My Lil’ Saigon

First off, here are some pictures of the house I currently live in. It is very nice, very clean, and quite a rarity among normal people houses. It has 4 bedrooms, all with their own bathroom, and a rather nice kitchen (no pictures, it was too blurry).

Click Me!

Now on to the rant.

I could probably write about 5 pages of text about drivers in this city/country, and I may do so yet as a separate article. People either don’t care or don’t understand the concept of traffic lights or directional lanes. When the light is red, they just pile up at the red light (only if the cops are watching). This causes a spill over into the opposite direction lane. Consequently, there is a limited flow of traffic in that lane, which in turn causes fewer people to be able to exit the intersection. This happens at all corners of the intersection, leading to a massive traffic jam. Add into this that the lights are not timed quite right (when one goes red the other goes green immediately, without allowing any time for people to clear the intersection) and the people trying to sneak through the red light, with the other people leaving early from t heir red light. Add this all together and you get one mass of stubborn, “I’m not moving”, Vietnamese people on motorbikes spewing carbon-dioxiode and who knows what else from their tail pipes.

I feel like I will have lung cancer in 2 weeks.

I realize that traffic laws have only really come into effect in this country in the last 10 years (traffic lights in the last 5-6 in mass quantities) but still. People need to stop being stupid and realize 5 seconds of patience could lead to 5 minutes of saved time and less breathing in of that crap out of the tail pipes.

End Rant (for today).

Here are a few pictures from the flower festival last New Year’s in Vietnam. Ly took these, I just thought some people might like to see them.

Click Me!

Enjoy

Yes! My first website is up and running. Now, don’t be to hard on me, I suck at this kind of thing, but I hope to put some time into it every week and make it better and a good representation of what I have in mind. Pictures and other things that occur in my life will *hopefully* get posted here. I also would like to expand it into environmental work and the like. So bear with me and watch for new things.

In Asians countries there is a Mid-Autumn Festival (Click Me!) . This festival takes place on the 15th of August, on the Lunar Calendar. This festival, as you may have read, is also known as the moon cake festival. It is known by this name for a very good reason, as the celebration of it turns the entire continent of Asia into one giant moon cake bakery. Moon Cake .

Almost literally, every single corner in this city (Ho Chi Minh City) is occupied by a moon cake shop. There are 2-3 main bakeries running these shops, but there are hundreds if not thousands of them. I wish I had a few pictures, but your imaginations will have to do.

As this is a special festival, I attempted to buy a nice set of moon cakes for Ly’s family, mostly to woo her mother. I went and bought a nice ( I thought) set at a bakery in District 5 ( the Chinese District), with my roommate Chi (my living map of the city). We chose what we thought to be a good combination set of meat and fruit cakes. Very fancy, but not as expensive as I expected.

As it turns out, her mom and bro have an expensive taste in moon cakes, and what I bought was not only the wrong kind, but the wrong bakery! Not that I have any reference in the matter. Basically, I spent $10 on some nice cakes, that are now going to make their way into the tummies of Chi’s parents, and I have to go buy a bigger set of cakes with Ly, so I don’t screw up.

Mooncakes 101, now in session.

Welcome to the first posting of my Vietnam blog. I hope to continue to update this blog, with things that are happening in my life at this time. I have never designed a page before, so you will have to be patient while I work to improve my site.