Siagon Day 2

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Kim and I walked over to a Vietnam Air office and booked our tickets to Phu Quoc we are taking off tomorrow morning. We also relocated hotels. The Indochine hotel jacked up our room price from $50 to $70 US per night so we decided to check out other hoels. We looked around and found Lien An Hotel for $40 US for 3 of and it is much nicer. In the pic Coung playing with his iphone and Kim striking a pose.

In terms of food we went to find the infamous soup lady. Coung had been there previously so we were able to find her in a matter of minutes; well she actually found us as we walked past her corner - because we didn't see her. But she spotted us and called out..."are you looking auntie?". I guess she is used to foreigners coming her way - I don't know if she spotted the hairy mexican dude or the two asians carry their dslrs. We learned that we were early while we were slurping down our Hu Tieu - Auntie mentioned that she did not serve her soup til after 11am...but we got there at 10am and she still served us. We felt special. No-wonder no-one was around. We slurped our noodle soup in the mid-morning heat savoring in the sweet clean clear broth with at least 10 different meats...sat there enjoying the relaxed scenery of the local corner... so off beat the regular tourist path that a few locals gave us weird looks as we passed by looking for the infamous auntie. We spent less that $5US for four bowls of Hu Tieu, spring rolls and drinks. Kim being the dorky foodie...had to get a pic with the lunch lady and told her that we would be back on Monday with more people.

Afterward we headed out to the neighborhood coffee at shop around the corner with just locals and had some Cafe Sua Da. While there people watching and enjoying the view - we saw an American couple clutching a few scraps of printouts looking a bit lost...we figured they were looking for the lunch lady as well. We gave each other smirks as though we were in some secret knowing club...and wavered on weather or not we should point them in the right direction or let them have the adventure in finding her. We decided to be good Samaritans and I took them around the block to her little corner.

We headed back to the hotel to take a breather from the afternoon humidity. And decided to got the Ben Thanh market to do some shopping. The market is quite expansive and had the usual touristy trinket that could be found at any local Asian market. We walked past the food stalled and were pulled and called at from so many different directions to sit and eat at their stalls. But we were full. Food looked good though. Kim wanted to shop around the market and found some necklaces I picked some imitation Ray Bans.

The afternoon humidity gets pretty heavy in Saigon so we snuck into a local chain coffee Trung Nguyen Coffee; which in my opinion beats Starbucks. We had Caffee Socolat - Chocolate Coffee - very good! Cuong had the usual Cafe Sua Da but it had a big selection of different types of beans, the choice he made had a very rich nutty flavor.

Until next time. FYI everyone Kim has been shooting pics in raw format so as soon as she can convert them to jpeg we will upload. Sorry.

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