Day Fifteen

5am, what the heck just happened... Why am I up?! I slowly slip back into a sleep.  Exactly 5 minutes later, I'm up again, this time I catch the end of a very loud rooster wake-up-call. Jade and I both look at each other in shock. You have to be kidding me I grumble, and roll over hoping that the bird alarm only goes off twice. Nope! Someone down there is pressing snooze, and the snooze timer is getting shorter and shorter. After about 10 rooster noises within 5 minutes, another rooster goes off opposite the other. There would simply be no way to sleep thru that racket. Looks like we'll be up bright and early. We peered out of our only hotel window to discover that the damn roosters were basically right below us. That's the last time I book a hotel I told Jade. When I booked the hotel, I considered two variables - price - and proximity to the central market. This one was the cheapest and closest to the market - what else could you ask for...  Apparently you could ask for a room with no rooster directly below it. Jade on the other hand, considered my two variables, but several more like - guidebook recommendations - online reviews etc.

We got up and got ready to the incessant rooster calls, and we headed out for a day of exploring.

First we went up for breakfast in the rooftop restaurant. Our coffee was terrible, our eggs were terrible, our bread and jam, was decent.

We walked down to a lake surrounded by the mountains. The air was refreshing, and I wasn't sweating - a strange feeling after sweating literally every day for the past 2 weeks. We stopped at a cute restaurant on the lake. We picked a table on a little boardwalk right on the lake and had much better coffee and some decent Vietnamese food for a better go at breakfast. We ended up sitting there for quite a while having a great discussion about life, and several interesting details. I don't quite remember what we discussed, but it was surly profound at that moment. After said discussion, we made our way up to the Crazy House.

The Crazy House is a house designed by a local architect that has been opened to general admission. A cross between Gaudi and the Berestain Bear's tree house this bizarre house was... Bizarre. Convinced that this house not only refrained from meeting any safety standards, it also deliberately broke more than a few dozen - we walked gingerly around - literally warning each other - watch your head - don't trip here - don't go up on there, I'm not sure it'll hold a full human's weight. It was interesting - but lost its charm quickly, just another tourist trap. Jade and I talked in archibabble, unlike any of the other visitor - you know, if she stuck to her Gaudi references, I think she would have been much more successful overall, and - Oh come look here, this is a nice detail, I like how the tile transitions here. God we're nerds.

We walked back down to the central market area just as it started pouring rain. We ducked under a cute little gazebo like shelter of which reduced the rain from hitting us a little - as there were holes in the clay tile roof. The rain let up just enough for us to venture out a little ways from the gazebo and then started coming down again. Jade led us to a short cut - thru the town dump. We didn't realize it to be the town dump until we were walking thru it, and let me tell you, it was disgusting! But a shortcut it was.

We headed to our room with bad juju for the rest of the rain lasting a few hours. We watched TV - Nat Geo - of which I call out randomly now. Nat Geo! I exclaim every time we turn on a tv, Nat Geo! Turn it to Nat Geo! Nat Geo is a shortening of National Geographic I think in efforts to be hip and cool. I think it's really nerdy, so I use it facetiously, and not sparingly. Jade doesn't think it's as funny as I do, but I'm ok with that.

We headed to the V Cafe for dinner. Reviewed in our book as decent western food, we welcomed a break in the Vietnamese cuisine. Pizza and fish and chips was our order and it went down good. Not the best we've ever had - but it was just the break we craved.

That was basically the extent of our day. We've been reminiscing about our time in Ho Chi Minh City, and it seems forever ago that we were there! Man-o-man we've been gone a long time!