…50ish more to go! (fingers-crossed) That’s right, we had our one year anniversary last month. Despite my tireless efforts to remain indifferent to and therefore above Romcom-esque holidays like Valentine’s Day and anniversaries, I was surprisingly excited about this one. First of all, our anniversary is easy to remember, which saved us from awkward anniversary-date-forgetting moments. This is because instead of sending Save the Date cards, we sent a YouTube video featuring Mitchell’s students last year. So, whenever I need to remember our wedding date, I just close my eyes and hear a cacophony of screams from Vietnamese children saying, “Mitcho and Sarah – Save the Date – AU-gus 28! – DAAAANNNCCCEEE!”:
Second, I was super excited to give Mitchell his present, which I will giddily describe for you now. Back story: Over the last couple of years, Mitchell has concocted numerous money-making ventures in his brain, many of them Vietnam-themed. For example, he and his friend Ben have fantasized about setting up a bia hoi and/or bun cha street food establishment on a sidewalk in their college town. Health codes be damned! Another of these schemes has involved a series of expat-or-backpacker-in-Vietnam-themed T-shirts. He’s been dreaming up T-shirt ideas for a while now. Knowing that one can easily get customized T-shirts made in Hanoi, for his gift, I decided to make a couple of his ideas a reality. I’m showing them here at the risk of having his million dong ideas stolen, but we must all take risks in life.
Presenting:
Ho is my Bro 
Mitchell was a little concerned that this shirt might somehow be misconstrued as disrespectful to Uncle Ho. I don’t see it. In a culture where it is customary to call most people you know either “brother” or “sister,” this shirt only seemed appropriate. (That’s Mitchell’s White Boy Gangsta Face, btw).
The Backpacker Menu 
Goodbye embarrassing moments of ordering nonsensical items like chamberpots to eat on the street. Now you can just point to the menu on your shirt.
She Likes Zombies
Total inside joke shirt. Our neighbor’s kid has a toy car that sings a song. The lyrics are not in English, but they appear to say the above. The shirt that didn’t get made because I had forgotten about it (regrettably) was a T-shirt related to the New Hanoian. Expats will be very familiar with this website where any and all can review restaurants, cafes, services and basically anything in Hanoi. As is normal for these types of sites, a lot of the reviews or comments are negative, some understandably so and others to a baffling degree. Because you must give each review a score (1 to 5 stars), people often dramatically slash stars from their reviews and painstakingly explain why they have done so. For example, “Minus 2 stars because the staff failed to light my cigarette.” (I’m paraphrasing but not actually making that one up). So, the T-shirt would put either real or fake reviews one the front and then “minus one star” on the back. Actually writing it out makes me realize that it would probably be a stupid shirt to actually make (and may elicit a storm of negative stars on the website itself), but it was fun to think about.
On that note, I encourage you to make your T-shirt dreams a reality. All you have to do is print out or roughly sketch your genius idea and take it the T-shirt making place on Hang Gai Street. If you’re facing the lake, it’s on the right. Sorry I can’t be more specific than that, but it’s not hard to find. Just look for the place with a lot of T-shirts. Yep.
Hanoi Eats Sarah 