Thursday, March 13, 2008

It was cool and cloudy today, so these pictures aren't the best, but this is the view from one of our windows. The tall building is the Melia hotel. Such a contrast in this city between the modern and the very old.

Hello, sunshine!
We got a slow start today, mainly because I was trying to upload pictures again, so it was lunchtime before we left the apartment. We went to the Citimart grocery last night to get some breakfast foods, so we're good there, but for lunch we decided to try the Green Tangerine, highly recommended by many other BTDT adoptive parents. It's located over near the lake in the old quarter, but we took a taxi today instead of walking. Some foodie pictures:

This is what Don had; can't remember what it's called, but he said it was outstanding:


I liked most of what I had; the scallops were a little fishy tasting IMO, but the stir fry beef was pretty good. Appetizers of spring rolls and breaded shrimp were just ok.

Lauren got her hair cut at a salon in the shopping center in our hotel this morning. She wasn't all that happy with it, but I think it's cute.



This is apparently a 'green tangerine'. It was Don's dessert, and I didn't hear him say if he liked it or not.

The waitress spoke to punkin in Vietnamese, and you could tell she understood the language, at least she seemed enthralled. She couldn't take her eyes off the waitress as she spoke, and then she happily went to her and held on tight. I will admit, I was jealous. I imagined the baby thinking, "Finally! You have come to rescue me from these aliens and take me home!"

After lunch, we walked around the old quarter for just a little while; so many shops I wanted to explore, but the kids aren't into shopping unfortunately, and the sidewalks were crowded with people and scooters, and it was difficult to walk around. So we made our way back to the lakeside and grabbed a taxi to the hotel.
Bear with me as I post a bunch of pictures of the hotel for my adoption friends who are waiting to travel. These are of our 3 bdrm/2 bath villa. (Disclaimer: the unit looked alot better before we dumped all of our stuff in it.) Here's the living/dining area:



Small balcony off the kitchen:

Kitchen:


Entryway, looking down the hall towards the bedrooms and bathrooms:

Master bedroom (king bed; pretty comfortable):

Another view of master bdrm:

Master bath (tub & shower):

Bedroom #2 (queen or double bed; I'm not sure which):

Bedroom #3 (2 twin beds):

Bath #2 (shower, no tub):

These are pictures of the children's play room on the 5th floor. Looks like an empty apartment with some toys in it:


We then were going to go next door to the infamous "Hanoi Hilton", the former POW prison where John McCain spent many years during the VN war, but we arrived just as it was closing at 4:30pm, so we'll go back another day. We can look right down into it from our rooms. Some of it was demolished when they built the Hanoi Towers, where our hotel is, but what remains can be toured. Here is a picture of the hotel from below:

Outside wall of the prison. There's broken glass cemented into the top of the wall, as well as electric fencing.
Here's where we went for a late dinner. It's within walking distance of the hotel. Check out the menu item in the right column, 2nd one down. William wouldn't order it though.

A couple of Tiger beers (Vietnamese) to start things off.

Fake smile; he thought he would be getting beef fried rice, and so did we. Our waitress spoke no English.

Don decided to be adventurous and order the "Fried Crap". Turns out it was just plain ole' carp. Don't ya love translation errors?

And Richard never would have guessed his hamburger would be topped with a fried egg. If only I had captured the look on his face when he saw this. Priceless! Luckily, fried eggs can be removed quite easily.

"I'm just happy I don't have to eat any of this stuff!"

Actually, we were all moderately content with our food until Anna noticed 2 ants crawling on her bread. And then I found a dead one in my rice. Ok, appetites now killed. This caused Thomas to immediately pass out. Or maybe it was because it was late and he was just tired, I'm not sure. Anyway, we paid our bill and left without complaining, because the food was cheap and they wouldn't have understood us anyway.

Tomorrow we have our interview with the US immigration to get lil' darlin's visa to enter the US.
Hopefully, that will go smoothly and we'll get her visa probably on Monday, then we'll be free to leave the country with her. Our flight home is on Wednesday.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

OMG, you made me laugh out loud with the Fried Crap!! I LOVE those kinds of mistakes!!! And hey...in some cultures, ants are a delicacy........right????? EWWW!

Take care!!

love
Michelle Z

Alana said...

ants are chock full o' protien, you should have eaten them to keep your stamina up!!

mmm...fried crap... Digging the nice hotel you are in, noting it down for future reference!