Exciting times last week. A famous giant yellow rubber duck designed by a Dutchmen called Florentijn Hofman has just visited Ho Chi Minh City. It was pretty massive and by far the biggest yellow rubber duck I've ever and probably will ever see. Its statistics are 600kg and 25m x 18m x 18m.
They set it up in a lake about 2 minutes drive from my house by my local supermarket and cinema. I've attached a link to a newspaper article which covers the event pretty well. You can see in the picture above the locals are well happy having their photo taken with it.
http://tuoitrenews.vn/lifestyle/19331/giant-rubber-duck-floats-on-saigon-lake-lures-thousands
The opening line of the article says 'Thousands of Vietnamese and foreigners on Sunday filled up the area
around Ban Nguyet (Crescent) Lake in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City, to have a
look at and take pictures with the giant Rubber Duck'. I can first hand vouch for this because the traffic all around my house was horrendous, in fact I'd say thousands of people could well be an understatement. It was gridlocked.
Not realising how busy it was, we made the mistake of wanting to go to the cinema on this Sunday evening and the roads were all blocked. The Vietnamese have a good solution to busy, slow moving traffic which is to jump red lights. I have no idea why they do this because all that happens is even thicker and more gridlocked traffic. I did manage to get to the cinema eventually and could see the duck as I passed over the rivers bridge but due to the traffic problems for which it was to blame all I felt at this time towards it was rage and anger.
These negative feelings continued over the next few days because whenever I went on Facebook all anyone who I'm friends with in HCMC posted was selfies of themselves with this duck. After a few days we did go to visit it whilst we were doing our weekly shop at the supermarket.
We had to walk through the supermarket to get to the river to see the duck. As I told you a few days ago its been ridiculously hot and this day was no exception. When I got outside I saw the duck at the other end of the river (about 100m in guessing). It was so hot I couldn't be chuffed to go and see it.
Well as the newspaper article quotes this duck has been "spreading joy around the world" since 2007 and increasing its carbon footprint by visiting many famous cities around the world such as Sydney, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Osaka, Sao Paulo and Beijing to name but a few. If your lucky, like me, you may get to experience its joy in the future.
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