Our current home in Vietnam is in District I, and as massive as it is, even the small area around our hotel is filled with a non-stop slide show of amazing, stunning, and often confusing sites.  I have tried to pull together a few shots to provide a bit more insight into where we live and what daily life is like here.

NIGHT

As many times as we have tried to convey what it is like to cross the street in the city, this picture might do the best job.  The motorbikes never stop, it’s a stream that you wade through.  One slow careful step at a time.

Sunday was the Mid-Autumn or Moon festival, known as “children’s day”. The general idea is that due to long working days this time is set aside to show family affection towards children. Since the poor families work the hardest, people often give lanterns and moon cake to the families unable to afford presents and the city’s orphans. In this picture a couple of charity workers hand out lanterns to children near a busy intersection.

DAY

Walking this street was amazing.  It appears to be a kind of drive through a supermarket.  As you pull up you yell out an order to one of the seemingly identical vendors who line the sidewalk and they run out to your bike and load it up with bags of limes, spring onions, and host of other vegetables and fruits I have never seen before.  There was a similar street that had small food vendors next to it that seemed to run on the same concept.

This is our current restaurant of choice.  There’s a great local crowd.  They have Saigon Green – our favorite local beer – by the bottle for 9,000 Dong ($.54). And a great view of the traffic below.

You can see the whole set of pictures on a map here (you might have to zoom out a few times).  Hopefully this offers at least a glimpse into what our life is like here.