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090310 Thaikarl - walking around in saigon

friends,  we breakfasted at a restarouant t his morning and started walking. and walking and walking.  we went thru the market building.  stalls and stalls of STUFF for sale, mostly tourist appealing stuff.  the vietnamese sales  girls are much more aggressive than they are in thailand.  we blundered through the shirts for sale area.  the girls would actually grab my hand and pull me towards their booth, aking me what i want to buy- nice shirts, t-shirts, polo-shirts.  they love my purple hair.  a bit difficult to pull away from them.  and if you stop to ask prices, and then don't buy, some of them will play 'angry' with you-  "why you ask me how much if you not buy anything?!" "go away"!  most of them aren't so intense, but they are more active about trying to get you to stop, and buy if you do stop.  things are a bit more expensive her than thailand.  bottle of water that is 25 cents in thailand is 75 cents here etc.  food on the street is about a dollar fifty for noodles, where i's less than a dollar in thailand.

we finally got to the zoo.  rather a minor zoo actually, a few bored animals, some big trees, walkways.  the orangutan in a big cage was a hoot.  if you thru something to him, like a banana or a leaf, he'd reach thru the bars and throw it back at you.  sometimes after he slobbered all over it.  we wandered around in an anticquities museum for a while- you know, old busted pots and bits of wood and such.

we took a couple of motorbike taxie's back... quite a thrilling ride.  it's kind of like those microsopic movies of blood cells flowing thru capularies, all rushing along nearly bumping into each other, but no body does.  there are millions of motorbikes in vietnam.  and no pick-up trucks, unlike thailand, where the small pickup is the normal "car".  when we got off the bikes and were walking back to our hotel, we passed a girl whom i bought a couple of books from the first night.  i'd told her to let me know if she ran across one of my favoirte street sellers i met last time- a gir named Behai.  when How saw us, she waved and Behai came across the street.  it was nice to see her.  she's as charming as ever, and still the sweet coniver.  i gave her a couple of dollars for dinner and promised to see her again.

we had a nap for a couple hours, got some noodles on the street and went walking again.  there is a long park in between two big streets near here.  lots of young couples hang our on the sidewalks next to the road.  seems a big date in saigon is to goto the park with your girl and sit on your motorbike, watching people going by.  there were a couple of pavillioins in the middle, people were learning to ballroom dance.  fun to watch.

the night market wasn't much different than the day market, it's just dark above us, and a bit cooler.  we walked some more.  semi-wandered into a travel booking shop, one of a hundred around here, and ended up buying two tickets to Me Mui  and Na Trang, so we're getting out of the city tommorow.  figure it out from there.  $5.00 for a 4 hour bus ride.

onward!!!    Nu

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