Buy groceries on the Mekong river, Vietnam!

MI Time - 2:47AM
Local Vietnam time: 1:47PM
Date: Saturday 21-Jun-08
Location: In a local cafe in Can Tho Vietnam overlooking crowded street

Ladies with bamboo hats sell mini-bananas, motorcycles zooming by...epiphany, women do whatever men do. They ride motos and row canoes down the river, which is more than I can say for Honduras where the culture was very machista and women only stayed at home. Culture here also seems to be very non confrontational. I remember wandering the Chicago airport before departure and commenting to Steve, "this is the busiest I've ever seen it in the airport." There were business men in suits rushing here and there, women in high heels, clickety clickety click, familes scurrying with childern, long lines for starbucks coffee. Everything and everyone humble-jumbled together formed a large rock band of noise. In contrast, landing in the Vietnamese airport waiting for baggage and in the long immigration lines, I felt the need to whisper to Steve as if I was in the library. Vietnamese tend to be more soft-spoken. I don't see a lot public display of affection (hugging kissing, holding hands). Unfortuantely, the habit of carelessly tossing garbage out of bus windows or non-chalantely onto the street while walking is a commonality I've seen in all our travels, including Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and here in Vietnam as well. Even our boat guide this morning tossed his empty cigarette box into the Mekong river. Smoking! It pains me to see young men 14, 15,16 years of age smoking. Another custom that I've noticed is that a large percentage of Vietnamese men smoke or chew. I wonder when and why that custom was started.

Each day we are awakened by the concert featuring the motos and the alarm clock. This morning a rooster awkwardly joined in. We went downstairs at 5:30AM, the hotel lobby door was already open and a thin small-framed man greeted us with a smile and shy chuckle. He waved his hand as a greeting. We darted single file through the motos and bicycle traffic (not many cars) and followed him into a quaint coffee shop. "Blah blah blah...Cafey?"
"Cafey...yes" I replied with a smile. The little man disappeared and left us sipping iced coffee (belive me, you wouldn't want it hot here). Five minutes later, our tour boat guy returned with a bunch of finger sized bananas. "Banana?" he announced. I looked up banana in my phrase book. "Choo-ea" I stated proudly. Our communication was limited. To break the awkward silence, I had him read me the numbers in Vietnamese from my phrase book, and I repeated them over and over. "We go" he stated suddenly. We followed him out of the cafe and to the boat dock.

MI Time- 10:00AM
Local Vietnamese time - 9:00PM
Date: June 22nd 2008
Location: droopy eyed and in our hotel in Can Tho

So I'm not going to last long, but I wanted to gift you a beautiful snapshot of the floating market. Our guide steered the boat from the back using the motor most of the time and sometimes just the paddle. We went downstream for about an hour and all of a sudden...canoe...canoe...another canoe, canoes everywhere. Our guide parked us right in the middle of the canoe chaos. We bought some green dragon fruits (big red pink fruits with green spikes and white inside with tiny black seeds). The taste resembles a kiwi. Another wooden canoe pulled up beside us. A little Asian man (all Asian/Vietnamese men seem to be really short and small framed) was swimming in sodas and buckets of ice in his canoe. He held up a plastic cup already filled up with ice and motioned for us to pick a beverage. "Cafe!" I stated. He nodded his head and filled our cups with espresso/coffee and milk. In the middle of the floating market we were sipping iced lattes for 30 cents each. Canoes were filled with cabbages, carrots, dragon fruits, onions, garlic, even bathroom supplies and clothing. Imagine going to the supermarket and every isle's products packed into a Canoe!