Vietnamese people work long hours

Vietnamese people work extremely long hours either as self-employed or for a small business. There is no such thing as overtime pay and people often work seven days a week. There are so many small family owned businesses and individuals hawking food, lottery tickets or other things on the streets. The last couple days in Long Xuyen I have gone out about 5:30 am to get my exercise. It is about the only time that it is cool enough to do exercise (feels about 80 degrees.) Even though it is still dark, there are many people in the park exercising, doing tai chi, aerobic types of activities, stretching or just walking. The park is a long skinny strip, the median area of a boulevard that stretches several blocks beginning from a market by the river. After I stretch, I go jogging through city streets being careful not to get run over by a motorcycle or bicycle in the semi-dark streets. People are already up preparing their little restaurant or small business for the days activity. Some are sweeping the sidewalk in front of their business or cleaning and setting up their restaurant or street stall. After about a mile, I find a paved path that runs along a canal. There are houses along this path and I pass people up cleaning and preparing breakfast outside. After about 20 minutes of jogging, it is time to turn around and jog back to the hotel, shower and have that wonderful buffet breakfast offered on the roof with a beautiful view.

Today we took a minibus back to Ho Chi Minh City. We arrived in the sweltering, noisy, crowded city about 2 pm, and negotiated with two motorcycle taxi drivers to bring us from the bus station to a hotel area described as a kind of a backpacker ghetto with lots of hotels, restaurants, and agencies hawking various tours and trips. There are many Western tourists here, most of them Europeans, Israelis and Australians and they a lot younger then we are. We mounted the cycletaxis with all our gear and the drivers gunned their way through the crowded blazing streets, weaving in and out of the traffic and passing everybody. It is amazing how at intersections or at traffic circles the drivers manage to get through without smashing into oncoming traffic, kind of like two opposing waves of water that manage to get through each other. It was a harrowing experience for us and we were thankful we made it safely to look for a hotel in the sweltering heat.