Saigon Market - Day 2!

After a glorious 15-hour sleep-a-thon, we were off to the market.  Our hotel was just a block away from the Ben-Thanh Market, which is a super humongous market that sells everything.  No joke - everything!  

Flowers

Gold

This is the seafood aisle - each of these little buckets had oysters, mussels, crabs, etc.  Anything and everything you could think of.

Herbs and veggies

Dried fish and shrimp - who doesn't need that?!

Ryan and Tony in the market!

Every kind of fruit that is imaginable.

Traffic outside the market

I got my first beverage in a coconut!  I got a drink in a pineapple when I went to the Bahamas, and really wanted one in a coconut.  Well, two years later I finally found one!  Except rather than rum punch, this one contained coconut juice.  Gag.  

I tried to pawn the coconut off on Ryan, but he didn't love it either.

More shellfish

Ryan at the market!

Me at the market!

Here is the outside of the market.  At this point, I was still a newbie at crossing the street in Vietnam, so I was super impressed with Tony's skills.  He's in the blue shirt to the left of the green taxi-van.

Whew!  He's coming back!  And he's alive!

We decided to head back into the market after taking a breather - it was blazing hot out and blazing hot indoors too, since A/C is definitely not used in most Viet stores.  It would probably cost too much to cool the joint down!  We were cruising the aisles, and I saw this Buddha in a coffee store.  I LOVED it.  Had to have it.  Needed it.  Wanted it.  

The salesman explained that it was made of a piece of driftwood, and was one solid piece of wood (not hollow like cheaper statues).  Price: $500!  We were not prepared to pay quite that much for this (gorgeous) statue though.  So they got it down off the shelf and set it out beside the serving table, where they made us coffee and let us stare at it while we enjoyed our coffee break.

Ryan and Tony enjoying a bev!

We bought the Buddha.  Got it for $200, and they packaged it for us.  It was very delicately carved, with individual fingers and flowers, and I was sure that when we got it home, the fingers would be broken off or something would be damaged on it, but it was perfect.  The guys who packaged it up did an amazing job and it looks great in our dining room!  :)

Here are some pics from outside and around the market.  There was loads of traffic and loads of people.  I think the guidebook said something like 7 MILLION people live in Saigon, so it was a bit crowded!

We finally took a break at Highland Coffee - expensive by Vietnamese prices, but still only like $1.50 US.  It was a swanky, Starbucks kind of atmosphere, and loads of English-speaking tourists were on the veranda with us.

We people watched for a while - to get a break from walking around in the extreme heat and to rest our little legs!  The guy propped up under the tree is the scooter valet.  No kidding.  You just drive your scoot up on the sidewalk, they give you a ticket, and you're running your errands, whatever you need to do.  

It was a good place to take a break.  We were going non-stop!  

Vietnam - Saigon Day 1

On February 21, 2011, at 6 am, Ryan and I left from Will Rogers Airport on our first trip to SE Asia.  It was my first trip to Asia, period, but Ryan spent a month in Russia  few years back, so he had already been.  (As a side note, one of my life-long goals is to step foot on each continent, so this was huge for me!  Now I'm only lacking Australia, Antarctica, and South America.)  Anyway, our first flight was delayed, which really freaked me out, since we were connecting twice, and I really wanted our flights to go smoothly, since we used AA miles to travel.  We had been saving our miles for years, and cashed tons of them in to fly first-class, which was AWESOME!  I mean, I could never afford the $14,000 price tag to fly that way otherwise, so this was such a special treat!  Eventually, we left the airport, and made it to Chicago, with just enough time for us to grab a bag of Garrett's popcorn (cheese and caramel mix, of course) and hop on the plane.  

And oh my god.  The seats were awesome!!  Here is a shot of us in our pods - Ryan's was beside mine, with a divider in between us.  As a side note, right after this pic was taken by the nice man in 5A, we were told that this was a violation of FAA regulations, and we'd have to put the camera away!  Eek!  After having made it with the delay in OKC, I did not want a freaking camera to get us booted from the plane.  Luckily, they were okay with it and didn't confiscate my camera or anything - hehehe!

