Market Fatigue

In travelling through Europe, one is at first fascinated by all the cathedrals: the architecture, the stained glass windows, the art displayed in them and the religious art in the all the museums. But as one visits more and more of them, one becomes fatigued. Same thing happens in SE Asia while walking around. "Oh look, cheap deals on stuff," soon becomes, "I'm not buying anything from you. Please direct me to ice cream."

Which they don't have much of here:( A suitable replacement: fresh squeezed sugar cane juice (3 parts) and fresh squeezed orange juice (one part) over ice. And they fire up a generator to power the sugar cane crushing machine, so it has power tools involved with its creation. SO GOOD.

We are in Saigon now, and it is by far the most cosmopolitan of anywhere we've been on this trip. Crazy busy and dense like New York. Except take all the cars, sextuple the number, and add that many scooters and motorcycles. Remove road rules and prohibitions like "correct side of the road," driving against traffic or on the sidewalk. Everything is high rise here and there are far fewer merchants of touristy stuff. They sell exercise machines, have far more beauty salons, and child care, so that means they're much better off with more disposable income.

Went to the War Remnants Museum here this morning. It was very interesting to see the war from the Vietnamese point of view. The deformed fetuses from Agent Orange and the combat situations in that terrible mud were the worst. I met a guy who lost both arms from the elbows down, one eye, and one leg and bought some post cards from him. A ripoff, but it did buy some guilt away after just walking through that place.

My main question is: What's up with software stores and internet cafes having numerous fish for sale too? It's like you can't work with technology without also working with a large number of fish. Interesting, but not as interesting as finding out where the ice cream is. Let the search resume!