jet lag

actually, after taking a ridiculously long flight, i'm not really jet lagged. i did get like two hours of sleep after figuring out the noise situation (the window faces a street, and although there are no chickens/roosters across the street, at least not the ones that makes noise, there is plenty of honking noise), then headed out to work.
first thoughts: it is hot. really hot. i'm not even sure if i'm more distressed about the heat here or when i was in tajikistan. oh, who am i kidding, it doesnt matter because it is hot. technically, the temperature in HCMC is lower than in Dushanbe, but the humidity is killer. I am sweating, profusely. i feel as ridiculous as i look. amazingly, of course, the vietnamese apparently are not bothered. in fact, they wear jeans and sweaters, like actual sweaters, stockings in their sandals, and i am the crazy white girl barely making it down the street. i got lost looking for the right building. well, i didnt get lost, i just could not find the right building. found the hospital and the map of all the buildings, but, let's say it was not true to scale. so i arrived at the head of the department's office, after a significant amount of wandering around, completely disheveled.
next, everything is in vietnamese, which obviously makes sense, but makes it incredibly difficult to find anything. i stood in the soy sauce isle for like 15 minutes staring at the soy sauces, trying to figure out if it's really soy sauce or if they're trying to trick me into buying fish sauce. because none of the bottles had any indication what was in them, well, not in not vietnamese. ok, maybe that story also approves that i'm neurotic, but it's the similar situation with spoken words. whenever someone tells me to go check something out, the tonality of the spoken word makes it impossible to understand or even visualize what is being said. and street names. i swear they all begin with ngyuen and have a different combination of other words in them, which sounds terribly culturally insensitive, but makes it hard to walk around the city without an actual map.
the other thing that makes it hard is stupid traffic. it is unreal. the amount of motorcycles, cars, bikes, mopeds, whatever that moves as one, in different directions, right or wrong, and across is terrifying. crossing the street is a feat and requires a great amount of magical thinking in firmly believing that you will not die and must step out and walk with purpose while the traffic spreads around you like seas around moses. the problem is once you've mastered that, thinking that the sidewalk is your safe place, you're wrong: the fuckers drive on the sidewalk! come up behind you, completely startling. i am terribly jumpy, feeling very ptsd. the drivers and the passengers behind them wear face masks. some plain blue surgical ones, others personalized fashionable ones with patterns, stripes, curious george. some of them are strictly face masks; others extend into these elaborate neck and head covering, like a jihhadist's uniform. they also wear full on gloves and sleeves, so i initially thought the masks were for dust protection, but given the neck covering, i think it's more of a sunscreen thing, since one's neck in not that likely to get dusty (although what do i know). and that again makes it more fascinating: as i'm sweating my way through the city, wondering how i can minimize my clothing more, the locals are covering up, head to toe, before getting on their motorized vehicles to try to kill me.