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How did the chicken cross the road? (hint: you need think like a fish and act like a turtle, forget the chicken)

   The chicken doesn't cross the road in the city in Vietnam.  Chickens get squashed. Or the chicken makes it across the road leaving a path of chaos and wreckage and sour attitudes behind it.  Traffic here is a living, breathing thing. In this thing, Traffic, there are different entities. This may get a bit silly, so just close your eyes and use your imagination with me for a bit. Imagine a nice, clear moving stream running, at a good pace, in one direction. Next to it, an exact replica of this stream, running in the opposite direction. Clear water, green riverbanks, sun is out, clouds dotting the sky, very peaceful. This is the road. at 3 a.m. Maybe.  Enter the shark, this could be a full size bus, a dump truck, a vehicle of size. The shark cruises down the stream doing whatever it wants. It owns the road and nothing argues with the sharks (I know there are not sharks in rivers, but remember use your imagination). Now enter the red drum, they sometimes school ...
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Stalled out in Hanoi

We have been in Hanoi almost 2 weeks now! We are itching to get out and explore the country. One of our hold ups is that I am trying to get a license in VN so that I can drive a motorcycle legally. This has been a time consuming process with good information that is hard to find. We are also figuring out that getting proper size (for us) motorcycle is going to quite a bit mor expensive than just getting a scooter. We need something that is going to hold me and L and our luggage and that is starting to look like a Honda CB500 X.    A 500 cc bike is huge over here as most bikes top out at about 125cc. That is great for city driving, but will leave us lacking for driving across country. It's all very confusing, trying to make sure that we aren't getting ripped off and that the papers for the bike are correct. The best thing that we have going for us is that we have time to spare! The food is great, the accommodations are nice, and we are doing a good job of sticking to our budget...
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Start of the Journey to Vietnam

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  3/3/26 Travel started at 430 am after a frantic final week of prepping, packing, and moving out of our house so the renters could move in.  I admit to my hoarding tendencies after 15 years in that house. We were down to the wire and ended up with no sleep.  My nephew took us to the airport on March 3rd. We had originally planned to leave February 28th but changed our destination to Hanoi instead of Saigon because my sister was over there and we wanted to meet up.  Our flight path was RDU to Seattle to Seoul to Hanoi.  When we arrived at Incheon airport, we just showed up to our gate and Korea airlines converted our boarding pass from Delta to Korean air and handled the bag transfer right there when we gave them our bag tracking stickers. Food on flight to Seoul was good... Not Delta One good because I'm now a simple peasant flyer, but it did the job  We both chose ginger pork with veggies because the description for the other option was literally just "...
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This is the Brian and Linh Era

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TLDR WE'RE OUT OF HERE, SUCKAS!   WHO Brian and Linh (yes I'm referring to myself in the 3rd person... Fight me), two people with insatiable wanderlust and now, time on their hands. WHAT We got tired of working, we're not getting any younger, thinner, or prettier, so we quit our jobs in order to experience the world and all it's food ...i mean wonder...ful food. All it's wonders. Up to this point we have visited 53 countries.  Linh has chalked up one more country than Brian but this isn't a competition!  Stop goadng us.  Hopefully we're stuck with each other forever so the count will always be Linh is 1 country ahead.  According to AI there are 195 countries in the world. This means we have 142 countries left. We may not be able to visit all of them but we're going to try our dangest (stop autocorrecting my word to dancest, Google.  Dangest is a much more legit word than dancest.  What even does dancest mean?)  Let's see what we can do. ...
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