Bai Bien Cua Toi (I): Flowers, Friends, Fallacies, Food, Fishing nets & more Friends

5:00
There SHOULD be some light out there now.....

if EVERYONE would just pick up a little bit ......

5:45
THAT means it's time to ride to the market !

It has BEGUN.  100 bungalows in the making !

The market is another lesson in humbleness.  

early morning sun on the road to the market

 I walk everywhere looking for flowers to comfy up that BARREN hotel room !

No flowers here.....that's the fresh fish section
Note the women's CLASSIC Rubber boot and pajama bottom look !

Then I find a stand with flowers. I grab one bunch and the seller (who is busy serving soup in the next stand) at first gives me a blank look.  Time to speak Vietnamese !   Toi muon mua comes out of my mouth and soup lady understands and lifts two fingers.  20,000 Dong.

Having found my bearings in the unbelievable maze of this market again, I locate my Banh Mi stand.  She recognizes me and already wants to make me 1 Cha Lua & 1 Trung, so I say Mot banh mi trung va mot banh mi KHONG hand-wave and point at the plain baguettes.  She understands!   I'm not sure how much that will be, so I just open my wallet and let her grab bills.  She grabs 10,000 and I'm thinking "That is CHEAP".  I'm already walking away when she calls to me and gives me 1000 change. 

Tam notices the flowers when I ride back into the yard.  I undo the rubber holding the stems together, grab one out of 4 stems and present it to her with the words "ban".   "Cam on, ban" is the answer ;-)

 
Binh stashed TWO different kinds of wine in my room yesterday, one kind more expensive than the regular stuff. 
I ask her how much I would have to pay for a bottle of the good stuff........  
Oh, Yummy wine, you like!   is the answer.
NO, NO, NO.    HOW MUCH?
250,000 per bottle.
I'm not putting on a show of being insulted; I just bring those EXPENSIVE bottles back to the storage area.  
Why you not drink? 
I'm paying 160,000 for one of those in Song Cau, that's 90,000 less per bottle!

Nope. Need more sleep

WOW. 13:00

Flotsam fishing nets

that looks like rain....

What happened to the undisturbed forest?  

 It's given way to the coming luxury bungalows ;-(

A quick run for provisions (flooded village street with dog):

And the reward:

Grand total 49,000 VND

At 15:00 I see Tam pulling heavy (there are ANCHORS stuck in there) tangles of fishing nets (torn loose and flotsamed by the heavy sea two days ago) from the beach through the yard to a neighbouring property.  Can't really let her do that by herself.  Muoi's husband also comes to help (Thank God).  But I enjoy it, even though becoming as slender and lanky as the Viets will take a LOT of work.

And yet ANOTHER lesson learned:

While everyone in the West always engages in an endless backing up-moving forward-backing up-moving forward to turn a motorcycle or scooter in a tight space I have always been flabbergasted when I saw Viets just tilt the bike on the kickstand and PIVOT the bike around in place.

Don't know what I'm talking about?  Here is a 25 second YouTube video.  (But someone should tell the kid in the video that it's MUCH easier and safer to DRAG the heavier-side wheel over the ground).

Muoi's husband is around.  I say Toi Muon Hoc, and he shows me the trick.    I CAN DO IT !





Quang shows up on my terrace waving ;-)   

Time to get out the glasses, LOL.

I'm still unlearning my Western ways.  

Despite sinister suspicions, nothing has changed!

Quang is digging a HUGE hole at Binh's behest right next to my door for some plant transplant.   My phone translates for me: "Are you trying to bury a body?"  His chin and eyes point at Binh but I don't even get it at that moment, LOL.

so ends another day .....