It's Mr. Minh, but my friends call me Ho.

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Good Morning!  (Sorry, sooooo cheesy).

Alright, picture the intersection of 42nd street and Broadway, at rush hour.  Now double the widths of the streets, and in place of each car, put 18 motorcycles.  Then remove all traffic lights, and while your at it get rid of the general concept of traffic laws which guide people to stay on the right side of the road.  Imagine each bike honking their horn approximately once every 10 seconds, and at no one in particular.  Now attempt to cross this intersection, preferably with all your belongings.  Got it?  Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City.

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Still recovering from jet lag, and already it's amazing to be back in Asia.  It's fast and colorful and everything (the smells, sounds, etc) is bigger and more in your face here than even we remembered.  The streets smell like beef noodle soup, although there is a huge Buddhist population so a ton of vegetarian stuff, too.  There are parks and markets and museums, and the people are friendly even though we can't yet pronounce "hello" or "thank you" in their language.

The first thing we did was to visit the Reunification Palace, which we thought would be extra special since we were there on Liberation day.  Turns out that instead of holding special events, they canceled all the English tours that day because the place was swamped with Vietnamese people who had the day off, and who actually had something to celebrate.  Oops.

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Next we attempted some shopping/sightseeing in the markets.  Ben Tinh Market is an enormous labyrinth of stuff you never knew you always needed.  Brightly colored bamboo rice bowls called to us, as well as flip flops and more than a couple deep fried snacks.  The Russian Market turned out to be more of a mall, but we were not complaining when we realized this meant air con comfort.  We came back to this market several times- we never bought a thing there.

At night, in an attempt to not be those white people drinking beer at the guest houses with all the other white people, we wandered off the main street till we found a little place serving beer on the street.  We sat down at our mini table, and before we knew it we were engaged in a conversation with Hoong, a gentleman on his 4th giant beer, who spoke no English at all.  We did best we could using signs, but he did not seem to understand us saying, "no thank you, we have had enough, please stop ordering us more beers."  Suddenly Jenny's nose started bleeding (!!!) and this old woman popped up out of nowhere with tissues and ice, tending to the injury.  In no time Jenny was cured, no more beers were served, and we were on our way.  But not before posing for a photo with Hoong and his friend's daughter.

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We visited the War Remnants Museum, where there were extensive exhibits on the short and long term effects of the American war (that's what they call it here), and where Jenny got terribly depressed.  To add to our educational war experience, we took a day tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, where the Viet Cong were able to live in a system of underground tunnels, somewhat thwarting the US army.  It was interesting in theory, but a bit of a circus of a tour, so we did not feel so bad about posing Mousehead with the displays.  At the end of the tour there is a shooting range where you can practice your aim and shoot real bullets out of real guns.  How vulgar is that?  Seriously, war, what is it good for?  Absolutely nothing.  Huh.

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To cheer us up, on our return home we stumbled upon a concert in the park.  We may have stayed there all night dancing, but Vietnamese pop music may be an acquired taste.

On our last day, we made our way up to Dam Sen Park, which we thought would be a nice place to relax, but it turned out to be somewhat of an abandoned amusement park.  There were tons of rides and displays, but they all seemed closed.  Turns out they were all open, just not running because there was no one there who wanted to ride them.  As evening fell, some people began to arrive and the lights were slowly turned on.  It wasn't quite what we expected, but it was another excellent opportunity to pose Mousehead with ridiculous displays.  And what more can you really ask for from a city?