PYTHON and chicken do not make good neighbors

Friday, June 11, 1999

The next day we went down the street to go see the family that owned some pythons and some chickens. I don't know why they chose pythons and chickens, maybe to sell the chickens for meat and they just had pythons as pets...

It still took a while for me to get used to taking baths in an outhouse, though. For those people - like me - who had grown up used to bathtubs and toilets, it's a little bit of a switch. At least I had already gotten used to washing with a bucket of water though, from my earlier trip to Japan. It wasn't quite so much of a shock afterwards, but the bathroom was something I hadn't ever been -forced- to learn in Japan... so it still was something I tended to avoid.

I didn't really do much else that day other than read a bit and play cards. Uncle Minh really liked to play Freecell from the previous day on, though, and Aunt Tuyet's husband really liked the pyramid solitaire game I showed him. At least I wasn't a complete void when it came to communication... someone at the python house asked Uncle Minh if he talked to me a lot. He said he did, but he couldn't talk for very long because his arms would get tired [from all the hand motions ;b ]

So... here's as good a time as any to mention those mosquito nets which we've been sleeping under every night. In Vietnam, mosquitos usually come out en masse only at night. That's why we have giant nets stretched over the mattresses we sleep on, since anyone sleeping without a mosquito net becomes an all-you-can-eat buffet. A little more trouble to set up a mosquito net, but considering that the mosquitos got me pretty good during the DAY, I felt it was justified. ;b

We were going to head back tomorrow morning, but everyone decided to take the 3:00 bus home instead. But regardless, that's in tomorrow's log. :)