Day 39

It’s Sunday! Day to relax and to do whatever we want to. We get up at 7 am and get ready to go for breakfast. As we only have one motorbike, Carlos takes first Xuan and the kids to the place where we’re going to eat and then comes pick me up. We ate prawn noodle soup and the kids are very smiley today and giving no work to the grown ups. When we finish, Xuan takes the motorbike and goes to her baking classes while Carlos, the kids and me walk in the park and then go to the coffee shop.

It’s very fulfilling to watch Carlos with Thach Thao and Phuc and watch them play together. The smile on the kids’ faces are priceless and the smile in Carlos face too. I’m grateful to be witness of this…

After the park we walk until the coffee shop. Two cà phê sữa đá for me and Carlos and strawberry juice for Thach Thao and Phuc. As our Vietnamese is not good enough, the juice for the kids comes with orange too and it’s a drama! =) Luckily the orange juice is separated from the strawberry juice and Carlos is able to get rid off the orange juice by drinking it and makes Thach Thao very happy.

Thach Tao and Phuc play around the coffee shop and act like grown ups doing cheers with the iced tea, Carlos and me talk a little bit and around 10 am we leave the coffee shop and head home. While they continue walk home, I do a detour around the touristy street and go to a beauty parlor for some girl stuff. When I finish I stop by a store with very funny t-shirts and bags and I can’t resist to the following one.

When I arrive home, Xuan’s sister in law, brother and nieces and nephew are here and they came to visit Xuan’s mum. I’m very happy to see them but I have a couple of stuff I want to do before lunch so I head to my room. When Xuan arrives she calls Carlos and me to lunch and we have chicken rice soup and I fight a lot with the chicken so after a while I decide to eat just the rice soup with veggies. To finish we eat watermelon and here the fruit is so sweet that’s just like paradise…

After lunch I continue doing my stuff while my parents aren’t awake. In the meantime, Thach Thao and Phuc come to my room and want me to play with them. They’re still very happy and it’s a pleasure to do stuff with them. My parents start calling me on Skype and the kids go crazy: they want to talk with uncle Kim and Didi and want to see the cats. What a party it is here! The kids get bored and leave and I’m able to speak with my parents for a little bit.

Then there’s a knock on my door, it’s Xuan telling me we’re going to have a massage so I say bye bye to them and head to the massage place. Carlos takes Xuan first and then comes to get me. Today I get a new girl, nº 2, and, if in the beginning I thought she just wanted to do the massage and leave because she was doing everything very fast, I realize, in fact, she’s really good. I leave the massage like new and head to the steam shower and today Xuan and me can’t be inside too long, it’s too warm and we learn that it’s 10º higher than the other times. We dry ourselves and get dressed and leave.

Carlos heads home while both us go for cold milk at the next door. This milk is really good and there’s so many people stopping and drinking it that I get amazed. When we finish we hop on the motorbike, stop at home to get a couple of stuff and head for the supermarket. We buy what we need and when we’re ready to go back home, Xuan realizes she doesn’t know where the parking ticket is. We search for it for 15 minutes until Xuan goes to the reception and fortunately someone had seen it and delivered it there. We’re able to go back home with our shopping.

I still feel sweaty and dirty from the steam shower but I prefer to clean myself before I go to bed, at least like this I go fresher to sleep. In a little bit is dinnertime and we have barbeque ribs, prawns, squid and beef with rice and veggies and for dessert homemade flan pudding. I’m so full that I leave the flan for tomorrow and just drink a coconut. Xuan goes up to put the kids to sleep, Carlos goes to the office to finish his work and I go to my room to surf the net for a bit.

At one point I think it’s time to take a shower and go to bed and relax, I’m thinking in a long shower where I can wash my hair, exfoliate my skin and feel clean, fresh and relaxed. Oh, I was wrong, really wrong… there’s no water running and I think, well, I’ll do it tomorrow morning… I’m in bed feeling a little bit dirty but there’s nothing I can do. Just Skype with my parents, watch a TV show and…

Night night everyone, don’t let the bedbugs bite!