Cock-a-doodle-do

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"Rise and shine", "The early bird catches the worm", "Up and at em" are all appropriate phrases when you visit Vietman. For 3 nights in a row, I have been waking up to horns honking, motorbike enhines reving, dogs barking, neighbours dragging their portable stone stoves to the edge of the road and roosters doing what they do best, cockadoodling at...(get ready for this)...at 3am! Thats right, 3am. Each morning. I would lay in bed, wondering how I can get back to sleep and then for a 5 minute period it is all quite, I can finally sleep now but as soon as I think those words, the roosters have changed my plans! Then all of a sudden, I hear faint music playing and with each passing 5 minutes, it gets louder and louder. Tired of fighting the noice, I get up and look out the window and to my amazement, across the street is a park, full of kids playing, adults doing thier daily workouts at 5am. The parks even a simplistic metal workout machines (an eliptical, a torso rotation thingy, a workout machine I have seen on late night TV back home...etc) for the locals to use.

So I left off from my last blog comtemplating jumping on the public transit and now have no hesitation to do so (granted that I know where it is going!). But for me, it is only one bus to the heart of HCMC and it is indeed only 28cents compared to a taxi costing $14. And what is worst, is the taxis have not once ever been able to take me to to correct destination the first time, even when I have the address written down in engligh AND even in Vientamese! Last night, I had to direct the taxi driver how to get back to my brother in laws place with my 5 word vietnamese vocabulary! Thank goodness for google maps or I may not even be home right now.

On my first day, I hitted up the tourist hot spot of Ben Thanh Market, meandered the narrow aisles of the market taking in the sights and shoulds and not to mention the smell! Actually, the smell is not that bad but I heard it is much worse in the morning when the fresh catch from the seas is readily available to be purchase. Maybe tomorrow morning I will check out the market for the fresh catch and report back to you. Is there somewhere in cyberspace I can send back smells for you to enjoy?!!

Yesterday, I when on my first guided tour - a half day HCMC tour. The tour visited the Reunification Palace, a local laquer factory, Chinatown with a cyclo-pedicab ride. The pedicab ride was what I was most excited for, to be travelling along the streets of chaos amongst cars and endless motorbikes going each and every way. Streets in HCMC is not a one way or two way streets, it is ALL-WAY streets.

On both evenings, I have visited the Tet (New Year) night market. You can visit this night market numerous times and it will still not feel like you have seen it all. It is so large and just walking 10mins you will start to feel lost with the large number of stalls to visit. They even have a section for plants and flowers, amusement rides, plant display and even a romantically lit path along the river with a pedestrian bridge where many couples make their way to! Kinda reminds me of the PNE and Richmond night markets combined together. It is quite fun and interesting place to be at night.

As many of you have seen on my facebook, I have been indugling on local grown fruit shakes and meals from local stalls inside of Ben Thanh Market and stalls lining along the sides of the streets. Many have warned about comsuming shakes made with ice and local food stalls but I haven't had any bad experience so far (knock on wood). I have had not had a meal cooked in a restaurant aside from my brother in laws restaurent and I don't plan on starting. People do say that the food prepared by street vendors are more tastier and you sample when the locals eat. Plus, how can you beat the street vendor prices?

Tonight, I will be staying at a hotel at the heart of HCMC. I want to experience the busy city life from morning to night. Tomorrow, I will be heading out to the Cu Chi Tunnels for a tour at 8 am. I somehow don't think it will be a problem for me to be up by that time! Then after 2 nights at the hotel, I will head down to the Mekong delta for a visit.

Many of you have been messaging me for more pictures so I have uploaded some on flickr. These are unedited versions so quality might not be as good. I will most likely report them when I get back so I don't want any complaints that you have seen them already when I lost again! Here are the pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyvrpilot21/sets/72157632695878289/

I am having a great time so far and surviving the heat (although, I should be drinking a lot more water than I have been). Hope all is well back home and enjoying my blogs. Hope to blog one or two more times before I head out to the Mekong delta as I don't think there is any internet connections there. Till next time...enjoy the reads and pics. Miss you all....kinda...a little...ok, not really! :p

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