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My last two days in Vietnam I’m on my own to explore the neighborhood (5^th Ward or whatever it is). Sean is at work, I sleep in.

Welcome to sights and scenes from Saïgon. Let’s start with traffic – on the back of a scooter:

There are other clips on YouTube at the same location of other experimental traffic shots. Breath deep, assume it will all come out right.

When I’m staying with folks in a different city, I just tend to pick a street and walk 5 or 10 blocks in each direction to see what I find…and with the maze of Saigon streets running at angles, I’m going for straight lines.

Hello Kitty! I found this store on the first walk:

They were having a 50% off sale and MAN was I out of place. Lots of pretty pink dresses, nothing in the laptop sleeve that I was looking for – luggage – they had that.

I should have spent more time looking for bargains – but I got the feeling they were a little freaked out by a 50+ year old white guy in their store.

You can get everything on the streets – plane tickets:

CDs/DVDs from guys that have their own battery mounted sound system:

Random food:

Then there are the random cathedrals:

Mixed in with upscale buildings wedged between crumbling ones…

And forget walking on the sidewalk, it is filled with scooters:

Walk, and you are in the street. Speaking of the street – I have a collection of “party” billboards – Vietnam still is a nominally communist country:

I’m sorry, but in the one below, Ho Chi Min is looking a little too much like Colonel Sanders, which is in Vietnam at this point.

To me this reminds me of the YMCA song so popular at weddings in the US:

And then there is TinTin – apparently he crosses all borders:

Other amusing street scenes include auto dealerships where there is a 200% import tax on cars that are not manufactured in Vietnam – FYI – Vietnam doesn’t manufacture any cars:

Public parks have exercise equipment for everyone to use. Hello USA!:

Random shot of a street restaurant:

It is the year of the monkey after all. Apparently I’m a FIRE MONKEY:

And the “party” is still alive – this Jeep waiting to go on Communist Patrol:

As my last night in town, Ming shows up for dinner, and to pick up a painting he is taking to his father as a house-warming gift – this isn’t the painting (which I should have taken a picture of), but a large 3-6 foot mural in the showroom – which happens to be on the corner of where I’m staying. “Painting” is a bit of a stretch – unless you call painting with ground up gem stones painting.

And then we were off to dinner – s hot pot place:

A nice final meal for Vietnam for late tonight I’m at the airport headed home.

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