All Around Ho Chi Minh City

With mixed emotions we left Cambodia yesterday and took the 12 hour bus trip from Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Although we are really excited to be here and we are especially looking forward to volunteering during the month of January, we are very sad that this is the last country we will visit before heading home. Yesterday we did start thinking again about how we might be able to get Laos back on the itinerary.

After a good night sleep we got up this morning and headed out to explore via cyclo. If you can imagine, a cyclo is a sort of oversize tricycle with a large wheelchair attached to the front. If you can't picture that try this...a bicycle powered stroller for adults. Although it would have been just as fast if we had walked, we didn't have to do the work and got to admire the city as we were peddled around. It was very relaxing, despite the swarms of motos and cars that were honking at us as they swerved to miss our slow moving vehicles. It turns out that these cyclos are quite difficult to peddle and navigate as Kenny and I both got a chance to try it...in a parking lot of course!

The cyclo was a great way to start our city tour as we needed some time to learn how to cross the street. It sounds very basic but the traffic here is like nothing I have ever seen. In fact there are five million motos in this city and sometimes it feels they are all heading for you at the same time. We have now learned that one must simply start walking across the street in a slow and continuous fashion and pray that the oncoming cars and motos actually see you and slow down. If one was to wait for an opening in traffic, he or she would NEVER get across the street.

We saw many Chinese style pagodas and went to several huge markets where they sold just about anything you could possibly imagine. Kenny was almost convinced to buy some snake wine but when he learned what it was for he realized he had absolutely no need for it. We also enjoyed Pho at the same restaurant that Bill Clinton visited when he came to visit Ho Chi Minh City and it sure was yummy.