Pictures Uploaded!

April 12th

• I got up this morning and started uploading some of my pictures from the trip to my gallery blog. I did some last night but it was so late by the time I finished uploading pictures from the first 2 days of the trip. I'm trying to do them in chronicological order.
  
• Waiting for AN to come and take us fishing today. He says that there's a place where we can catch our own meals. I'm excited. Got to lather on the sunblock and bug spray!
• KA and I had spent the day "fishing". My cousin's version of fishing is far from my version of it.
• The 3 of us headed out of the city and into a remote area. We pulled up to a restaurant that had a man-made-lake in the middle of it. They seated us in a hut with tables and chairs. The waiter brought over 3 fishing rods (which were just bamboo sticks with a fishing line and hook attached to it). We had a great time trying to catch something with our shrimp bait.
  
• Our fishing techniques weren't going so well - all the small fish were eating up our bait. We decided to take action. I asked our cousin if he could get the restaurant to give us a large net (as I was out to get those evil little fishes that had snatched up all my shrimp bait). As a tourist we can get away with a lot of things - so they gave us the net. The net's handle was metal so it made it really heavy. I devised a pulley system. I was out to get those little fish if it meant climbing into the water and catching them by hand!
  
• KA caught the first fish. It was the size of my finger - we sacrificed it and turned it into bait for the "big one". The big fish never got close enough to our rods - though they taunted us by jumping out of the water a few times. Looked like we weren't going to be able to catch our lunch. So we ordered from the menu instead - a 1.5 kg fish for us to munch on. It was so big and yummy!!
  
• I caught a baby fish later on and was thrilled! We took pictures of the excitement. I put my little fishy into a plastic bag and it started to shrivel up but not die. I was thinking of making it into bait. My guy cousin came and rescued the fish (he said he felt bad for turning the other one into bait). So my little fishy recovered after some tender care from the cousin. He and I watched it swim off into the lake.
• AN's girlfriend stopped by for lunch with us as well and the 4 of us sat, ate and talked for a few more hours. The wind was picking up and it made the hut very cool - which was a good thing as we were melting in the heat. I'm still not use to the 30 degree weather.
• After the restaurant we went back to the hotel. I told our cousin that he didn't have to entertain us tonight (as we've taken up so much of his time already and I'm pretty sure he wants to spend some time with his girlfriend as well).
• KA and I went out shopping tonight. We were mostly disappointed. So many stores but nothing that fit us. KA was frustrated. I found a shoe store that had "white" people sizes. I'm like a size 45 in Vietnamese standards. That's super hard to find. It's like walking into a women's shoe store here and asking for a size 13 "pretty" shoe. So I bought 2 pairs of shoes. Might not wear them though as the heels are pretty high.
• We finally got tired of shopping tried to hunt down food. Because both of us were so indecisive we ended up coming right back to the hotel area. We went next door to the Empress Hotel (that's where I'm stealing this internet connection from right now). The restaurant was filled with caucasion people. We looked at the prices of the menu items and nearly fell over. It was like 4X the price of "local" food. On top of that the restaurant charged a 15% government and service tax. This is the first time we've ever heard of such a tax. I took a picture of the menu. KA ordered chicken congee and I ordered nasigoreng. What I got was fried rice with an egg (over-easy) on top of it. So gross and expensive! We were tempted to order caucasion food (such as a hamburger) but were warned weeks before that the "white food" really sucks in Saigon. We're going back to local food tomorrow.