After breakfast we waded through the streets barefoot all hoping that we were moving quickly enough to avoid pesky parasites and thus trenchfoot. We arrived at the docks and were loaded onto boats and off to the floating market we went making a brief stop to pick up the self dubbed "vikings" from their home stay. They all looked quite rough on initial inspection. I deduced it must have been from sleeping on the bamboo cots, however It was apparently from shockingly small amounts of homemade rice wine. The floating market was amazing. Upon arrival a man tied his boat to ours and then sold us iced coffee and beer. Next up we approached a bigger boat that was bursting at the seems with pineapples. We were then allowed to jump on board where we could pick a pineapple and the man would prepare it to be eaten. Meanwhile a similar boat with mangoes was attaching itself to our other side. The fruit was super tasty and fun.
The rest of the day consisted of visiting the rice noodle factory, visiting a local market where skinned rats and pythons were not uncommon, visiting a Chinese temple and watching fortunes be told, playing fuzeball, and buying more fruit. I spent the day with Paula and the four Danes (i.e. Vikings).
It was such a great day it was unfortunate that we had to return to Ho Chi Minh city. Luckily the bus ride home only added to the fun. I had lunch with a Vietnam vet who was returning to this country for the first time since the war. He talked about his experience and memories and said that this was not the Vietnam that he remembered and he wished all vets could come and see and experience what he had in the last two weeks of traveling. After lunch we had all bought various snacks that we all shared. Poor Niels, one the Danes had the misfortune to be the closest in proximity to Paula and I and also to have purchased coconut candy. My snacks to share included: a pommelo (humungous sweet grapefruit) and these orange things that no one still knows with any certainty what they were. 50% thought mango 45% believed sweet potato, and 5% were too scared to try the unmarked Halloween colored chips.
After arriving back in saigon Paula and I decided to eat pho for dinner and the danish guys told us they would join. Meeting up with Paula prior to dinner was my first exposure to the boisterous backpackers district of HCM, where everyone is German or of scandinavian descent and the beers range from 25-50, but might be tepid. The pho was great and my sugar cane drink was unique. I was extremely excited about it because I had wanted to buy one from a street vendor but my remaining smidge of caution had kept this dream from being realized. It is worth noting that it is highly likely that after I ordered this drink the waiter stepped out onto the back alley and barked my order at a street vendor who then used the same rusty grinder and produced the exact beverage that I would have ordered just walking by.
The boys were at least an hour late to our soup slurping extravaganza and were extremely confused that we had ordered and started eating. Apparently our telepathic powers should have been alerted to the fact that they were definitely coming to dinner. After lots of soup and deep conversation, we went to a bar on the street which consisted of a bunch of children's sized plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk with lukewarm beer available for 40 cents for 40 ounces. We continued our dinner conversation a mix of the sex trade, religion and spirituality, and our individual nation's politics, while we watched some dude repeatedly put a live snake in and out of his throat and Vietnamese Halloween drive by on scooters. We crouched on the sidewalk in our flimsy chairs (the shortest of us being 5'9 it was good for the joints) sipping beer with ice cubes until it was time for paula's bus to leave for cambodia. Then we attempted to head out out to a specific vietnamese club. Apparently there is a Cuban club in HCM that is supposed to be a really good time, however no cab driver actually knows where it is (we asked 5). Even better, one will eventually say they know where it is and then when they can't find it they drop you off at the big catholic church in town (I laughed aloud when 2 of the Danes explained to me that this had happened to them in exactly the same sequence several nights before. i laughed more when i saw all of the other westerners standing around the church in the middle of the night looking for a new cab. ). We never made it to the Cuban place. We did eventually find our way to a club called Lush where skanky prisoner, sexy cop, and black swan costumes reigned supreme on the native girls and they had a water snake in a big jar on the bar.
The pics: Niels and Peter trying betel,floating market, Asian unicorn, Mekong floods
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