Catchphrase: No, i do not need five pairs of counterfeit ray bands. Thank you though!
Sai gon happenings:
I'm in Vietnam! Saigon to be exact. It's been a long time coming.
The first thing to really hit you after leaving the airport is the Traffic (note use of capital) I have never seen anything like it! The are literally hundreds and hundreds of motorbikes taking up every square inch of the road - and the footpath sometimes - as well as the usual cars and buses. It's not unusual to see whole families on one motorbike, or a mother carrying a baby on the back. It's so surreal! It's total chaos, at first, but then after a while you realize there is some order. Pedestrians give way to absolutely everything. Motorbikes give way to anything bigger and heavier (cars and buses) then cars give way to buses, and buses answer to nobody.
But more daunting than driving in the Traffic is CROSSING ROADS IN VIETNAM. A friend of clare's suggested doing it with your eyes closed. That suggestion should not be taken literally, but i can see their point. Pedestrian crossings, as well as red lights, are there more as a suggestion rather than to stop the Traffic. It's best to adopt a nonchalant, fearless attitude. Motorcyclists will not stop for you. In fact, they will aim straight towards you, anticipating that you will continue to walk across the road. So any hesitation - any hesitation AT ALL - will pretty much lead to a extremely close encounter with a fast approaching motorbike. I don't want to scare any of the mums out there that might be reading this but it has to be said. So the idea is to walk across the road, paying no attention to the motorbikes/cyclists/food carts that fly past you. Okay maybe a little bit. I believe the less you think about it the easier it is.
So i don't think i'll do much facebooking in the near future. It's really difficult to access it here in vietnam, either it doesn't load, it cuts out intermittently, or the keyboard is set for vietnamế. And before you knock my internet savvyness - facebook doesn't work for other people too. The solution: facebook lite! Actually, i like it heaps better. It's just the bare backbone of facebook: no ads, applications, spam... and it works in vietnam! Sometimes. More often than not. Anyway thought i'd give you the heads up!
Pretty much every night we've been in saigon we've gravitated to the local exercise park next to the backpacker district. Everyone there is playing games, stretching ridiculously and running in the most bizarre styles. The first night though we were walking past with full bellies and saw two locals, standing about five meters apart, kicking a shuttlecock to each other with impressive accuracy. A guy sitting on a motorbike saw us ogling and gave us one to play with, and that was our initiation into the amazing game of căư (pronounced gaow, sort of) although we affectionately call it "hackeycock" We are terrible at it. They make it look so easy but it really isn't. We looked so bad that one night, a local lady came over - kim - and gave us a two/three hour lesson on how to kick straight. By the time i get back to melbourne i'm going to turn pro. Or at least better than one person. I aim high.
Mee kong delta happenings:
We took a cheap as tour through the mee kong delta for two days (~US20) which was pretty amazing. Basically the tour consisted of taking us up various rivers and canals, stopping at some family owned sheds that made rice noodles, coconut candy. And the floating markets were incredible. Each family had a boat that would stay in the mee kong for a week to sell their produce, then they'd head back to their villages, pick up more fruit and vegetables and start all over again.
While taking the bus to a ferry, traffic slowed to a grinding halt and it took us close to an hour to go just four kilometers. Grace and i needed to stretch our legs so we got out of the bus and walked along the side of the road to find a water closet (toilet) We found a strange place, half restaurant, half hostel, and decided to go inside. They were all helpful and the like. But when i went to use the WC, i could hear grace talking a fair bit to someone. As i got out of the WC there was a young vietnamese girl with a camera phone taking photos of me leaving the WC?!? They were not used to seeing foreigners so they were taking photos! It was weird, but then again this was what we'd been doing pretty much our whole trip... i guess this was karma. So i finally resigned myself... but then every shot she took of me, she shook her head, and took another one! Apparently i'm not so photogenic as i though i was :(
Also a recent development has also been that my camera's memory card has decided to become 'read only'. I think it's trying to protect itself from a virus. In any case it's being incredibly annoying and difficult :( All i can do is hopefully transfer the existing photos onto a USB before wiping the card and starting over. We shall see.
Tonight we're catching the 11:00pm sleeper from Ho Chi Minh to Nha Trang. We chose the 'hard' sleeper as opposed to the 'soft' sleeper because we are far from soft. We are hardcore TO THE MAX. We are like diamonds amongst ripened pears. Seriously.
Right now we're holed up in a semi-air conditioned internet cafe, just until it cools down enough to venture out again. I can't work out whether i'm getting used to the heat, or it's that i've only become more savvy at avoiding the worst of it. I'm pretty good at turning on various models of hotel air conditioners now :)
So long sticky chickens!
xxx mel
