Only in Vietnam

So, there have been a lot of things that have happened or I've seen that have made me do a double take and wonder "wtf?" but this one simply took the cake.

A few examples of this behaviour include, before I get to the real meat of the entry: men urinating any where, any time, any day in public; many of them at least stand in shadows or corners, but a lot of them are not ashamed at all. I saw a little boy intentionally aim at this other guy's cyclo, laughing and thrusting his 5-year-old hips.

Which brings me to the concept of "it takes a village". The previously mentioned little boy was punished by the owner of the cyclo. Communal punishment is pretty frequent, who ever saw a child misbehave is absolutely allowed to spank, yell, or scold him. I'm not sure if the parents are told and then the child is punished again? Either way, their punishments don't look THAT severe, though, I imagine the embarrassment of being spanked in public is enough.

All of the unbelievable things I've seen carried on the back of motorbikes, of course: various live animals, many not in cages, large panes of glass, large pieces of furniture, entire electrical system playing music. Every one sees different things and I'm not out in the middle of the day, so you'd have to see for yourself.

The Vietnamese are very open with shooting "snot rockets", picking their noses and toes; however, picking your teeth with a toothpick in the open is out of the question.

A favorite was the day my friend Chris and I got on the elevator in my building to go out, leaving is a key concept here, and a woman got on the elevator with a dead, fully plucked chicken. I thought for sure it was rubber but Chris assured me it was real. She took it outside somewhere, I didn't follow her even though the journalist in me was extremely curious. You can't bring your dead, plucked, chicken on the elevator! Can you?!

So to get to the real point, I came home from work this evening around six o'clock. One of the two elevators on my side of the lobby is down and probably will be until at least Monday, which means you could wait a solid 15 minutes for the unbroken one to get to you, or take nine flights of stairs, but that's, still, not the point. I walk into the lobby and there's a woman standing holding her toddler, another woman standing behind her child who is on a big wheels, a woman crouching (in a way I've also only seen in Vietnam) with a little boy around 4-years-old on her lap, and they are all awkwardly circled around two, for lack of a better word, turds. Human feces.

Shock? Awe? I had no idea what to do or say and the elevator wasn't anywhere near the ground floor. I don't think the adults were discussing it but the little girl on the bike was looking at it and the boy sitting in his mother's lap the way I wanted to look at them.

Finally, the elevator arrives and I take a step toward it only to realize that the little boy is still pooping on the floor, using his mother's lap as a toilet seat and the floor of the lobby as a toilet bowl. No wonder the little girl was looking at him so strangely. I am well acquainted with the inner-workings of the intestinal track; however, NOTHING makes this okay! Agreed? I mean, it was six o'clock in the middle of a crowded lobby of a well-populated building.

Only in Vietnam, for sure.