I apologize for the lack of travel documentation, so here’s a recap of some pics from my Spring Break trip to Ho Chi Minh City back at the beginning of this month. I went with four other friends from my Japanese language program for ten days to Vietnam and it was a wonderful relief from the harsh freezing cold Kyoto winter. The weather down there was in the balmy 90s and full of rejuvenating sunshine. I stayed in a hostel hotel for about $20 per night including a tasty breakfast with a variety of options including Vietnamese Pho, or noodle soup. 
One day we wandered out to the main market for a bit of shopping and gourmandising when I ran into a fellow traveler from abroad. This man was traveling with his equally ridiculously garbed wife and stood amongst the street surrounding the marketplace trying to capture the vivid atmosphere as the heart of the city transformed into a nocturnal food court. I took this picture because he embodies the stereotypical Western tourist with his fanny packs, camera pouch, tucked in polo shirt and easy-zip-off cargo khakis. His goofy grin of glee as he photographed obstructed pedestrians simply sealed the deal for this priceless picture.

The Stereotypical Tourist Just Begging for Attention
That night we also went to see a Water Puppet show, a traditional Vietnamese performative art. The stage is a shallow pond of water where puppets controlled by puppeteers hidden behind a semi-transparent green shade. Clearly this is an art that could have only developed in a country like Vietnam where large rice paddies and deltas dominate the landscape (when it’s not mountainous and rough). I also glimpsed a traditional water puppet theater built on a pond, which must have provided an amazing backdrop for viewing.

Water Puppet Show
The next day my friends and I took a tour from our hotel to see My Tho (?) and some small islands outside Ho Chi Minh City. After a long and bumpy bus ride we arrived at a dock where we boarded some river boats. Those boats took us to smaller islands where we disembarked and walked through an island passing a honey farm, snake liquor producer, coconut taffy workshop, and other local specialties before arriving at even smaller canoes. The canoes took us through little canals that were dark with mud and surrounded on all sides by leafy palm frond vegetation. It was a cooling and relaxing ride with the gentle sound of a wooden paddle stirring up the silty brown watery muck as we inched forward. The canal went on for quite a ways until we arrived out on a bigger lake and again boarded our little boat.
A Slow Canal Cruise
Lunch that day was a scrumptious “elephant-ear” fish. I’m not sure how else to describe it, but it was a really big, ugly looking fish that I think lived in the canals and silty rivers of the area. I saw a big pond full of them when I was looking around the restaurant area. The restaurant itself was mottled with smaller canals and ditches full of water that must have been used for some kind of irrigation purposes. Anyways, the whole fish was fried and served to us standing vertically along with a large plate of fresh Vietnamese basil and other mysterious herbs. The fish was pretty good and my friends and I picked it clean.

Fried Elephant Ear Fish
Our adventurous day finished with a roughly 5-hour boat ride back along the river to Ho Chi Minh City. About 1 hour in, our seemingly-legit (as compared with the rickety Cambodian) vessel broke down and we pulled over towards the bank for a brief rest while the mechanical engineers attempted to figure out some kind of quick fix for our problem. One of them came towards the back of the boat where we were sitting and promptly jumped down into the waist-deep water where he plunged down for a second and returned bearing none other than the boat’s propellor. Another seasoned crewman apparently knew what he was in for and started trimming his fingernails at the bow of our broken down craft. Eventually another boat came along and rescued us from what could have been an interminable marooning along the banks of the mighty Mekong.
333 Beers, Mr. Puppy, and Leftover Mystery Poultry
Once on the new boat we were well on our way again when we made the acquaintance of on Mr. “Puppy” who (unknowingly on our part) sold us a brand of local Vietnamese beer called “333” or bai bai bai in Vietnamese. He also offered us the remains of some kind of finger-lickin good duck or chicken spattered with some really really succulent sauces. Puppy was quite the character and one in a series of Vietnamese we encountered with diminutive animal names along with “Kitty” (the receptionist at our hostel in Ho Chi Minh City) and “Monkey” (one of the staff at Bo Resort, where we stayed in Phu Quoc). It was quite a memorable couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City and the sunset on the Mekong River was one that I won’t forget.
Excellent post!
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