puppy love.

today's post is brought to you by special request. i guess i could have written something about hoi an or how we got lost and had dinner in a dark alley (always get lost and have dinner in dark alleys!) or how this is turning out to be the journey of all the boat trips. but since i got a special request, i thought i should rather focus on another important part of travelling – meeting people – and introduce you to the post requester.

there is wifi all over vietnam, except in our hotel right now. so little social media addicts that we all are we sat over dinner with our iphones, checking facebook, and basically commenting on what the people across from us at the table were doing online. yes, i it is a bit sad, don't i know it...

ash – who, by the way, was my knight in sweaty armour from my last story - had not only started to read my blog and like it, but was now demanding more and when was the next story coming and what was i doing here eating dinner instead of putting down amusing words. and of course my ego was stroked and so here i am by special request at midnight.

meet ashley from london or ass as the vietnamese tend to pronounce it, which of course one cannot help but adapt. after spontaneously tricking him into being my today's travelette instagram on the topic of 'travel buddy', i thought he deserved a bit of a better introduction than this:

 

(though most of the pictures he jumped into are sort of like the above.)

we met on our first part of the journey in bangkok and to my horror i had to find out that there were people, well, one, who are almost half my age on this trip. this led him to tell me that he doesn't mind being organized and will i please organize him. my therapist would have been proud of me when i declined, but somehow it still stuck that he calls me his mum once in a while (thanks, ass!).

i never thought i would become friends with someone who does that or with whom i don't have anything at all in common with on paper. but sometimes wanting to squeeze someone's cheek will be apparently be enough to start a friendship. and before you shake your head or mentally high five me, i am not talking about cheek squeezing in a mrs robinson way, but rather in a puppy's cheek squeezing way.

ash, i'm not being condescending, but i will call you a puppy. because you can sleep anywhere and eat anything. but mainly for your enthusiasm you bring along for everything: rocking a dingy piano bar, enjoying angkor wat and angkor what, eating baked beans and pringles in the pool or doing homework with the restaurant owner's kid. i envy that enthusiasm, i want more of this in my life. thanks for showing me how it's done!