Tuesday, July 21st

Alex watched the children while Franca and I went shopping at...you guessed it...the Ben Thanh market. We were greeted with the smell of fresh flowers and fish. We spent the next couple of hours wheeling and dealing for good pricing on jade, jewellery, makeup, and other special Vietnamese items. There are over 3000 stalls and we haven't even seen the tip of the iceberg. Each stall, which is about the size of Alex's big too, not including the hair, holds about 3 Vietnamese people and they all call out to you in unison, "Madam, madam...I have big size. I have your size." Ladies, not a good place to go when you are having one of those "fat" days. I must agree however, that I'm alot bigger than most men here and could probably bounce 4 on each knee, and probably squeeze one into my back pocket. Nonetheless, we had alot of fun and left knowing that we'd be back. We arrived back at the hotel at around 1pm as Alex was getting ready to leave for his own separate adventure. Although he did have to go with our rep to the passport office for Reuben's documentation, he made a little pit stop in an area of town they call the backpacker's area. Apparently here is where you can find the deal of all deals as long as you keep a close tab on where your wallet is at all times. It's a pickpocketer's haven with tourists as the target. Alex came home with a big smile from ear to ear (so you can just imagine how big that smile really was). He is having 3 suits custom made at $80 a piece, two dress shirts, also custom made at $11 each and bought ties for $2.50 US. I don't think it gets much better than that. Let's just hope that there's not a mis-communication and Alex doesn't end up getting a short-sleeved suit with shorts instead of pants. Now that would be funny! We decided on going out for dinner with Loan (our agency rep) in hopes of being introduced to another authentic Vietnamese restaurant, but the weather conditions worked against our wishes. Much flooding occurred due to the heavy rainfall, so with many roads blocked our cab driver drove around aimlessly until we finally gave up and agreed Pho 24 would satisfy our needs. Pho 24 is a new chain restaurant here in Vietnam and they can be found on just about every corner. It's clean, it's fast and it's cheap...it's pho. After dinner we called it a night and headed to our home away from home. Loan joined us for a while as we spoke about life back at home and the differences between the two countries. Some things are very different but yet, in some ways they aren't different at all. The same problems, the same hopes and dreams....