Wednesday, July 29th

Lazy morning...decided to have a nice breakfast and swim & relax by the pool until early afternoon. The sun was shining and it was probably one of the nicest days we've had since we've arrived (aside from the time in Mui Ne). Around 2pm we headed out to see some of the sites that we wanted to check off our list. We saw the Central Post Office, Notre Dame Cathedral, Reunification Palace, Le Van Tam Park (Children's park and not really too exciting unless one of their festivals is going on.) One thing we've noticed is that some parents are not shy to change their sons clothing in public and yes that means stripping them right down to the bone, even if you happen to be, oh, let's say 10 years old. We noticed most people at the fairly busy park would take off at least one of their shoes and hold/play with their foot. I've never seen this before in my life, but here in Vietnam, it's all around. These people LOVE their feet. Infact we went to a restaurant the other day and on each TV screen randomly place around the room, the Vietnamese Shopping Channel was selling a special device to trim the corn off your feet. I'm all for people taking care of their feet but dinner and a demo, I think I'll pass. Anyways, lastly we went to the Tan Dinh Market. The Tan Dinh Market is a smaller version of the Ben Thanh market with the main focus on textiles. If you can manage to take the smell that emenates from that place, then you could probably squeeze a deal to have a suit tailor made for a steal. We couldn't take the smell. And that wasn't the only thing. The aisles were likely about 1.5 feet wide and that is being generous. Some of these people work so hard under such hot and cramped conditions, you almost get the illusion that you are walking through a prision. After 5 minutes, if not less, we decided it wasn't the place for us and headed to the Backpacker's area. We were pretty hungry by then so we ate at Good Morning Vietnam. Like the same restaurant in Mui Ne, the food was delicious and satisfying. Portia was so exhausted she fell asleep in her daddy's arms so Alex felt it was best to get the kids back home. Franca and I had a fitting at 8pm so we had no choice but to stick around. We did some window shopping until about shortly after 7pm, where we took a much needed break and headed for Highland's coffee shop. We sat in 2 cozy chairs by the front window and couldn't help but observe the people watchers. Here in Vietnam you could park yourself anywhere, whether its to sit around on your bike or to sell something, no one seems to care if you decide to do it outside another business' front door. So there you have it, we had about 4 guys right in front of us on the other side of the window doing their thing. One slept (on his bike of course), 2 chatted while one of the two took off his shoe and freed his foot and the other, well we aren't quite sure. Finally at 8pm we crossed the road to the Tailor's shop and tried on our new clothes. It's amazing what a difference clothing can make when it's made to fit you. If I could, I would have all my clothes tailor made, but in Canada we'd be paying an arm and a leg, it not the whole torso along with it. After some noted adjustments, we headed home for the night and fell quickly asleep.