lsanderson | Day three in Ho Chi Minh City

We just got back from the rice farm. It’s a first time for sleeping under mosquito nets for me. It’s probably the worst I’ve been for water quality in quite some time. I suspect parts of Greece would rival it, but they’re much less densely populated.

Thong’s two younger brothers were excellent hosts. We sat up, ate outside, and drank beer along with the car driver who got us there until late into the night. I crashed around 10:00 but Thong and Tin stayed up until the wee hours talking with their brothers. The moved into the house at some point, but they kept shushing themselves and finally gave up and went out by the rice paddy. I still woke up around midnight, and again as Thong finally gave it up and went to bed around 4:30. He’s convinced his brother should not marry at 24.

We took a lot of footage from in the car on the way down to the farm. Shot some more footage this morning when we took off on motorcycles and ran to a mountain, and stopped at a city market. I started showing people the screen on the camcorder when it was pointed at them, and they seemed to be either startled or very excited. Everybody holds up their babies. One of the beggars was very excited about seeing himself. I’ll see how it looks.

Once we got to the mountain, more a huge chunk of granite, we walked around a bit, and then sat down about ¼ of the way up the hill. It was in the shadow. We stopped and got hats for the lot of us, and I figured out what I’d forgotten to get – sunscreen. I did remember the mosquito repellant, and Thong sprayed his legs. Tin sprayed the dog.