleagues took to some war-time tunnels was sparsely attended. At first I was blaming the rainy season, but now I am confident that it has a lot […]

Gotta love a fast food joint that is built around a core product of chicken-noodle soup. Condiments include sprouts, sliced lime, and a couple of unidentified herb-type items. Lemon grass, maybe.

As a society, the Vietnamese value boys more than girls. Under the country’s two-child policy, which has been in effect, with varying degrees of enforcement, for two generations, the rate at which boys appear on the scene, rather than girls, is amazing: for every 100 girl babies, around 116 boy babies are born (closer […]

I had heard about a customary practice in many Vietnamese offices to “rest” a bit after lunch, but thought nothing of it until I arrived 15 minutes early to a 1:30 meeting at a law firm last week. Oh, my, I awoke a room full of people! All the chairs had been pulled away […]