Nong enough for ya?
Man alive it's hot today - red lights leave you in the sun and you slowly bake while begging for it to turn green. Though you could drive straight through as its so hot the boys in khaki are nowhere to be seen.

Which makes me think of jobs I wouldn't want to be doing in Hanoi on a day like today, which include...

1) Pump attendant - Working in a Hanoi petrol station with the fumes, the engines running, everyone pushing and shoving. It seems five degrees hotter in the shaded petrol station then it does on the street
2) Meat griller – Grilling the meat at a bun cha joint, sitting by the flames all afternoon.
3) Rubbish collector - Wrapped up a jumpsuit, traipsing the streets of the city shovelling everyone else's crap up all day long. These women (mostly it seems they are women) are the unsung heroes of the city.

It was this sort of weather when I came back from a Bangkok hospital with a cast on my leg two years back. That was bad enough but then my street's eletricity-pole went up in flames and exploded meaning the power - obviously - went out for a couple of days. That night I slept naked on my tiled-floors and it was still hot as bejesus. That's a lie, I didn't sleep. I just lay, reflecting on my rather foolish decsion to opt for a first class ticket paid for by insurance company to come back to Hanoi rather than all the way to Dublin (where I was going in a couple of weeks anyway).

Ah dearie me, hindsight... as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.