Good Morning, Can Tho!

Can Tho, January 2^nd 2010

After making sure breakfast will be served for my little troop, I headed to the street to see how morning life is here. There weren't as many motorcycles as the night before. There weren't 'yet', I suppose.

It turned out that in the morning, it's a busy market over here. They sell various fruits, vegetables, and meat. As for the fruits, nothing were extraordinary in my Indonesian eyes. However, as Michelle commented on the papaya in Dalat, these fruits, although look alike, might taste different than the ones in my home country. Mom also says that Vietnamese tangerine tastes very sweet and has a very nice fragrance.

I find this unique. A bamboo basket on wheels! You know what's in there? Baguette! French bread! I saw a few women rolling her basket from door to door. It seems that it's a routine daily life for the Vietnamese to have baguette in the morning. I saw her stopped several times along this street.

It's not only the materials for cooking that's available. The utensils are also available. Regarding on the sizes, I think you can prepare for a big feast.

Here comes the butcher.

And... "tukang cakue". This time it must be Chinese influence, not French.

And... "tukang bak pao" is "banh bao" in Vietnamese.

In Indonesia, we have a similar one to this, but this one, in my opinion, tastes very sweeettt. I had to eat it while drinking black coffee. But Michelle and Wiwik seemed to be very fond of these. They bought a dozen of these.... hahahaha.... just kidding. But they did buy many. They had them in the morning after breakfast, and in the afternoon after lunch before heading back to Ho Chi Minh City. I’m sure they would have them for midnight snack, too, if we were to stay another night.

This is where we had our breakfast. Some sat outside and some sat inside. It was very crowded and very multinational.

The place where we had breakfast was the hotel where we first came. But when I wanted to check in, we were told to go to another hotel several houses away.

It was this one. It looks more like house than a hotel. But I'm very happy by the clean bathroom.Wiwik's room wasn't so good. She got a room with twin beds, but one bed apparently had already been booked -- by ants. So she slept in one bed with Gabe.

When I went down in the morning, at approx 6:15, it was completely dark on the first floor. I could not even walk through, because there were some people sleeping on the floor. I saw an old lady pass by bringing incense sticks. I asked her about breakfast and of course she just smiled at me. She must have been pretty in her youth. She went into the back part of the house which was only had a curtain door. A tall pretty lady came out while wiping her eyes. I asked her about breakfast, she rubbed her eyes harder. Suddenly everyone in that living room arose. They seemed rather embarrass. "I'm sorry for waking you up," I said. "I just want to know where we can have our breakfast."

"Breakfast? There, there." She pointed to the direction of the first hotel. "Your name?"

"Shuni."

She poked into the back of her desk, and then, "Here."

A young man pushed the sliding door and I went out. When I passed by Huy Hoang Hotel, life also seemed to have just started there. No signs of breakfast at all. Suddenly someone came to me with a big smile. "Breakfast, breakfast!"

"Yes. How about breakfast?"

"Seven o'clock. You breakfast here."

I went back to the hotel to tell Wiwik and Michelle. Our room was on the 4th floor. Up there I met that old pretty slim lady who was bringing incense just now. She was on the way to the 5th floor obviously to dry laundry, because she had a big pail of wet laundry in her arm. She gave me a big smile, again.

The reason why houses in Vietnam are narrow and long, as I learnt from "Insight Guides Vietnam", are because feudal laws taxed according to their width. However, due to the rapid modernization, minimalism architecture has started its influence here in Vietnam also.

I should have followed her movement with my lens and thus I would give a better panning impact. I was shock at the sight of such an old woman having so much to carry.

Do I have anything else to complain about life?