Bits and Pieces

Typical traffic with market in background
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So Steve and I were supposed to be riding on a jet plane on our way to Hanoi at this very minute but it seems that domestic travel of any sort, plane included is not always as reliable as we would prefer. Our flight that was to leave at 2pm is now leaving at 10pm. NOT much of a difference!  They did let us check our luggage and gave us a round-trip voucher for a taxi, so that's something. Now if we can just get a hold of the hotel in Hanoi so that they will pick us up at midnight, we'll be golden. We considered staying at the airport and drinking the rest of the day, a buck a beer is hard to beat, but our sense of propriety or something made us decide otherwise.  So here we are back at our hotel.

The coolest thing (unfortunately) outside the Jade Pagoda
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The last two nights we have actually been doing the Alley crawl here in the backpacker district. We had wondered through it on Saturday during the day and it really didn't seem like much, but after the sun goes down, at 6pm, it transforms itself into a creature all of its own.

First you have all the crazy expats, Aussies, Brits, and the like come out of the cheap budget hotels and crowd into the alley pubs and sit and drink. Then you have all the street hawkers and vendors, that come with their dried squid, cigarettes, and towers of English books. Then you have the Mom's with their children ages 2-10, that send the little ones to your table with packets of gum asking you to buy.The little buggers have quick hands and will crawl on your lap and steal you blind.

Incoming!
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Honestly, at certain corners or bars it gets quite overwhelming. If somebody makes the mistake of "paying them off", 5 more descend upon them. Most bar/restaurant owners only tell them to get lost when customers start to leave. Its more of an issue here in the backpacker district obviously then if it was downtown where the swankier places and people reside. Still its fabulous people watching.

We also manged to stumble into the seedier underbelly. We stopped at this place called Cyclo 63 on Sunday that had a swanky wooden bar and barstools. We had seen some people having beer there earlier in the afternoon. So we dropped by at the beginning of crawl. The girls were dressed "hooters style" for lack of a better description and seemed  a little confused by my presence. No one else was there yet so we had a beer and moved on.

Dragons are pretty big here in Asia
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Monday night we ended up at this place called SAPA sitting next to an Aussie who has been living here since about 1994. He had just sold his Cafe for 80 million dong and was feeling a little celebratory. We ended up talking to him for 4 hours. He filled us in on the girls at the Cyclo bar and the girls that were there at SAPA. He said that any bar in Saigon has bedrooms on at least one floor. Steve and I had just been discussing how we thought that profession seemed a little underrepresented in a place like Saigon, but apparently we just weren't looking in the right places. In our defense we had only been in the city for 3 days.

"If you could get me out of this crappy zoo you would be such a buddy"
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Steve and I are both ready to move on to Hanoi. Our experience in Saigon has been great, but there's not alot of "sightseeing" to do. Its more a people watching, party kind of city.  We out to the Jade Pagoda yesterday, which was written up as this fabulous place.  It was so underwhelming we passed the entrance to it twice!  As Steve declared, "it was a dump". We had walked easily 2 miles, maybe more to see it, so it felt like a let down.

The good news however, was that on our trek back, we discovered this fabulous Tapas and Bodega place. Yes, its hard to believe that her in Saigon the Tapas was superior to that in Indy, but they even had Iberian ham on the menu! Our lunch was pricey compared to the bowl of Pho we ate the day before, but it was well worth it and still 1/3 of the price of what it would have been in the states. And after all, we're worth it!:-)

Even Vietnamese penguins (?) aren't crazy about Houston tap water
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Oh, and just to set the record straight I didn't say that we couldn't rent a motorbike, I said that I wouldn't drive a motorbike myself! I have no problems being the sexy wife on the back of the bike, but those who really know me well, understand why its best for me not to drive one! The last time I attempted to ride a motorcycle, I scraped all the skin off the top of my foot, when I got it caught between the curb and the motorcycle. ( I might have been driving barefoot as well)  So if Steve wants to drive I'm all for it!

We'll try and post more pictures later, I'm sure Steve will have things to add.

(Steve says, not right now.  Time for a coffee or cocktail.)