Traveller's talk #2

It was 42 degrees yesterday in Hanoi. I have been exploring on a bus, admiring some buildings.
'Oh, look at these lovely buildings,' said a fellow girl traveller. 'Don't they look French?' But she didn't really know this. She was just reciting it from the Lonely Planet. I didn't know either, but I'd read the Lonely Planet too, so I agreed.
Sturdy old trees line the streets, and blossoms spill from crumbling balconies. The buildings here are unique. They don't really have floors, more just levels that appear here and there, one sometimes overlapping another, and often at odd slanting angles. When we go to eat we hunt down a cafe on some such level, so that we can perch among the leaves and watch the activity below. Motorbikes, people, people, motorbikes. Everyone is always busy. It doesn't matter which object a person may be carrying on their scooter - a herb garden, a TV... just as long as it's something, and its going somewhere.
How fat and awkward the Westerners look next to the Vietnamese!