Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliputians

All SE Asians are small but the tiniest of all are the Vietnamese, and you really notice it here. Probably because everything here is downsized for the Vietnamese body size (much more so than the other SE Asian countries): houses, doors, furniture, vehicles, utensils, everything. Shower heads are often at chest height. See the table and chairs in the photo on the left? The table is at knee height and the plastic chairs are the type we buy for small children. But it's not a children's playset. It's found in every restaurant and is perfectly sized for the Vietnamese adult. There are no decent bicycles anywhere in Vietnam. In fact there is only one type of bicycle here -- a girl's frame single-speed cruiser with a basket in front, like the old Schwinn bikes from the 1950s. Even with the seat raised to maximum height, my knees were hitting my chest. Even so, I must have been pedalling unbelievably fast by vietnamese standards, because I always drew amazed looks, and motorbike riders would turn around and marvel that I was going nearly as fast as them.

In general the whole country is appears to be constructed for an eight-year-old American child, which is the same size as a Vietnamese adult. I am not tall by any means -- just average height -- but I positively *tower* over everyone here. I now know what Gulliver must have felt like during part of his travels.