Food for Thought.

Nice Buns.

Hanoi, Vietnam – We dropped down a smoky, fragrant alley, alight with charcoal fires and blackened skewers of uncooked meat. Lunch time.

In each stall: mounds of crab – tinted pink – small barbequed fowl or large brown snails, plucked from their shells with a pointy awl. The omnipresent heat became cloudy, my eyelids fluttering in the acrid air.

Women sat on the ground behind cardboard shields, fans placed beside small charcoal fires. We folded ourselves onto blue plastic stools that could not have been more than six inches high. I felt like the 'clown on a tiny tricycle' act.

There are times being 6"3 can be a disadvantage.

But out came glasses of iced green tea and bowls of vermicelli and grilled pork for our lunch of Bún thịt nướng. Loosely chopped chili peppers added some heat to a day that smoked as it was. I got chopstick practice, wrestling pork and noodles from the savoury broth, enjoying every bite. All this, and lunch for the four of us came to $5.

Aren't you jelly you didn't try this?

Our guides decided we needed dessert as well, so we proceeded to a stall of jellied…everything: corn, bananas, taro, and several things I could not name.

As my eyebrow climbed, the woman in the stall took a scoop of each, placing it into a glass before topping it with milk and passing us a bowl of shaved ice we were to add.

It wasn’t something I would not have ordered back home, but it was sweet and tasty enough.

I was particularly thankful for our excellent guides as I’m not sure I would have eaten in the market on my own on the first day. I certainly wouldn't have known where to start.

What an impressive introduction to Hanoi.

Tour de Force.

Toy street: ironically, not a place for kids.

Hanoi, Vietnam – Machine-blown bubbles seeped into the humidity as we wove through a street of toy stores. Around us, a cacophony of colour – doorways framed by bright plush and plastic objects of desire for squealing children.

And still, the scooters. So many scooters.

I was quickly surprised, however, to see how assertive I had become with traffic. With some common sense, crossing the street amidst the mayhem actually came pretty naturally.

It’s a form of organized chaos: the jabs of the horn, the flash of the lights. The sheer volume (exhibit a, to the right).

Turning onto another street, buildings full of mannequins with pointed heads, curved like turretella shells, grinned at us through second-storey windows. We were glad to have guides today.

I've been dragon these doors around.

We visited many of the city's key sites, including Hoàn Kiếm Lake, and the Temple of Jade Mountain. We visited the Temple of Literature, which hosts the Imperial Academy, Vietnam’s first national university. It was built in 1070. (!)

Founded in 2879 B.C., Vietnam is an ancient country.

We also visited the Museum of Ethnology, and learned about some of the country’s 54 ethnicities and 53 minority groups. The site included full-scale ethnic houses from across Vietnam, and hosted a performance of a traditional water puppet show.

It was helpful to learn about some of the culture and history, and it was obvious our guides were proud to be sharing it with us.

Given my mandate here, it helps to understand the audience.

Buổi tối tốt Hanoi.

Local flavour.

Hanoi, Vietnam – Curling my eyes open, I am greeted by a thunderstorm that lights up the clouds like Chinese lanterns. Below, Shanghai glows orange against the darkness. Still more than an hour to go.

We land in Hanoi under a rusty scythe of a moon, and I am immediately embraced by the familiar leafy aroma of the tropics, and by the humidity, which clings to my every pore like a grieving widow.

The drive from the airport seems endless – so close now – taking well more than an hour to travel 25 kilometres into the city. The ground vibrates from the endless rows of scooters, carving new directions to find Saturday night. Red lights – where they have them – appear to be nothing more than decorative.

A young girl, clutching to her father's flapping windbreaker, wears no more head protection than a plastic tiara.

After 26 hours of travel, it is nice to see the smiling faces at Church Hotel, and even nicer to have dinner and a couple beers unexpectedly arrive in my room.

Let this experience begin.

Land of the Rising Sun.

Tokyo A Go-Go.

Tokyo, Japan – My body is numb, leadened by several false starts at sleeping, by my contortionist’s effort to fold origami legs into a comfortable position, and by chasing an ever-present sun.

It has been daylight the entire trip west, to the Far East.

Jarred awake from restless sleep, the warm roasted aromas of coffee cut the stale cabin air: twelve hours of mouths agape in the face of flickering screens.

It is a new day, and yet, just a continuation.

Ironically, as we land in Japan, the sky is a drapery of cloud.