About three days ago my partner Andrew and I finally left Ho Chi Minh City and all I can say is that that place was a blast! We spent about 6 weeks there studying the Vietnamese language in preparation for working in the city of Can Tho. Though we spent most of our time in District 1, something of a downtown/city center kind of thing, we never even got to know it too well because HCMC IS STINKIN' HUUUUUUGE! The city has about 24 districts and well over six million residents. My hometown of El Paso is sitting comfortably at a population of slightly fewer than one million (22nd largest city in America! Woo!) and has mostly a suburban feel to it while Vietnam's *largest* (corrected thanks to Liz!) city on the other hand is pretty dense and urbanized.

Oh yeah, and it's in Asia.

What that means for me practically is that almost every person owns there own motorbike with cars being out of most peoples' income range. Millions of bikes fill the streets everyday and make traffic into a congested and convoluted mess. And if you have a need for order with your transportation needs, then this is probably not the place for you. Seeing vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road and on sidewalks is not only common, it's pretty much how many people get around.

The evening rush hour is often a huge mess of many hundreds of motorbikes trying to navigate a precious few roads. You can sometimes be stuck pushing your bike with only your feet for over an hour.