Hai Phong streets

I have a 12 minute walk to work here in Hai Phong. Cross the street from the hotel, walk by nine sidewalk barbers (yup, it’s the barber street, shave and haircut on a kitchen chair on the sidewalk with a mirror hung on the fence), around the corner and past the sidewalk tropical fish market (see the picture – plastic tubs on the ground hold live fish and small turtles - remember, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them), past the navy museum (uniformed sailor guarding the gate with a well worn AK-47 automatic assault rifle – I nod and smile and keep walking), past several cell phone shops, some sidewalk cafés, around another couple of corners and down a quiet tree lined street to the police building (see pictures – police building, and street, note sidewalk café in corner of picture).

So there I am, walking along looking at this different world on the side street by the police building (picture of police building included) when I hear a familiar tune over a loudspeaker. “Santa Claus is coming to town…” Imagine this when it’s 25 C and incredibly humid. So warm and humid that my shirt is soaked and it’s not even 9:00 am.

The music is coming from a guy with a set of scales on wheels walking along the road, with a bull horn slung over his shoulder attached to a small recorder. It’s common to see somebody wheeling along a set of portable scales (combination height measure thing built in) so that you can stop and check how much you weigh. Very common. See them a lot. Don’t often see one though playing Santa Claus tunes. So very odd.

On the walk back to the hotel today, I managed to get a shot of one of those impossible loads routinely moved along the street using a converted bicycle. I think it was bales of plastic and construction materials (see picture).

Two more days of police skills coaching here, then travel to the south end of Viet Nam, via Ho Chi Minh City, and up the Mekong Delta to Dong Thap, and another set of skills coaching days there. Wonder if I’ll hear Christmas tunes there too?