Syracuse Sunday

Today we woke early in order to head to a 24/7 hour bar in hopes of watching Syracuse compete in the NCAA Final Four. My traveling buddy, Tammy, is from Syracuse and is a big fan. I just like to watch basketball and will cheer for whoever! We got to the bar a little after 8am, and the bar owner found the correct channel right before the tip off. Tammy wore her Syracuse basketball t-shirt and I wore the only orange shirt I own. Shortly after the beginning of the game we were joined by another Syracuse fan sporting orange and later two Vietnamese guys also joined and told us they lived in Syracuse! We sat at the bar and ordered breakfast and beers. Unfortunately Syracuse lost, but it was a good game and we had a great time cheering for the team.

After the game we did some shopping in the backpackers district and hopped from store to store to avoid the rain. It rained on and off for about half an hour, and it even cooled off a little bit afterwards. It's been extremely humid since we've been here. I don't think I've sweat this much in who knows how long. We visited Ben Thanh market again before heading back to the hostel for an afternoon nap. We had a nice dinner out before going to the famous Vietnamese Water Puppet show. There was a live band who also narrated the story in Vietnamese. The stage that the puppets were on was a pool of water. I'm not sure how to explain that better because honestly I'm not sure how the puppeteers control their puppets.

We were all confused about how they were controlling the puppets so after googled it this is what I found: "Up to 8 puppeteers stand behind a split-bamboo screen, decorated to resemble a temple facade, and control the puppets using long bamboo rods and string mechanism hidden beneath the water surface. The puppets are carved out of wood and often weigh up to 15 kg."

I can't figure out how to put captions underneath the photos on my iPhone, but the one photo of two street scenes shows the street directly outside our hostel during the day and at night. There isn't much happening during the day, however, at night tables and chairs are set up and the street is transformed into a busy Vietnamese restaurant!