Hello Goodbye Toilet

Saigon aloha! Well, not aloha, but tshin jaw or something - I've changed languages again and am now learning the absolutely necessary few words in Vietnamese; hello, thank you, goodbye, toilet.

As the image above shows, the traffic in Saigon (and the rest of Vietnam) consist mosty of scooters. Sooo many scooters! And road signs such as red lights, driving on the right hand side of the road and one way streets are seen more as general guidelines than actual constraints. Crossing the roads is a truly heroic, death defying mission, where the key is to have a lot of attitude! The attitude is - I'm coming, get out of my way! One must not, on any account, alter pace or direction whatever seems to be happening. Sudden stops or steps aside to "avoid" a collision will surely lead to one.

To think that only yesterday I was still in Can Tho having a nice quiet day on the delta of the Mekong river with two excellent lassies from Chicago, Alexis and Lauren. We drifted gently through the floating markets, where locals sold vegetables, fruit, coffee and what-nots from boats to customers on their boats. I loved the little eyes painted on the bows of most of the boats - possibly to ward off evil? Very pictoresque, but at times it did seem as if there were nearly as many tourist boats as locals...

Then we carried in a slightly zig-zaggy pattern (due to our driver concentrating more on folding origami rings and decorations out of bamboo leaves for us than on steering in the direction we were supposed to be going in) along minor canals to riverside villages. And a good time was had by all.

A very long 7 hour bus ride later Saigon it was last night. However no more shall be told today about Saigon, since I must now rush off for my next bus! Tonight I outdo myself by taking a 9 hour night bus (with bunks, but the question is: how long are the beds? By local standars I am the green giant!) to Nha Trang.