Nosin' Around (part 1)

Here's some photos I took while wandering around.

This is one of my favorite buildings (donut shop next door notwithstanding). There are a few examples of Miami Deco.

Arcade in the mini-mall. Doin' a little dance.

So you beat a live goldfish in an arcade game and then you get to take it home or eat it?

They say KFC is the pioneer in Western fast food encroachment. Haven't been inside one yet, though I feel it is inevitable. There is a larger restaurant at the corner near our house. I didn't mention yet that Vietnamese chicken is outstanding, "organic" before the word was coined.

A little school. They all have these cute motifs.

Some really enormous prawns in a restaurant window awaiting the grill. "Please eat me!"

Across the street from us, a typical city block. Street vendors in front, markets on the first floor, apartments above.

Ooh, the illegal street market. The street is clean while school is in session. Then on weekends when the police are on holiday the vendors converge here. Saigon has been cracking down on street vendors, which seems really stupid since it is a part of Vietnamese culture that works. You can get the freshest...whatever on the street. You have to, since supermarkets are scarce and have sucky produce. Yet, the police come by and bully the street vendors back into the alleyways. Apparently this is a Saigon thing, not a Hanoi thing.

Jenny's church. We didn't get anywhere near it, as we were really late and were at the end of a line of bikes. I thought about how weird it was that Christian dogma found a home even here, and thought it was a shame. But it is also kind of funny how the church is a concrete-slab deal with a steel girder cross, as Vietnamese as nuoc mam. And in most of Asia, being part of one religion doesn't make you against others, so why not?

Yup, you can get anything here. Serendipitously. If you need something particular and have to know where to find it, well, good luck!