PIG sties stink, don't go near 'em

Saturday, June 12, 1999

And I mean that. Uncle Sung raised chickens and pigs in his backyard - he had a concrete section for the pigs, though, so we could at least walk from one place to another without stepping in something nummy.

I still don't like chicken's foot soup though. I can't remember when it was cooked up for us, but seeing the head of a chicken get cut off and drained into a bowl didn't really pique my appetite, and seeing the chicken's feet in the middle of the soup bowl didn't do wonders either. The soup was good, though, so long as I didn't look at it.

It was pretty hot over there, by the way. Even with electric fans, I still had little much choice but to sleep because it was too hot for me to feel like doing much of anything. I will say this though, it was relaxing... something I rarely do here in the States :)

We headed back to Binh Duong that day. I never really knew the name of the town until a week or so later; one reason being that Binh Duong is how the town's name is printed, but it sounds like "bean yoon" to someone who doesn't know the South Vietnamese dialect. A normal "D" sounds like the consonant "y" sound in South Vietnamese, whereas the "y" letter is only used as a vowel in written language. Very confusing for someone like me, but I can't understand a word of it anyways, so it's not a real big deal.

Anyways, we caught the "bus" back - about 20 people in a van this time, but it wasn't too bad with my walkman running. I think that was the night I tried riding a bicycle through downtown Binh Duong and almost got myself run over. I told you, the traffic is downright lethal for the uninitiated - yet another reason you've got to rent drivers to accompany the vehicles.

(Note for the rhetoric-impaired: "downright lethal" is just an expression and in no way indicated the lethality of the situation. It's just pretty darn scary.)

And so we go to the zoo tomorrow.