Anh Tran , February 05, 2003; 10:07 A.M.
I am glad that you have visited Vietnam. However in Hanoi section, I have to tell that this is the worst traveling article section I have ever read. Guys, This is Photo.net and this Hanoi review section has no good travel photos but try to show the poverty of Hanoi, where are the beautiful view of Old Hanoi, Hoan Kiem lake and nice, hospital people overthere? What is the point in the opening when you stated that John McCain was beat up by TAXI driver while he was wounded? There is no TAXI during the war time in Hanoi, Taxi only existed around 1990's, so there are no TAXI drivers there to beat up Mr.McCain. About Glenn's overview, you should understand that this is 2002-2003 and Vietnam is opened-market long time ago. There is no obligated to buy the cheap stuffs from Govn. the problem you have in your hotel is very common in the low price hotel. and the paper tower holder that you spent many boring lines for the demand-supply lesson, is made in CHINA, which million American house-holds are using today. I laughed outloud when you tried to point out the Vietnamese engineers are so stupid that they couldn't design the toilet paper holder.The problem you got is just because the holder is old, out of order, it can happen here in US if your paper holder is old enough and out of order too. I am using one at home(in US) with the same style with the one you described in Hanoi. It's just that so simple. :-D
About the oversize step, this is a fun part of the review, you can fell and in danger and hurt yourseft anywhere if you don't pay attention, you are not simply in danger because of Vietnamese oversize step. Just give you some history about the oversize step, there is a ancient tradition about stair step in Vietnam. the steps are represented as the lucky charm, they count from the first step as Living, the second step is Oldness, the third step is Sickness and the fourth step is Death. then when they reach to the fifth step they count back as the first step as Living , the 6th is Oldness and so on. The counting ends when you reach to the end of the stairwell. The rule is always the final step have to fall into LIVING. so the size of final step is double the size of all other steps because if they create 2 normal size steps then final step will fall into OLDNESS or DEATH , that's why instead of 2 nomral size they make 1 big final step so that the final step will be LIVING which is lucky. you can see oversize final step in many many houses because of above LIVING reason.
Hope that you have more generous opinion about VIETNAM. not just "poor communist-oriented country".
