3rd Day

Today we met a bit later, at 11 am in our favourite coffee place, at Ben Thanh Market, and we discussed our first excursion outside of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) : The Cu Chi Tunnels. We'll visit them on Thursday (it's a one day trip for only 8$ !!), so more infos concerning this trip in two days =D

After that we took a cab to the best vietnamese pancakes' (banh xeo) place in HCMC, in Dinh Cong Trang street. Those aren't the pancakes we're used to in Europe : They are salty, fried and very thin pancakes with seafood and pork in them (I took mine without pork) and soja beans, and then you have to wrap them in salad leaves and dip them in fish sauce. It's delicious !!

In the afternoon we stroled around in the streets, shopping a bit. We then arrived to the Vietnamese Notre Dame (built by the french and looking exactly like the Notre Dame of Paris), it was funny to see that in the middle of the (very different) other buildings !! At around 3:30 pm we took an other cab and drove to a center for blind people, where we had a really nice one hour long vietnamese massage, by blind people, for less than 2 euros each !!

At 5 we went back to the main bus station and the traffic was even worse than today (I'll show you some photos and videos, it's really not imaginable), but you get used to it very quickly .. And then the most improbable thing happened : I saw Alain, an old class mate from Collège Rousseau, jumping from a motorcycle-taxi and looking for a bus !! I just didn't believe my eyes, we talked a bit and he told me he was staying in Vietnam for 6 months. What a small world !!

This evening I had dinner with my host family again, we had some delicious crab !! The father teached how to say "I love you" in Vietnamese : "Anh yeu em" (a man saying it to a woman) and otherwise "Em yeu anh" (woman saying to a man). He said that if I said that on the street to some one, they would be very happy (I told you the father was very funny!!) ... Later that evening the mother had some women over to make her hand and feet nails, and she invited me to have them done too, it was very nice (one of the women asked me to organize a blind date for her, because she'd like to come to Europe ... But she's married). The Vietnamese are really the most welcoming people !!