Unsupervised in Ho Chi Minh City

After a fitful night, I got up, went downstairs and told Sue I was going to skip the trip out this morning. She gave me the name of the place to meet them for lunch and said to ask the concierge to help me get there. I then had a very lazy morning at the gym, then a bit of yoga, shower and a very leisurely breakfast. I had pho and I had a seafood soup, which was a lot like pho except it had wheat noodle and octopus - excellent!

Out I went into the city unsupervised. I wandered around the streets and checked out the post office and the cathedral built by the French during the occupation. Since it was Saturday, there were lots of families out and they were all dressed nicely and either shopping or enjoying the park. The park is called Paris park and was renamed when the French and Vietnamese patched things up after the occupation.

There are lots of fancy shops and families seemed to like getting their pictures taken in front of them. I thought this was really the scope of it, but later in the day I went in and downstairs. Two floors down were the real shops and people were buying - there was housewares, grocery stores, toiletries and electronics - all hiding under Louis Vuitton.

I did some shopping, as I found the place I was looking for in Ha Noi and I got some cute things for Gill and I. Then it was time to go for lunch. I had asked the concierge for the address giving him the piece of paper that Sue gave me. The guy was confused and said there were many places with this name, then he added an E to the end assuming it was spelled incorrectly.  

Knowing this was a fruitless pursuit, I continued on. He called the number on the paper even though I told him the person did not know the address, she had given me the paper - he confirmed this to be true. Then he googled it and said there are two and gave me the addresses. So looking at the map, I went to the one closest to the hotel.

When I got to the address, there was a restaurant, but it was not the right one. I shrugged my shoulders and went back to what I was doing. I ate some street food, my favorite being these little triangles of dough. They were sweet, only a little bit. She had a bucket of hot coals and a grate over it and was cooking them and some waffles on an iron. She had me try everything before I purchased.

By late afternoon, I was ready for a rest so I stumbled into a salon and asked for a manicure and pedicure. They were very excited about this and 4 women sprung into action; a small argument erupted when another girl tried to do my pedicure, but it shortly resolved and all was calm.

I went to the hotel and had an hour long foot massage. It was very good and just what I needed after my day of walking through the streets. Then I met up with everyone for a drink and they told me about their day going south and seeing the tunnels that the Vietcong used during a couple of wars to hide from the soldiers, survive the bombs and move around in a stealthy manner. There were 3 levels and hundreds of miles of tunnel. When they cooked underground, they waited until evening and then only let the smoke and steam out a little at a time to ensure they would not be detected.

Once happy hour was over, everyone scattered. I went and packed my bag and got an early nights sleep. I made a picnic of things I'd picked up throughout the day then I had a very long sleep.