my blog shows up under search key word "vietnamse dicks"

... or that's what my stat monitor is telling me.

Nice.

I had a semi-venturing day in District 1 yesterday, the city's center and the nest of foreigners, backpackers and expats. I had to head up there for a meeting with my new friend C to discuss what I will be doing with Helping Hand Saigon for the weekend. I had been wanting to head up to Distric 1 to check out the tourist scenery since I've been chilling on the local side all this time. So this was the perfect excuse to test the water since I am still feeling uneasy about heading out around town on my own.

I had my aunty dropped me off at the cafe where C and I are meeting. (when was the last time I needed a relative to drop me off anywhere haha?) I arrived 20-30 minutes before the meeting time so I took the chance to walk up and down the street the coffee shop is at. It's a completely different feel than the other areas in the city. I'm not sure how to describe it, but for some reason, I felt like I blend in/don't matter there. I don't feel people's eyes on me since they are either used to the sight of tourists or are more distracted by people looking more touristy than me.

Anyway, I head into the coffee shop after walking up and down the street like an idiot holding on to my helmet (that's a story for a different day) and went in for a drink to wait for my friend. This began my discovery of how prices in D.1 is so much more expensive than prices in all the other areas around due to the heavy tourists flow. Such is an iced tea costing 15,000 Dong while you can get the same thing for about 1,000 Dong or less somewhere else. One dollar is about 20,500 Dong right now. The cafe's name is Sozo and is apparently owned by a French of Germany lady.

Sozo cafe's upstair view

C and I talked about HHS for a bit and we talked about hanging out for the rest of the night but wanted to wait until the sun is down so it's cooler to be outside. To kill time C asked me to teach her Vietnamese. She is the Belgium friend I made two days ago. I taught her a few things while the cafe is slowly filled with university students. Apparently, Thursday and Friday nights are for English clubs so we left after it started and met up with some friends from our own English Club and went to another cafe.

I took the opportunity here to snap some more pictures while I'm out and some more when we walked around looking for food. I hung out with more locals who aren't relatives or old friends and it was quite an experience. One told me that he doesn't feel as nervous speaking English to me as he does when he speaks to a foreigner. I guess I have a calming effect on people hahaha. Nah, it was probably because the local mentality here still hold foreigners quite a bit apart from themselves. They either love foreigners for their money, hate foreigners for the customs or just completely don't/don't want to understand that non-Asian people are people too. Anyway, here are some tourist pics:

Not sure what these two buildings are for but they're prominant in District 1

Entering District 1 and the iconic Ben Thanh Market that requires ridiculous bargaining skills

I took this pic by accident, but I think less people should call me fat especially if there are chubby people around here too. Glass houses man, better watch out


Streets bustling with tourists, ridiculous electrical wires and cars without lanes