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for some reason on this trip i am consistently becoming more influenced by food.  its a little bit ridiculous how much of an effect food has on me.  on the saturday, we went to the night market and had dinner with some of the pa's. i wasn't too hungry, pretty ambivalent, but you know, it was dinner time so it was bound to happen. so after dodging some motor bikes and yelling at honking taxis, we made our way to an outdoor pho place that sold the best pho/salad dish in hanoi.  a little secretive so we got the inside scoop. it wasn't the regular brothy pho that you would imagine. it was cold and had a slightly salty sauce to it with chicken on top. a salad with a sweeter sauce was also served. it was probably one of the best meals i have had in vietnam and let me tell yah, i've had a lot of good food. so literally after that meal, i went from ambivalent to ecstatic. it was insane. kind of like when i jumped off the 50 ft rock this summer and it was so cool that i was constantly thinking about it and remembering how great it was. yeah. it was THAT GOOD.

so you'd expect that to be normal? no that isn't. because it was literally night changing. i felt so happy like i had millions of endorphines pumping through my body. just from a good meal.

the night should have been great since i felt so good, but you know what they say, what comes up must come down. so we're walking around the market and it gets fucking crowded as shit all of a sudden and i was like omg! the crowd passed and as we walked, i looked down at my bad and REALIZED THAT IT WAS SLASHED. SLASHED. AND HALF OPEN. thank god i had my nalgene to block the slash but STILL. my REAL LESPORTSAC got SLASHED. /////////////////ed! i was so angry. almost as angry as that time that everyone cut me off in the trader joe's parking lot 2 summers ago and i got so angry that i pumped the music, cursed everyone so loudly, and drove too fast on the freeway entrance then had to stop because of the damn traffic light for entering the freeway. joyce and i almost died.... anyways YEAH PO-ED CONNIE! NOT SAFE! so after that happened i walked around like a paranoid tourist and held my bag like my new born child.  and jumped at anything tha tmoved around me.  i swear, i blame that on the macaques in malaysia... i'll tell you about that later. so imagine connie suh, all fidgety and paranoid, clutching her bag to her body,with crazy eyes... yeah. BUT WAIT THERES MORE

I SAW AN ALBINO ASIAN TOO! IT WAS INSANE.

so as you can tell, that was quite the night. and just the beginning of an interesting night. well last weekend in hanoi, go big or go home