We each had a "guest seat" so that someone could join us for dinner or to play cards on our huge table, or to conduct business, whatever!  I used my extra seat as a footrest.  I mean, I was very busy catching up on Oscar-nominated films.  On the flight from Chicago to Tokyo, I saw Black Swan and The King's Speech.  Loved them both, but that's neither here nor there.  When we sat down, we got champagne and our menu from which we could order our dinner.  (!!!)  The flight was smooth and perfectly comfy, and we made it into Tokyo on time.  We then boarded our JAL flight to Saigon, and even though it was a 7-hour flight and we had business class seats on that flight (free bento box!  sushi!  sake!), we both passed out cold and slept the entire way there.  Apparently watching every movie available on the previous flight had been a bad idea!

We made it to Saigon on time, and were immediately blasted by an inferno when we stepped out of the lovely air-conditioned airport.  MAN, was it ever hot there.  We left a frigid Oklahoma and arrived in the jungle.  Awesome!  And we were easily the tallest people there.  I swear, when we walked out of the airport, there were 170,000 people there to greet us.  The airport security made people line up, like girls on the sides of the tunnel at a rush party.  It was insanity.

Our friend Tony and his cousins were there to greet us, and since we only carried backpacks with us (that's right, my husband is one of those creepy ultra-light travelers, and insisted that I do the same for this trip - which actually turned out to be just fine, but don't tell him that) - anyway, since we only had the backpacks, we jumped right on the backs of Tony's cousins' scooters!!!  Just plopped a helmet on the ol' noggin and off we went.  It was such a good way to see the city - the majority of people travel by scooter, and cars are definitely not the norm.

This is the parking garage at the airport.  Scoots only!

 

These next two pics were taken the next day, but it kind of helps to see the extent of scooters and the traffic in Saigon that we were instantly exposed to.  There is really no way we could have prepared ourselves for this madness since 1) we live in Oklahoma and 2) America is definitely not as big a bike culture as Vietnam.

The scooters kind of "absorb" the cars while driving.  We eventually figured out that everything is just fluid in Saigon driving.  There is a strict hierarchy, and once you figure it out, you are free to go!  Here it is:  pedestrians are the low man on the totem pole, and they watch out for everything.  Bicycles trump pedestrians-scooters trump bicycles-cars trump scooters-buses trump cars-buses watch out for semis-semis rule the road!  It sounds simple but it's so very true.  Everyone just kind of goes with the flow - there are no major traffic jams because people keep moving.  Where Americans view driving as "owning" their lane, the Vietnamese really have no personal space.  There's no "hey, that asshole cut me off!" because if you weren't going as fast as him, and he had room to get in front of you, he just did.  People aren't mad and angry - there's no road rage.  Just people who need to be somewhere and want to get there ASAP!  

We made it to our hotel after a 20 minute ride or so.  The hotel was nice, but was SO cheap.  Literally, $20 per night - we had a queen size bed, and a bathroom, and it WASN'T a hostel, so I think it was quite a good deal!  Here is our room:

It was totally comfortable, and worth every penny!  They even had laundry service, which was insanely cheap as well.  I think we got 2 pairs of jeans, 4 pairs of shorts, 5 t-shirts, 6 pair of socks and 6 pair of undies washed for maybe $3.00.  This was literally the cheapest place I have EVER been.  I cannot stress that enough.  It was worth it to visit.  Like, literally worth my money to go to Vietnam.  Okay, off that soapbox!

WELCOME TO VIET NAM!!

Snow Day!

Due to the blizzard on February 1, we got an impromptu snow day (more like a week).  Having a cold-weather loving dog was fun!  Not so much fun were the frozen pipes that left us without water all day Wednesday.  But I only took photos of the cute part - the puppy playing in the snow.  Here are some of my favorite shots!

Testing the snow...

Might like to go this way...

Aaahhhh!  What is thisssss?!?!?!

Okay, maybe I'll go this way instead!

 He was pretty pumped that he got to go out in front of the house (usually it's a no-go!)

Got a little too far away - had to send Ryan after him.

He's so prancy - adorable!

Racing back to the house...

About to fall off the foot and a half drop!

BOOM!  Face plant!

hehehe!

How do I get out of this?!?!

VERY deep drift!

Crawling out...

Whew - made it!

This is the drift he fell into!

Silly boy - running around like a fool with his tongue hanging out!

Running, running!

Time to head inside!

One final look at his precious, snow-covered face! :)

HAPPY SNOW DAY/WEEK!