Parasites! Fat Knees! Really Long Flights!

Tomorrow I make my flight to Vietnam, stopping for several hours in Singapore before the final flight to Ho Chi Minh. Until today my entire cultural knowledge of modern Vietnam was limited to what I had seen on Gordon's Great Escape, Vietnam's Next Top Model and my really harrowing phrase book (genuinely sporting such faves as "Are there any landmines over there?" and [said by a dentist to you] "come back I haven't finished yet"). Obviously this has hasn't really made me feel reassured as I dislike explosions, pain, internal parasite-giving food and people pointing at and discussing my fat knees. As a result I have spent much of the last few days trying to find something which makes sense of Vietnamese culture and I stumbled onto this blog which made me realise that I never really will.