Did you know your eyelids can sweat?

Hot, hot, hot! We spent the day shopping, sightseeing and sweating. We started out at Ben Thanh Market, which is like a huge swap meet. There is shop after shop of the exact same stuff, so the sales girls will hook their arms around yours and literally drag you to their stand. We found some pretty good deals. John thought I paid a little too much at one shop, so we got better as we went along. All you had to do was walk away and then they would let you name your price. It’s very bizarre. After we’d had enough of being pulled through the market, we decided to see some of the tourist spots. I had the bright idea to let a rickshaw pull us to the Unification Hall– where the President of Vietnam lived during the war. It’s like the White House to us, and is full of really old memorabilia and beautiful furniture. We took some neat pictures.

Vietnamese Motorcycle Police Officer (in tan)

Street sweeper

Scooters...scooters...and more scooters

When we went into the Unification Hall our rickshaw drivers told us they would wait for us and then take us wherever we wanted to go. When we asked how much it would cost, he told us “a few dollars.” We let him ride us past the Notre Dame Cathedral, which is only open on Sundays, and then on to the War Remnants Museum. The museum was very somber and disturbing to me. I couldn’t help but cry as I looked at the disturbing and graphic pictures from the Vietnam War. The most amazing thing to me was to see all of the horrific pictures of what we did to the Vietnamese people, and then walk outside to the gift shop where they sold both Vietnamese and American military hats side by side. They really do like Americans here, which blows me away.

Unification Hall

Orchids at Unification Hall

So, after seeing the museum we tried to find some shorts for John and headed to the sporting goods area of town. We found lot of nice stuff, but not what he was looking for. We were tired and sweaty and ready to go back to the room so we asked the rickshaw drivers to take us back. Now, we thought we were going to give them $6-$10 for taking us around, so when the driver dropped us off a few blocks from our hotel on a secluded side street and told us we could walk back to the hotel from there, we were a little concerned. And then he hit us with $40!!! There is no way we would have taken the ride if we had known it would be that much, but now we had two angry men wanting to get paid, so we gave them the money and walked back pretty ticked off. We got hosed in Ho Chi Minh!

We decided that we should have lunch and chill out, so we headed to this little pizzeria and had a delicious lunch with beer. We had to laugh about what had just happened. Live and learn.

We have one more day before we get the baby, so we will venture out again tomorrow and see what kind of trouble we can get into. Oh yeah! I almost forgot…John almost had his camcorder taken away by a soldier!!! He was videotaping a street and there were some women marching against the government so he started taping them. All of a sudden this soldier started running towards him. John hid the camera and the soldier ran past him and grabbed another man who was also taping the disturbance and made him hand over the camera! We keep forgetting this is not the US and we don’t have any rights here. We tried to get a picture of a police officer’s motorcycle yesterday and we were told “NO”! We need to be more careful or my next post will have to be called - "Arrested in Vietnam." Love to all!