Monday, July 26th: Good Morning, Vietnam!

Susanne:

we slept until almost 8 a.m. this morning; must be a first!

Today was our HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) sight seeing day but we got side tracked a few times, so we did not get a ton done, but are now sitting here watching Kate and Pete repack their bags one last time as they are catching a bus up the coast to go for another week on the Vietnamese beaches.

First impressions:

• Pho (sorry, can't find the o with the thing above it), but it is pronounced "Fa" and is the Vietnamese noodle dish you can every for about $2 or so
• tons and tons of motos that beep and honk all the time, but they DO have traffic lights and seem to operate according to them versus the Cambodian way...they just somehow work it out
• more advanced and industrial than Cambodia
• all cables above ground it seems, there are literally hundreds at times that are running along 1sr floor height
• cleaner, less garbage
• more money, more tourists
• hostels EVERYwhere
• lots of twinkling and neon lights
• coffee is big here. was not in Cambodia, cafes everywhere. yum.
• nicer cars, nicer stores
• still loots of street vendors
• "Thanks" is "cam on"...pronounced Gam On, almost like : Come'on. Had fun with that today, but have it mastered now, I think

We will go see the Cu Chi tunnels tomorrow but booked a flight to Thailand's Phuket by the Southern beaches for tomorrow evening and will stay there for 3 full beach days before flying to Bali for another 3. We are also ready for some beach relaxing time. We hadn't booked anything until today, but after a stop-in at a cafe with Internet, we saw that prices were increasing as options were decreasing. We had not booked anything and were literally doing everything last minute but decided that we really had to nail the flights down. So all is booked now. After Bali, we fly into China and have about 8 days there which will be busy days, as well. In Phuket and Bali, we are looking for some beach relaxation, cold drinks and warm evenings with great local food and rinks. Hmm hmmm, can't wait! Chelsea, our own little"travel agent", did all the bookings on line and is now looking for hostels with Michelle while I am on Blog duty. Will put some pics up for the last few days soon. My mission is to get everyone caught up sometime tonight. So hang tight :)

Today we wandered toward the market which was somewhat similar to the Russian market but more upscale (which means walls, no garbage or smells and cleaner), did some bookings for our travels (Kate and Pete and their bus, as well) and then went onto the War Remnant`s museum. After all we saw in Cambodia, maybe we were a bit hardened to some things we saw today, but still learned a lot about many things I did not know about the Vietnam war: specifically Agent Orange, the poisonous liquids that were spread over Vietnam, literally millions of litres which not only affected those touched by it at that time, but the effects of children born years later and related deformities were startling., Many pictures and stories, may weapons, tanks, planes etc. as well as tiger cages which I remember seeing in movies: cages made out of barbed wire where prisoners were held during the war. It would have been tough to enter the museum as an American, I think, as half the museum was about the atrocities Americans committed during the war, then it shifted toward the political climate and nations, including many Communist ones, joining ranks to support Vietnam in evicting American troops. It ended on a positive note with relationships today. But overall it was again a good history lesson for us all, I think.

So I was still working on the blog and putting some pictures up and as we were all doing a bunch of computer work, we decided to hang out with a bottle of wine and PJ`s and get caught up on a few things. well, little did we know that my ever trusty Leatherman tool which has saved us a couple of times already, did not have a cork screw. I finally called downstairs but communication likely wasn`t great so that we had a security guy up to check our fridge versus bring a cork screw. But he did return a few minutes later with a cork screw. OK, that took care of the bottle. Now we went looking for glasses in the bathroom and only found one for Michelle and me to share...hmm, we did have a little plastic bottle, so we poured wine into one glass and one empty water bottle.  Cla-ssy!

The next pic shows Chelsea cleaning up the room a bit and saying: why don`t you use these glasses...which were apparently right in the middle of the room. Oh, well.  plastic bottle it is... :)

(PS: for all of you who know Chelsea (and she may delete this): as Michelle and I told her we would tell the truth on this blog and she seemed to not agree with our approach....in order to take a pic able to make it on the blog, Chelsea had to be able to not only brush her hair as she just got out of the shower, but take 5 takes to get a pic in her PJ`s worthy of posting....some things don`t change...even in Vietnam. It was a nice, low key night. We have to get up at 6:15 am once again so am signing off :)