Reading not writing
Ok, It would be better if I wrote my own articles but seen as Messers Elliott-o, Oslo and Witloof enjoyed my last link to Vietnam, I found another one for their reading pleasure. Perhaps a bit long and dull, but hey it's the New York times on Hanoi's art scene - what would you expect?

Spot your own pet-hate clangers and cliches. Personally I just wonder why it is they always end up in Bobby Chinn's (Hanoi c'est surprisingly chic!). Other spots namedropped are the Metropole (old world class oozes from the taps) and quite astonishingly the PARIS EFFING DELI:

I took in the street scene below as I sipped a glass of Beaujolais nouveau, which had just arrived that week, right on time.

Hence the nouveau! Thank heavens for the Oriental express!

Another good one is: “We come to Duc to create contemporary art and to talk about ideas with him,” said one of them, who like the others, had never left the country, though each of them had a Yahoo e-mail address.

Vietnam - c'est online!

Very sadly, the journo saves the best till last when she says: No wonder most tourists try it once (walk across a street), and then spend the rest of their trip either in the back seat of a taxi or in the cramped quarters of a tuk-tuk

Tuk-tuk?

Anyway, I promise not to just slag off articles written by people who were here for three days and write an article myself one of these days, but the post Tet malaise is deep in my bones. And it's so easy being lazy and cynical.