Today my buyers remorse is gone after I got my sweet new clothes. The suits and everything else looks awesome. I think I'm most happy about the jeans and the blazer. Finding jeans that fit really well can be a challenge, but these babies fit like a glove. :-)

Now we're in Nha Trang on Vietnam's central coast. It's a pretty touristy beach resort kind of place. The beach is very nice and it's huge and not very crowded at all since it's off season. The weather has been perfect since we left Hanoi with nothing but sunshine. We found a nice hotel right by the beach and today we basically just lazed around. Tomorrow we're going on a diving charter. Since I don't want to dive I'm just going to snorkel. The diving here is supposed to be the best in Vietnam.

One thing you notice a lot in Vietnam is that women cover most of their skin to protect it from the sunlight. That is because being tanned is considered unattractive in Asian society, so they try to maintain pure white skin. They will wear long pants and shirts, hats, gloves, socks and some sort of facial cover. Not every woman does it, but it is quite common. Our tour guide from a few days ago was telling us that a tanned girl wont find a boyfriend. He kept bragging that his wife had 'very very white' skin. The whole thing was quite funny. Then it occured to me that I think it is a little odd for the women to cover up like this, but that otherwise it is fine. However, when I was in Egpypt it made me feel uncomfortable when women would wear burkas in public. But apart from the specific clothing used to cover their skin it is quite similiar to how they cover up here. In one society the pressure to cover up stems from religion, in the other it stems from societal expectations of beauty. In both cases it is considered the norm, yet in one case we judge it quite harshly. I'm not really making any further point here, but it's something that I was thinking about today.

Anyway, on a lighter note to get to Nha Trang we had to catch a night bus from Hoi An. It was really uncomfortable and I hope it's the last night bus we have to catch. I managed to get a double seat to myself early on, before they were all taken. About halfway through the journey when the bus was stopped again (it stopped almost every 2 hours) an Asian fellow from the front got up, walked to the back and said: "Are there any more seats in the back? Oh God, it is so uncomfortable and torturous." I don't know where the guy was from but he had the most hilarious accent. For some reason it reminded me of a Scottish accent. I couldn't stop cracking up and I think the guy thought I was a jerk since I had a nice double seat to myself. Ah well. Tough luck -- you snooze you lose.