flower shop in Saigon
com tam
Today was mostly a travel day but we still managed to squeeze in some good food. We asked to get com tam (broken rice + meat + egg cake) since that is one of our favorites and was something we haven't had in Vietnam yet. After breakfast we went to a nearby coffee shop that was recently opened by one of Hiep's friends. It was nice to have some coffee (this statement only applies to Dan).
After breakfast we retuned home to sing karaoke at the house with the family. They brought this up a number of times with us during the trip but we kept running out of time. Today they made sure we had time :)
After we sang our heats out (Yvonne impressed all by beautifully signing one song in Vietnamese) we went down stairs for a huge lunch. To our surprise, the photographer from our glamour shot session showed up. He ate lunch with us and he also had some of the photos with him for us to give our input on which we liked best. We could tell our tastes were very different from everyone else in the room as we tended to like the 'fun' or more natural photos and everyone else liked the staged/posed/traditional photos. We went mostly with the fun photos :)
Sending us off at the airport.
After lunch everyone piled into the car or scooter to go to the airport to send us off. No issues with our incorrectly spelled ticket!
We owe a huge thank you to everyone that helped us out in Saigon. We were extremely well taken care of, saw a lot of the city, and ate some great food. We get to return the favor when Hiep comes to the US.
The plane ride to Hanoi was smooth. our only issue was that we had trouble getting a taxi driver in Hanoi to use the netwr(we were instructed to do so since our friends place is closer to the airport than the city). Yvonne was very proud because she successfully argued in Vietnamese for the first time. This only one day after Yvonne said 'the one thing I wish I could do in Vietnamese is argue!' Success!
We had to walk a bit to get from the taxi to Sam's place since the driver dropped us off at the wrong building. Sam had dinner waiting for us and we got a chance to catch up and meet her 20 month old daughter, Sari.
Tomorrow we plan to explore Hanoi.