The Alleyway and The Park

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Eric and I got back on the ship the second day sometime around four o’clock and wanted to rest up but decided we would go out again a little bit later.  Eventually we met in the Square at something like 1700 and made our way out.

 

We headed left from the boat, where I had been with Emerson the day before, but didn’t really see anything of interest.  We kept walking down this one busy street thinking something would catch our eye, but nothing really did.  We figured we had gone far enough, so we made a left turn to a slightly smaller street.  It was actually intensely locally populated.  People were out ALL over the place eating on the sidewalks and hanging out near their bikes.  There were wild chickens running around in the street, and I almost stepped on this big fat white duck sitting right in my path which refused to move.  We went a little further and kept seeing things like this.  Open markets specifically for the locals, which we thought was really nice – good to be out of the awful tourist traps.  I asked Eric if he thought they could tell he was a tourist (he’s 100% Vietnamese by descent) and he said, “Yeah.  I’m not wearing pants.”  I looked around.  Everyone was wearing pants; only we were wearing shorts.

 

After a little bit longer, we saw this alleyway on our left that looked pretty interesting.  Just a tiny bit in was an opening with a large blue building back and to the right and it was just COVERED in really awesome graffiti.  I forget everything that was on their now, but it was 100% freehand and there was a picture of a cat or tiger somewhere on the right side as well as a bottle of spraypaint painted onto the wall.  Pretty cool.

So we kept going down that alleyway, expecting it would let out where the next big road we had seen cutting sideways would come across.  Turned out we were wrong.  It got pretty damn thin – about thin enough for me to line myself up three times hip-to-hip – and it was really, really long.  We saw a really great mix of things – people’s houses, little businesses, house-businesses, people hanging out and watching TV, people sitting outside for no reason, pets wandering around, people driving through the alley on their motorbikes (which was crazy!), kids hanging out and talking.  It was definitely just some little neighborhood we had stumbled upon, and it was really great to see.  You never would have seen that on a tour bus.

 

When we got out, we were a little bit relieved.  Not that we were in any danger – we definitely never were – we were just a little afraid we’d get lost and have to walk ALL the way back through it, which would take a while, and at this point it was getting to dusk.  We found a little park right in front of us, and we just sat there for a while and looked.  Parents played with their children, older people looked at us and smiled, middle-aged men looked at us and wondered.