Teeny Boppin'

When we were walking from our room to breakfast in the morning at our resort in Mui Ne, we noticed all of the statues around the grounds had been moved into compromising positions. At first we only saw two performing crude acts on each other and thought the wind had knocked them over in the perfect position. But then we noticed all of the others... men, women, children. We think it was the Russians.

Checking out was interesting. We sat and waited for the woman to complete the paperwork then she slowly came over and said, My boss, Mr. Fu, wants to invite you to stay for free. Hmm... so now we know who the boss of this organization is.. a Mr. F. Anyway, we acted like we were surprised it was all free because it was so very awkward. Then we were off on the 5 hour drive back to Saigon.

When we checked back into our hotel in Saigon, the staff was so happy. They missed us dearly. Especially Pho. We pronounce it like the soup to mess with him, but it is more like fo. Whatever. He saw us getting out of the taxi and we heard this like, high pitched scream of joy, and it was just Pho, happy to see us.

We took a taxi over to lunch and were completely ripped off. He charged us almost 4 times what we usually paid and when we tried to tell him he was wrong he just started screaming in Vietnamese and almost crying. What is with these people and crying? Anyway, lunch was quite the experience. First we walked into the wrong place and had Tuan over the phone figure out if we were wrong or not. Then we took another taxi around the corner to the real location. (SOMEONE gave us bad directions!) Tuan ordered our food over the phone. It was awkward. EVeryone stared at us of course. So this place has a lot of fish and shrimp bbq on sticks and then a soup where they take live fish and drop them into the boiling water and you have to finish cooking it at your table. The fish are these little things with super scary sharp teeth. Everything was really delicious. A couple of the guys staring at us ended up helping us figure out how to eat everything. They brought this big crispy thing to our table, 2 actually. We weren't sure if we eat it plain, or dip, or what... one of the boys came over because we looked confused, took the plate away and returned with a bowl of peanuts. We were like... What the heck? Where did our stuff go? Then he brought the plate back and now it only had one cripsy thing... and he was eating the other. Very strange.

We had a lot of time to kill during the day so we went to the market down the street and bought a few little things and some awesome Ho Chi Minh t-shirts for a couple dollars. Then we ran out of money and had to leave. It also started raining a bit so we were stuck in the hotel room for a while. We could either watch Chinese drama dubbed in Vietnamese, Korean drama dubbed in Vietnamese, Vietnamese drama, in Vietnamese, or Aaron Stone. I guess Kelly is big in Vietnam. I should let him know that. I have to say, it is very awkward watching friends on the screen. It could just be the show is very awkward. Whatever. I wish Steph and Kaity and Kelly had been with me though. Oh man.

Hellos and Chau met up with us for dinner. We went to a place right near the hotel that serves food from the Hue region of Vietnam. It was all so good, of course. Little rice cakes with shrimp served in tiny bowls, shrimp on sugarcane, little wraps, shrimp dumpling things... who knows what it all was but it was all delicious. And this was only dinner part 1. We then went to another location and this is where things got interesting. First the place was packed but still looked a bit sketchy. Who knows how long it will be before I have some disease. Anyway, we ate frog legs (because I mentioned how I caught a frog and Hellos thought it was funny to eat frog for dinner), chicken feet (which I had never tried before, they were fried and so good), and the best part, DUCK TONGUE. Yeah. Duck tongue. It also included some of the throat or something. It looked so weird but it tasted like bbq ribs. Everything was so so so good and pretty spicy. We couldn't drink anything cold because their ice was sketch so we had to painfully drink warm soda to rid us of the burning. Chau had never tried the tongue or frog before so she had an adventure as well.

Then we went to a bar with live music. It was called Acoustic: Emotion Talks. Hahahaha. Live Vietnamese cover bands played all night including one of Hellos' friends who was also in the top 4 for Vietnam Idol. Yeah, we met her. We are legit. We walk in and some little man is singing Linkin Park in a heavy Vietnamese accent. Very funny. But Hellos' friends were both really good. Then the two singers and our group headed over to a pretty hip and expensive bar for a friends birthday. Apparently Hellos knows everyone because everywhere we went he was saying hi to people and they were excited to see him. Someone told us during the night we were with the socialite of HCMC. We then went over to another bar which was more for dancing. Danced a bit and saw some interesting Vietnamese dance moves... nothing like the Taiwanese sexy dance, but close. Hellos' signature move is just washing his body and shaving his arm pits. Yeah.

We ended the night at yet another bar/dance club where some guys bought a bottle of alcohol so we got in free. The boys were all foreigners and smelly. But whatever we got in free. By this time it was late, we were tired, and the whole crew was ready to leave. We met a lot of nice people, again telling us how popular Linh is in the city, and said our goodbyes and left. Now it's time for me to eat breakfast and head to THAILAND. Bye.