Bus mobbing

When we woke up this morning we decided to go for a coffee… and the coffee here is unbelievable good. The use some kind of condescend milk.,, and it is just so awesome – I cant even accurately describe it.  All I can say is, it will be hard to go back to Timmies.  Or starbucks. Or really… any kinda Canadian coffee.

We met up with some SWB volunteers for another jaunt through the City. Today we went to the Vietnamese Ethno cultural museum for a few hours. The museum showcased all of the major traditional viet cultures and show cased all 0f their differences and similarities. 

One of the cooler things we saw was the history of the Water puppets, and we even saw a water puppet show, which was an interesting experience. A water puppet is a wood sculpture that is hand carved out of fig wood, and painted bright colours. The puppet floats on the water and is controlled by the puppeteers with long wooden polls. The Museum also had some traditional looking housing that is built on stilts, with woven read floors. They are surprisingly cool to be in, but climbing up and down them is a bit of perilous experience.  After a delicious meal at the Museum we headed back to the hotel for some rest and dinner.

We ended up buying some fruit from a street vender. We picked up some lychlee, dragon fruit (tastes like kiwi) and some mangos. They were all excellent. 

Around 6ish, we headed to the Old quarter for some touring around. We walked around This big lake and saw a lot of posh looking shops. We stopped for some Ice cream, and wandered down the book selling street.  We also headed into the Market area, which was so packed full of people, that it seemed to me that moving would be impossible. But, like the traffic, everyone seems to know what’s going on, and where to go. Apparently the market was so busy because the market is only held once a week, and  coming soon is the moon festival.. So this combo seemed to kick everything into hyper drive. 

Since we have been touring around, we have been using the public transport system. It is interesting, in that that buses seem to run on a schedule, that is not set… but they still come fairly regularly. At the bus stop, the bus dosnt really stop to let people on or off… but just kinda slows down as people hope on and off.  It is about 15 cents to ride the bus- but they give change which Is awesome.  

Another odd thing is that no one seems to line up. They Mob. It is all very polite and all… but the queue does not seem to exist here is any sort of way.