Stuff from all over

For a while I've been very much annoyed with the florescent lights in my room; being assaulted by blinding white light when i get home from work is not conducive to relaxation. So during one of the power outages last week, I ventured out into Pham Ngu Lao for dinner and to stroll around. And found a woman selling really cool lamps. I bought one (the below picture is up against my mirror), and it came disassembled, so it was a bitch to put together. However, I finally succeeded:


This is my street. The gate directly on the left is my house. I took this on Saturday when I went out to walk to Cholon, the Chinatown area of Ho Chi Minh City.


And, of course, there are these all over. It's the only American chain here (well, ok, there is one Pizza Hut in the most "Westernized" neighborhood of the city)--which surprises me, because I expected that Macdonald's would have achieved world domination by this point. KFC here does have really good iced coffee, though. (It started raining, so I went inside for one to wait until the rain passed.)


I walked to a street in Cholon that is filled with traditional herb markets--basically, every store had huge burlap sacks of herbs. The smell was potent, in a pleasant way. Every once in a while I came across an apothecary selling, amoung other things, snake wine (wikipedia it, I don't want to explain it right now) and dried seahorses in jars. I kind of wanted to take a picture, but I thought they might not appreciate it if I wasn't buying anything.

That's about all I've got right now.