Street-buying gal

The night market in Can Tho features some terrific poorly-translated-into-English t-shirts, a particular favorite of mine. We purchased some of these for a project member's birthday the other night:

a little Chanel-Chanel, a little Gaga

The captivating smell of "fragiance"

"My Beauq Days. I rely on you to USA"

This is just the weirdest word salad. I am hesitant to visit this website.

This guy is using a skinny little band saw to carve out text from slabs of wood. I asked him to make some little Can Tho key chains to give to my super-powered Intake Team to thank them for their hard work (really working on my executive skills, here!)

Some video of his skills. He still has all his fingers intact, as far as I could tell! (there's also a little bit of our idle chatter...)

I've been to my favorite vegetarian restaurant (a side benefit to a country that identifies as approximately 80% Buddhist-- lots of vegetarian options!) twice so far, and have been treated to this delicious dessert both times:

Creamy and cool-- layers of coconut, avocado, dragonfruit, and chocolate

We had a funny communication breakdown the first time 4 of us from the project went in to this restaurant. There are usually not any non-Vietnamese people there, and the woman that is telling people where to sit looked at us and said, "Com chay? Com chay?" I interpreted this as her asking us if we realized that this was vegetarian food, and I said, "Co (yes)", and then told her "Buun (4 people)." She pushed us onto stools (it's kinda like a diner) and just started bringing us plates of food and bowls of soup. No ordering! Everything was delicious, so we just kept eating.

In watching her with other customers, I realized that "Com chay" seemed to mean "the plate of the day" (literally "vegetarian rice", although it was tons of veggies and various tofu pork cracklings and "meats"), and it was just a big combo of everything on offer that evening. The next time we went, I realized we had to just shout "PHO!" right when we walked in, in order to get the vegetarian Pho, which is super delicious, heavy on the garlic and greens. Any choice is a good choice there! 

Coconut count for the day: 2-- one in smoothie form, one straight from the branch: 

I realized after I approached this person that I didn't really know if he was selling the coconuts,
or if he was just cutting them down from the tree.
I was relieved when I saw a little packet of straws in his cart.

Cultural misunderstanding averted!

Another satisfied customer

Different pulses drying outside:

And, to end this post, a little aspirational motorbike moment...