Tết is here!

Getting a drink

Stairs

 Today everything is closed and people spend the day at home or visiting family or close friends. So the traffic is much lighter than usual. These are pics of the house, the moped is an electric one I'm borrowing from my uncle. It's pretty fun.

This is the way to the place we're staying. I keep thinking alleyway, since it'd fit one car width, but since no one has cars, it's not a big deal. This really shows how light the traffic is, since normally you get at least several moped in a pic.

Tết  Foods : a pickle plate with dried shrimp, thousand year eggs, pickled shallots. Ban Bao, Thit Kho, rice and noodles.

Li xi: good luck money for the kids.

Scenes of daily life

Meat is sold either live of freshly butchered.  The markets have live chickens and ducks and sometimes other small animals like rabbits. Beef and pork are butchered I guess the day before and brought to market. So although it's all open air and would seem unsanitary, I don't see how the factory butcher system is much cleaner. People know who they just bought meat from, and don't seem to have problems saying what they think about any particular vendor. Word of mouth works here.

From backside of stall

Front of meat stall

Many varieties of rice

Traffic rules are mainly guidelines here. There's a lot of traffic. Everyone is on mopeds, and I find riding one makes you very connected to the city. There's no isolating bubble, you could even reach out and touch your fellow travelers. There are guys at various corners ready to offer you a ride to where ever you need to go to, but since we're obvious tourists we always take taxis. There aren't a lot of people with private cars, and even the max size of the moped is capped.

Traffic at a stop

A typical family vehicle

Visiting the "suburbs" of Saigon

Saigon is a sprawling big city. The place we are staying in is pretty close to downtown, but we were invited to visit a home on the outskirts of the city. It's a new development, so there's a little more space per house to build, but they do seem to build right next to each other. Also your house is based on the land area, not actual square footage, so a lot of people expand by building up.

Road into the neighborhood! The little ramp is for your moped to go into your house.

Mom loves cats! These cats were short tails too.

The front courtyard is the parking area too!

Upstairs bedroom - rather like a futon

Stairs to the upper floor

This is lunch. Seafood hotpot with fresh greens and fish. The yellow bowl has ice cubes for drinks. Mom is making sure the pot doesn't boil over.
Nobody seems to bother with tables or chairs, I think they just take up too much space.

Kids are kids everywhere.

The little neighbor boy probably didn't know he's in the picture!

Eating and going out at night in Saigon

Things are so familiar and yet so different. I'm not 100% sure that these are real Heinz products, but they may be. If anything they are from a international subsidiary. One is hot sauce, made in Thailand.

New Years decorations are everywhere, this is inside a mall.

My mom's brother is now living back in VN after living in the US for many years. His life is a bit complicated.

Street vendor for roasted dried squid

Eating clams

Waiting for main course

Seafood Hot Pot - See the little trash pile on the ground!

My Food was moving before I got here!

The food in Vietnam has got to be the freshest food you can get. The seafood restaurants keep tanks for the animals so that they are fresh, I guess it might be cheaper than putting in big freezers.

Bargaining for Dragonfruit

Looks like some kind of lobster

Snail/escargot

Crabs

Looks like some kind of grouper

some kind of shellfish