All's quiet on the Western front...

...and by the Western front I mean my intestine. I know you're all dying to know about my digestive health after 2 weeks in Vietnam. I'm happy to report everything is functioning normally! I think that's unusual for travel, but I'm not complaining.
I'm currently in the city of Hue, which was the Imperial city of the Champa empire for awhile. I'm traveling with 2 fun Canadians (oxymoron? just kidding...). They're a guy and a girl, but not a couple, so I don't feel like a 5th wheel (or is it the 3rd wheel? let's call it an awkward extraneous wheel). We'll probably head to Hanoi together too, and then go our separate ways.
I'm discovering I can't fly from Hanoi to Siem Riep, so I may go to Kuala Lumpur instead. That way I can do a huge loop, and I won't have to backtrack at all. KL to Sarawak to KL to Bangkok to Siem Riep to Chang Mai to Lao? Something like that.
It's raining a whole lot here, which puts a damper on fun. I'm glad I'm with some hilarious people, or it would be a little depressing.
People are getting more aggressive about selling stuff as I'm going north. "YOU! YOU BUY SOMETHING!" or "YOU! MOTORBIKE! YOU!" and then they follow you for a half hour until they realize you don't require their services. It gets to be too much. I feel like a walking dollar sign and I want to tell people to piss off. It's raining, why would I want to go with you on your motorbike? Even if it weren't raining...
I'm also discovering what, in South America, we used to call the gringo tax. Everything costs at least twice as much for foreigners as for Vietnamese. We went to the market today and the people I'm with needed to buy something warm. They drove hard bargains. The prices started out at about 3 times what they haggled down to. In other words, they're trying to take us for a ride as much as possible, all the while saying "same same Vietnamese" (as in: Vietnamese pay the same price, but it's a lie!).
I wish I'd brought a map of the US so I could show people where Minnesota is. No one knows where it is.
YOU! YOU BUY MY SOMETHING!!!