HCMC and the $6 massage! - Oct. 30, 2010

 Saturday October 30, 2010

We started our day again with another yummy buffet breakfast. This time I took a picture of Steve eating so you could see the delicious selection 😀

We headed back to our room and had an IChat with all the poker players (they wouldn’t let us play though!) at home. It was good to see everyone… I think we’re both missing our friends and the poker games!

Side note: From our hotel room we can see this apartment building. There are no balcony railings!!!

After our online visit with friends, we decided to go out for another walk to see if I have adjusted to the craziness yet. This time we went to the right. This was better on a few fronts:

1)   The roads were a little less busy (maybe two lanes of traffic each way rather than six each way). Mind you two lanes doesn’t mean two cars side by side here…

2)   I think I am getting more used to it here, and enjoyed looking around much more today.

You never know what you might see on the street here!

You can carry just about anything on your scooter!

3)   We found an awesome foot massage place!!!! 1 hour hot stone foot/leg massage for six bucks…. Ahhhhh!

Okay, so we interrupted our walk for a little foot massage 😀

Side note about the foot massage: They took us up to a room that had four beds in a row. The room was only about three feet wider than the beds. Steve was too long for the bed, which sent the girl massaging his feet into endless giggles! She actually had to push the bed right up against the wall so she could fit at the end by his feet. She thought it was particularly funny when she started massaging his feet and realized how big his feet are! They aren’t big by North American standards, but they were clearly bigger than she was used to seeing and she was giggling quite a bit!

After a very fabulous massage we continued on. We saw a lot of restaurants to try out, lots of shops and even found a pharmacy! I enjoyed my walk much more today, and am enjoying seeing how different this city is from any other we’ve been to.

Many of the restaurants for the locals use these short plastic chairs for their guests.

We had planned to go out this evening for dinner so decided just to eat lunch in the hotel restaurant. We had a great meal (we couldn’t even finish all the food) and it was under $10. If you can believe it, it’s even cheaper than Bali! We were actually so full that we never did get hungry for dinner!

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