{"id":1975,"date":"2020-02-27T18:31:30","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T02:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2020-02-27T20:23:39","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T04:23:39","slug":"how-i-survived-vietnam-and-accentuated-my-man-boobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1975","title":{"rendered":"How I Survived Vietnam AND Accentuated My Man Boobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As I have previously\nemphasized – I am a tourist, not a \u201ctraveler.\u201d \nTourists sit in air-conditioned buses eating caramel corn.  \u201cTravelers\u201d hike through bug-infested river\ntrails before sitting down for a hearty meal of barbequed goat gallbladders.  As I write this, I am preparing to depart Vietnam\nwhere I came to attend a wedding.  The\nwheels came off my \u201ctourist\u201d bus the moment the tires touched down at Cam Ranh\nInternational Airport.  I was thrust into\nthe unfamiliar role of being a traveler. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is what\nI discovered \u00ad\u00ad\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparing\nthe size of my body to the average Vietnamese, is like comparing the size of a school\nbus to the average Mini Cooper.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On our first day, everybody got fitted for an ao dai.\u00a0 This is the traditional Vietnamese wedding attire.\u00a0 Disturbingly, after the thirteen of us arrived at the ao dai store, the ao dai people took one look at me and my friend (who, for the purposes of this column, I will refer to as \u201cTim,\u201d because his name is Tim Larson) and gasped. \u00a0They knew immediately that they didn\u2019t have anything that was going to circumnavigate our impressive bellies. \u00a0We were summarily ordered to climb onto the back of scooters behind a couple of strangers and transported straightaway to a Vietnamese \u201cBig and Fat\u201d ao dai store.\u00a0 At the second store, the employees\u2019 brows shot up.\u00a0 They were obviously wondering if they had ANYTHING, including any camping tents in the back, with enough square footage to meet this challenge.\u00a0 In the end, they found two ao dais that, if I do say so myself, tastefully accented my man boobs.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day, two surprises awaited me at the prewedding party (a feast held the day before the actual wedding).  First, while I had fair warning about the fearless Vietnamese mosquitos, no one told me about the fire ants.  Here is one that went out of his way to menace me \u2013
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There isn\u2019t\nanything in the picture to give it scale, so trust me when I tell you it was 18\ninches long.  Okay, I\u2019m exaggerating!  It was 12 inches long<\/em>.  I handled the situation like I bravely handle\nall physical threats \u2013 I ran.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, no one warned me that when they cut up the chickens to grill, the head was part of the menu \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I did not\neat this chicken head for a very good reason. \nIt scared me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chicken heads aside, the wedding was incredible.  It culminated in a spectacular outdoor ceremony complete with traditional dancers, karaoke and endless toasting to the occasion.  Here is a glimpse \u2013
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Congratulations, Kian and Tina! We love you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To cap the week,\non our final night here, another one of our nephews proposed to his girlfriend!\n We all witnessed the special event.  We actually watched Zach get down on one knee\nand propose to Violet!  It was VERY\nexciting.  I immediately suggested a destination\nwedding to, of course, Vietnam!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I leave here\nwith only a few regrets \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I never ate a sidewalk lobster.  In Vietnam, apparently, if you can access a tin bowl, charcoal, an oven rack, and of course, a few lobsters, you are now a small business owner.  Here is one such operation \u2013
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Second, I arrived too late to save this crocodile\u2019s life.  He was skewered and rotating on an open grill by the time I became aware of his plight.  I\u2019m sorry, Mr. Crocodile! \u2013
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And finally, I never had the chance to have a cup of coffee at the Phuc Long coffee shop.  I am not a formally <\/em>trained linguist.  However, in my experience, an \u201ch\u201d immediately following a \u201cp\u201d is usually pronounce as an \u201cf\u201d sound.  Here it is \u2013
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ll let you try to sound it out. Have you figured it out yet? The “C” is silent, so the correct prounciation is, “Starbucks.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alas, I must\nnow depart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to buy some caramel corn for the plane.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do me a favor? Please comment and share!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And consider subscribing – It’s fun, free and family friendly (mostly). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I have previously emphasized – I am a tourist, not a \u201ctraveler.\u201d  Tourists sit in air-conditioned buses eating caramel corn.  \u201cTravelers\u201d hike through bug-infested river trails before sitting down for a hearty meal of barbequed goat gallbladders.  As I write this, I am preparing to depart Vietnam where I came to attend a wedding.  […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[884,882,883],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-vietnam-travel-advice","tag-vietnamese-humor","tag-vietnamese-wedding-humor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}