Vung Tao beach ~ Mon. March 10

First a couple pictures of the Evergreen Hotel lobby:

Some of the friendly staff:

We hired the car and driver from the hotel to take us to a beach for the day. The closest beach was in Vung Tao, about 2.5 hours away.

William finally gets to feed the baby on the way to the beach:

It was lunchtime when we arrived in Vung Tao, so we stopped at this very casual Vietnamese restaurant right on the beach. Not a soul there spoke English, which made ordering our food interesting! Here's the name of the restaurant, if you happen to be in town--the food was pretty good, and cheap!

The kids all like to use chopsticks, but some are better at it than others:

Thomas demonstrates the "poke & stab" chopstick technique:

Anna and Lauren were quite adventurous with their orders of plain white rice:

We were all excited to take a dip in the South China Sea, but once we walked down to the beach from the restaurant, we were very disappointed in how dirty and littered the beach was. We rented (got taken) some beach chairs and umbrellas and the kids had fun anyway.

Not too thrilled with the idea of going in.

(Pssst, Don! You missed a spot with that sunblock!)

These poor guys were digging for *something*, (clams maybe?) but not having any luck. They were plowing the sand in the shallow water with a shovel-thing with a net attached, then washing out the sand and finding their nets empty. I suspect they were hoping to find some sort of critters.

Little old lady selling peanuts out of her basket:

On the drive home--she's really starting to look for me now and will play with others contentedly for a while, but then she'll start reaching for me. This is supposed to be a good sign for attachment in adopted children, that she singles out one person (usually mom) and looks to that person for safety and comfort.

After we got back to the hotel and decontaminated ourselves, we took a very short taxi ride to a shopping center, the Diamond Plaza. Without kids, I'd say you could walk here from the Evergreen fairly easily. This place has department stores and a bowling alley along with a KFC and a Pizza Hut. Much to William's dismay, Pizza Hut won tonight. They had good fruit fizzy drinks here, and plenty of food options in addition to the usual pizza.

***Note: Lauren has been complaining about me taking all of the restaurant/food pictures. I like to do this because eating out is a big part of my vacation experience, and remembering where and what we ate helps me to remember the trip better. And I like pretty food. So there.

I have to get to bed so will try to catch up more later. We arrived in Hanoi this morning and are at the Somerset Grand.