Vietnam Pt 2: Ho Chi Minh

The next morning we woke up early and headed to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.  I had been warned that I would most likely get sick from the food in Vietnam (like one might in Mexico) so I was a little weary to try things like the fruit and milk coffee.  I normally don't eat breakfast so I didn't want to eat much anyway, but I did try a nice hot rice porridge and some bread.  The other girls had pho which is a noodle dish with fresh beef.  It looked great but I really wasn't hungry.

We had a while before Kym's relatives were due to pick us up so we wandered over to a big market near our hotel.  It reminded me of all of the markets you see in any big city with lots of booths selling similar products.  It was nice to kind of get an idea, though, of what I might want to buy.  It was pretty hot and some of the fish and shrimp in the market were quite overwhelming, but we managed to avoid those areas.

We went back to the hotel and met up with Kym's cousin and aunt.  They asked what we wanted to do and I honestly said I was open for anything.  Kym and Amy immediately said that they wanted to get che (which sounded like jeah to me) so we went back to the market we were just in.  Che turned out to be a yogurt type sticky rice dish which I passed on since I am not a big fan of sweets.  It was fun to sit in the market, though, and people watch.  A lot of tourists were milling about and we tried to guess who was who.  If you haven't played this game, I'll give you one quick head's up.
A) European men wear black socks with sandals, American men wear sneakers with white socks.
B) Canadians usually have their flag displayed somewhere on their clothing so as not to be confused for Americans.
C) Australians seem to dress the most casual and they usually have on quicksilver or a similar surf brand.
D) Japanese wear too many layers and crocs.  Other Asians don't wear crocs.
(I am joking about this and don't mean to offend...)

After the girls had their fill of che we went out of the market and to another large mall/department store.  I was shocked as we literally went only about two blocks but went from crafts selling three for a dollar to Louis Vuitton and Zara.  We weren't wanting to spend money yet but we did have fun browsing.  Amy and I got excited when we spotted Popeye's Chicken and Carl's Jr.  It was only the first day but we did make a rain check to return on our last day.  Being still full from breakfast we skipped lunch and got yogurt.

After the mall we went back out into the city and saw the opera house, an old church (a lot of Vietnamese are still Catholic), and the reunification palace.  We didn't go into any of them because we didn't have much time- we needed to catch a flight to Da Nang where Amy's relatives are.

We got to the airport, checked in, and had a quick meal of random Vietnamese food (wish I remembered the name- I had some seasoned meat that was really good) before boarding the flight.