A ride my bike here every day, try not to get hit with fishing rods.

Weekends don’t really have the same feeling when you don’t do anything with the rest of your week. My first two proper weekends in 6 months have been spent almost exactly the same way as when I was in Sydney, but more lonely, with more massages and less housework. Which basically means sleep, shop, cook, eat, tv, internet, hang out. Yesterday I did the shopping: 100,00vnd worth of meat and veg at the market, then 400,000vnd for a handful of items at the supermarket. This morning I had a disappointingly average massage, then bun cha and a stroll.

I see things differently through a viewfinder, I should take my lonely camera out more often.

There is so much quick and dirty construction happening, piles of bricks, mountains of sand and gravel and death traps of re-bar are the norm.

These girls were surrounded by an entourage at the back gate of the Sheraton. I don’t know what their deal was but they certainly wanted to pose.

Monk watching in Luang Prabang is a big tourist past time. I’ve been here a few times but never got it together to drag myself out of bed in the inky pre-dawn light to see the alms giving. I don’t want to talk too much about it, but it made me hate my white skin and big camera even more than I did before. The most interesting part of it was that the monks had to walk past tryptichs depicting before, during and after shots of road accidents. Bizarrely they all strolled past, eyes locked on the images.

Luang Prabang is lovely. There is some amazing food and it is easy to hang out here. I stayed for days just wandering around and drinking coffees, eating street food and making new friends. But I won’t ever get up at the crack of dawn to participate in the tourist circus of alms giving along the main street in Luang Prabang.

I always knew that shoes were going to be a problem for me here. Hell, finding shoes that I like, that fit, and that I can afford in Sydney is such a problem that I spent years wearing only Chuck Taylors. Before I left I was discussing the shoe conundrum with a good friend. I related my fear that I wouldn’t be able to find shoes that fit, he responded “Don’t worry lili, I’m sure that you can buy chucks in Vietnam”.

I came equipped with 6 pairs from thongs to boots, but when I started this mad adventure as a drifter I never considered that I would actually get a job so soon. Yeah, you heard right, I’ve got a job, start Monday and need appropriate footwear. There will be less drinking Vietnamese coffees by the lake and more wrangling screaming children.

I visited the only real fancy shopping centre in Hanoi, Vincom Towers in the hope that its westernised shops would stock western sizes. Uh oh, no. I visited every single store, tried on every pair that may fit my size 41 hoofs. Which basically means I squeezed my poor feet into a cascade of size 39 shoes, the very largest that most shops stock. I giggled in despair and left many stores where the biggest size was 38. I did try on one lone pair, size 42, which ended with me leaving the store in a hurry and while the attendant tried to smooth the leather out to remove my bulbous toe imprints.

Disinterested staff, tiny shoes, but I finally found a pair that just fit, size 40. They are not what I wanted, but I bought them because I could fit into them (pictured first, and below) and they are hot. The only pair of shoes in Vincom Towers that came close to fitting.

Actually, I lie. There was another pair, flat, ballet type shoes, dark blue. Sounds good, but the toe area was covered proudly with a Union Jack in enormous sparkling diamantes. And they were a little cosy, and they cost 2,300,000vnd ($131AU). Imagine if I hadn’t already found the hot black wedges, I might be sitting here attempting to remove diamantes from my ridiculously expensive shoes.

The only problem with these shoes is the heel. The children that I’ll be teaching are already obsessed with how tall I am, now thanks to these awesome shoes I’m even taller. But I don’t care, because they are affordable shoes that fit, almost.