On Friday night I saw Julie again. This would be our last weekend together as Julie would go visit the Netherlands next week. I already knew this beforehand and looking back, it might have been better to fly a week earlier to New Zealand. Out of the heat. But I didn’t and with the new plan to visit my sister and her family in Bali, I was glad that I didn’t.
We stayed in a lovely hotel close to the old city center. On Friday night we went to eat Izakaya, but on our way down, we saw an irresistible store. Full of pottery. We spent an hour collecting our souvenirs. I got myself four small dishes and I got Tika (she moved to New Zealand for a year) also four small dishes which can be used for your teabag. The most Dutch thing there probably is. But they were adorable and I got extremely excited. Julie also found little dishes to give to a friend in the Netherlands. So after they were wrapped up carefully, we continued to our food.
The restaurant was lovely. The only thing was the children of another guest. Who ran up and down several times before I decided to ask the children to stop. Which they didn’t. Then the staff of the restaurant tried to stop them. Unsuccessful. Only after the parents paid and were leaving, they stopped. Please don’t get children if you are not going the raise them.
On Saturday morning we joined a walking tour. Very lovely and learned a lot about the city. Besides the obvious touristy locations, we also visited small local houses. I did get a bit claustrophobic because it was extremely narrow and the electrical wiring was all over the place. A fire could develop at any time. Especially when the tour guide showed the empty fire extinguisher, I just wanted to leave.
The next stop on the bridge wasn’t much better. I forgot the reason why they stopped maintaining the bridge. But they had. I’m not sure what the Vietnamese don’t understand about corrosion of metal and the inevitable failure of the construction if it isn’t maintained. She offered to take a photo of me and Julie and we were both holding each other for dear life.
In the afternoon we went to a tailor shop. I wanted to get a custom dress for my friend’s wedding, and Julie got a lovely top. We could have probably negotiated the price a bit more, but we both hate to do it. So we accepted the price.
We still hadn’t eaten at that point. So we went to a restaurant at 2 o’clock. The time is worth mentioning because it was after lunch. But this did not speed up the process. After 45 minutes we still didn’t get our order (avo toast and a rosti). But we were promised it was coming within 15 minutes. After an hour it still wasn’t there. We waited for another 15 min. In the meantime, I walked through the restaurant, but no one had food. So I don’t know what was happening in the kitchen but not much. After 75 minutes I asked if the kitchen was making our food. They told us within 15 min we would have our food. At that point, we were done with it. So we told them we would leave. There like yeah let us get the bill and both Julie and I were like NO! We both worked too long in restaurants to accept this. Plus we were both HANGRY at that point.
We ended up eating ‘lunch’ or early dinner somewhere else and went back to the hotel for a little catnap. We did go out for a second dinner but only had an appetizer each. But it was still nice. Just to hang out with Julie on the other side of the world.
Sunday morning we were woken up by screaming children in the hall. Jokingly Julie said it was probably the same kids of Friday night. As I went into the hall to tell the parents of. I discovered that it WERE the same kids….. Yes, I have an opinion about this, but okay moving on. After breakfast visited the women’s museum. It wasn’t spectacular because the storytelling (at least in English) wasn’t great. It leaves a lot of open ends, but still, it was nice to get an insight into their culture.
In the afternoon we went back to the tailor to get a fitting on our clothing. We didn’t have much time there before we had to catch a taxi to the airport. Yes, this did stress me out, but Julie kept me quite calm. Kudos to her. The fitting of our clothing was definitely needed. But at that point, it already looked very promising. The final garments would be sent by post to Julie her house.
We did get to the airport on time and back to Ho Chi Minh we went. To spent on last evening together before I would leave for Bali early the next morning.
Zilla-in-the-wild 