City Views

First impressions: similar to other SE Asian cities – sidewalks and streets lined with open stalls, people selling everything imaginable, including multitudes of sidewalk eateries with open cooking fires right on the sidewalk. Traffic was worse than other cities I’ve been to. Most people get around on motorbikes and there are no traffic controls. People drive with their horns blasting continuously. Driving is a brute force, horn blowing, in your face orchestration. The entire time we were there we only saw 2 accidents amazingly.

After our first lunch at the hotel, we went for a walk in the immediate neighborhood and naturally got lost. We ended up in a covered market. I took a few pictures there. A woman followed us around for a few minutes trying to sell us some of her fruit. It seems that many women make their living by selling fruit or baked goods, especially these donut sticks, walking everywhere with the long bamboo over the shoulder, baskets filled to overflowing on each side.

We had dinner at a place called Brother’s Café that night. It’s a Vietnamese buffet and now that I remember it, it was my favorite place to eat while we were there. I wish we’d gone back. I had the best pho there. A woman squatted behind a table and prepared it for you while you waited.