Saigon is a city of 7 million people. Even here, in such a large metropolitan city where everyone is squeezed together like cows in a pen waiting for their fate, Saigon has a bounty of wildlife. There are lizards (or perhaps geckos). There are roosters. (Okay, maybe they're just lost looking for their owner.) And most commonly found (especially after dusk) are rats and roaches. Unlike Mexico City, Saigon rats are fearless and commonly appear where people can easily see them. To give you an example, this afternoon as I was dining on a plate of rice and meatballs, a good-sized rat scurried under the sidewalk table of a Vietnamese diner and rested next to his shoe. Since he was sitting diagonal from me, I tried to warn him (luckily he was wearing closed shoes), but then the rat scurried back from where he came. When the man realized what I had been pointing to, he just laughed. A few moments later, a western couple sat down on the other side of me, the rat appeared again. The western guy got spooked, jumped up ("I hate rats!" he proclaimed) and tried to warn the Vietnamese man the same thing I had. As he soon discovered, the Vietnamese really didn't care. Since I however, was wearing sandals, and the meatballs weren't cooked, I thought it better that I be on my way. And so I departed.
