Day 26

I wake up this morning and no one’s up. I don’t hear the children and I get ready and look for my massage class book and it’s nowhere to be found. There’s no point in my search so I just head back to bed, dressed and everything.

I wake up again around 9.30 pm and I’m hungry so I think, let’s go for breakfast. I head to the Tous les Jours bakery near home and eat very good strawberry bread and cheese bread with milk: Vietnamese European breakfast, I guess.

When I finish I go for a cà phê sữa đá near the bakery and stay there for an hour or so. While there, there are too many interesting people around and my camera has difficulty on stopping shooting. Then I go for a little window-shopping and I try a pink dress, it’s an L and, incredibly, it’s small for me! Yeah… Vietnamese girls are really tinny and really thin and I’m fat for their standards. You don’t even know what I’ve run to find a pair of jeans shorts that fit me… in fact I didn’t find them yet! I buy a couple of hair accessories and head home hoping Till and Xuan are awake.

Till and Xuan are nowhere to be found so I just go rest a little bit. Both of them show up around 12.30 and we have lunch. Steamed rice, ribs and some sour veggies with pork meat inside is the menu and while all the food finishes in our mouths we start talking about a relaxing massage, so why not? We head to the massage parlor and I get my girl and Xuan and Till get new ones. Today mine is strong and I’m sure I’ll finish the massage with a couple of bruises in my very pale skin but that’s no a problem, it’s just another way to learn where to press when in my massage classes. =)

When we finish, we wait a little bit to pick Thach Tao and Phuc from school and then we head home. While Till rests a little bit, Xuan and me go for a hair wash and refreshing cleansing at the hairdresser in front of the house. While we’re there Chi Mi brings us orange juice with ice that is really good.

At home we just have time to get dressed and leave the house as Mr. Truong invited us for dinner. We head to a big shopping mall and when arriving there it’s just deserted… it’s really weird. There’s like 2 or 3 shops open and all the other places are closed. Xuan explained us that it was a very trending shopping mall but the owners started asking too much rent money and the people started leaving and not renting the stores anymore.

As Mr. Truong was still at work we for a drink at a coffee shop. As usual I like this green beverage that tastes like jackfruit even if it’s not jackfruit. While at the coffee shop it starts raining so much that the first thing that come out of my and Xuan’s mouth is: “I don’t want to dirty my hair already! I’ve just washed it!”

Luckily doesn’t take long and when we finish drinking the rain also stopped. We head again to the shopping mall and enter a real Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant where Mr. Truong and Miss Hoa are already waiting for us. In the next room there’s a Chinese birthday happening and this is really important for our dinner.

Mr. Truong orders roasted piglet, fish, veggies, tofu and squid, and Chinese noodles with meat and to finish watermelon. While we’re eating the Chinese birthday starts the fun and this is what a Chinese birthday sounds like…

Of course that gangnam style is stalking us so while seeing what’s happening at the Chinese birthday, Till had to show how a “long nose” moves!

We finish dinner and head home to leave there the Vietnamese doggy bag and then go to the market to see if we find the t-shirts we've been looking for.

In the first stall, Till buys the iPhò t-shirt and I buy the Vietnamese flag one but in black and yellow.

We continue our walk and I find the Saigon traffic t-shirt and after discussing the price I bring another t-shirt home.

While walking there’s a cute girl selling hair accessories and for a nice price I buy two of them and Till other two. We then realize that Till can’t leave HCMC without buying a gangnam style t-shirt so we go on the adventure to find one for him and that’s what we found…

All the shopping is done so we walk home with a little stop in the middle so we can drink fresh juices. We’re seat at our table and we’re talking about the t-shirts and that there’s when which says “Vietnam telecom” and when we look about we see what Vietnam telecom is all about. With big laughs and everyone in a very good mood, it’s time to continue our walk home.

It’s midnight and I fell like an old lady but there’s always time to talk with mum and dad so I connect Skype and while video chatting with my dad he calls my mum on the cell and we all speak with each other. There’s nothing like family and I love mine very much!

Night night peeps!