Day 64

After a night waking up every hour, today at 6.30 am is a little bit complicated for me to get up but I’ll have to do it. With much effort I go to the shower, get dressed and comb my hair. I hear the kids which means they’re ready so I go downstairs, say good morning to everyone and it’s time to hop on the motorbike to leave Thach Thao and Phuc at school. When we’re back the breakfast drama starts… it’s really difficult to change daily after 2 months and because we haven’t eat it so much I suggest fried eggs and bread for breakfast accompanied by soybean milk.

In the morning Xuan needs to run some errands and I go with her. We go to the post office, then to the bank, we stop by Highlands coffee shop for our beverage of choice and finally we head to the store to get some things for the temple. While in our errands I find myself thinking that this city is so big and sometimes I don’t know where I am, basically Xuan to go to point A to B have many choices and it’s not easy to situate yourself. She’s been living here for a long time and even her has difficulties sometimes with addresses and locations…

the post office

the view from the post office's parking lot

the view from the bank

Highlands coffee shop

temple stuff

When we finish our things, we head home and lunch is ready for us. Once more Chi Lam made beef only for me while all of them eat fish with sauce; the soup is something I really love so I repeat twice. Guess instead of getting thinner I’ll be getting fatter…

After lunch I start preparing a couple of new stuff for my blog and later in the afternoon I practice I little bit of my nail art until being stopped by Xuan telling me we’re going out for dinner. I get ready in 5 minutes and we go out…

We try to find the place Xuan’s friend is and go up and down Phó Lè’s street a couple of times until we find this karaoke place. There’s 2 motorbikes parking and the security guy, when see us, starts telling us it’s not here we want to go for sure… Xuan assures him it’s here and we go up the stairs. Karaoke places in Vietnam are buildings with many private rooms, so you can scream and scare everyone in your room without disturbing anybody else.

When we arrive to the room Xuan’s friend is we stop at the door and we’re really surprised… the scenario is this: 4 men, 3 girls, the men are drunk, really drunk (one of them is even without his shirt), the girls seem they got they’re younger sisters clothes as I can see more skin than clothes, the guys have their arms around the girls, on their shoulders or in their legs and they seem to cozy and friendly… it’s like entering an alternative dimension! AWKWARD!

Xuan’s friend speaks a little bit of English and asks me sorry for this scenario and I can’t say anything besides “it’s ok” while thinking to myself “this is not happening!”… Basically the guys feel lonely and girls are working their asses off to get as much money as they can from these guys, I don’t wanna call them prostitutes ‘cause I really don’t know what’s going to happen later but it’s very common to find places where girls make company to men.

Xuan sings a karaoke song with her friend and after a bit we get up and leave. We go all the way down laughing, without words and still shocked with what we saw in that room… another girl friend of Xuan is going there so we meet her and take her to the karaoke place and after leaving her we go for dinner.

We go eat barbeque, there are no more chicken cutlets but the pork ribs are still good. When we’re finishing our meal, a young guys seats in the table next to our and engages in a conversation with me, he is nice until when he starts making personal questions like “are you married?”, “how old are you?”, I start feeling uncomfortable and so it’s time to get up and go to home.

At home, we eat mango and talk about what we saw at the karaoke place. Xuan is still in shock and guess so am I. She tells me about when she was young and how she and her friends would go to karaoke 5 nights a week… then it’s time to go to bed and we head each one to our rooms. I’m not sleepy so I watch a couple of TV shows, around 11.30 pm go for a shower, one more TV show and it’s time to sleep.

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