Bye Bye Hoi An - Welcome Saigon

For the last half day in Hoi An, I got up extra early this time to take a leisurely stroll through the market. And lo and behold: bright sunshine ☀️ and 26°C. Apparently, the weather forecasts don't work so well here 😅... So I hopped on the scooter 🛵 and headed towards the market 😎. Asian morning markets are quite interesting. Maybe not because of the fulfillment of hygiene guidelines, but still worth seeing. To endure the fish and meat hall like a man, my first stop was the street food area. I had to have an extensive breakfast here. I had Bun Bo (spicy onion soup with beef fillet strips), Nem Lui Hue (lemongrass minced meat skewers), and Banh Xeo Gion (rice pancake with shrimp) 😂. All very delicious 🤤!

If you don't consume the food served at the street food stalls according to the expectations of the sellers (i.e., proper assembly and way of eating), they will sit with you faster than you can imagine. It has happened to me here not for the first time 😅. She takes everything and puts it together somehow, dips it, and then eats it herself to show that it can only be eaten that way 😅. Then she hands you back the roll like a two-year-old and eagerly awaits your feedback 🤭 😳. Tip: stroking your own belly in circles and raising your thumb with a smile always works 😂😂👍. Otherwise, she will keep patting your food until you like it 🤣.

But most of the time, my thought is: when was the last time she washed her hands 🙄😂?

So, fortified, the market could come. Hundreds of market women dressed in straw conical hats calmly prepared their goods and sold them in their proactive manner. I'm sure the drive-thru was invented here 🛵😅... Initially, I actually wondered why I was being approached even when passing by the stand on the scooter if I didn't want to buy any live fish 🙄😂🐟. Shortly after, I saw exactly that on a scooter handlebar 🤦‍♂️. Plastic bag with water and a catfish swimming in it 🙈.

However, as seems to be usual in Vietnam, there always has to be something that doesn't fit the situation. In this case, it was a singer who was pulling a huge loudspeaker on a cart through the meat and fish rows and giving his best there 🤦‍♂️🤪.

Due to the temperature reaching 30°C at 11:00 am, I thought that the beach today would certainly look better 🏖️☀️ than the day before. So I quickly got back on the scooter and headed towards the beach for 30 minutes. Due to the general weather conditions and my now extremely developed scooter skills, I realized that it only took me 10 minutes to reach the beach 😅. But it may also have been because I wanted to test how fast the thing can go and occasionally overtook a few cars 🙈. Without a speedometer, it's difficult to estimate, but I assume that my little devil's contraption easily exceeded the 100 km/h limit 💪🤦‍♂️. That would at least explain why the speedometer went up to 180 😳. However, according to my highly developed sense of safety, I was also wearing the full Vietnamese protective gear 😎 (half coconut shell with chin strap)!

Arriving at the beach, I took a stroll for another hour and then it was time to say goodbye and continue my journey back to Saigon to the Flowergarden Homestay by Anh, where my transfer was already waiting.

Without giving away too much: Saigon is a bit crazy... 😳😎