Monday 3rd January...

Just a quick post about today... Rosemary goes for a long bike ride every morning that she's not working so I decided to start my day by taking a 'cultural' walk.  I wandered through town and found Lenin Park where an austere image of the great man stands proudly. 

Near by there was a huge tower with some intriguing brickwork. In the garden round the tower there were huge trees with a fascinating tracery of vines on their trunks...like something out of a Tarzan movie. 

The citadel tower.

Outside the Army Museum there was this wonderful looking wall, I took this shot then cracked up when I got closer and discovered that it was actually made of plastic...like a billboard but without the advertisement.

This is the Hero's Monument...the building you can see through the hole is Ho Chi Min's mausoleum where his mummified body is stored (you can just see the Ho Chi bit of his name.  People will queue for hours to be hustled through past the body...I can't say I've got any enthusiasm for a visit.

View from across the street...the paving around the monument is absolutely spotless...swept clean as a whistle.

Later in the day Rosemary and I met up and decided to take in a movie.  We checked out a theater that we'd seen the day before where the movies were shown in English.  Some theaters dub the movie and some use subtitles, this one uses subtitles.  We decided on The Tourist starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.  It was only 45,000vd to get in ($2.25!) and since the next session was not till 8pm we went for an explore in the neighborhood.  We found a cool Doc Marten shop which had some amazing boots for sale.  A pair of white ones with silver tracery up the side caught my eye but they were millions of dong, the equivalent of $225us.  Too rich for my blood.  Rosemary was trying on sandals but her feet are narrow so they didn't fit her...they fit me though and were really comfortable too, and they were half price - only $46.50aus. So I bought them as my xmas present to myself

My smashing new sandals...all ready for the Australian summer.

By this time is was too cold and dark to sit on the street to eat so we lashed out and went into an actual restaurant to have dinner.  It was a strange place offering everythiing from bacon and eggs to tofu and seafood.  I thought about a 'berger' but decided finally on a prawn noodle soup.  When it arrived there were three huge chunks of pork floating on top.  I called the waitress back, pointed at the photo on the wall which had visible prawns then pointed at my plate.  She smiled knowingly and used my chopsticks to fish around under the pork...yep there it was...one of two wee prawns!   In the end it turned out to be very tasty anyway so I munched down happily.
We were amused to see a family come in for dinner with their little dog.  Apparently there's no such thing as Health and Hygiene rules over here.  We did snicker about how vigilant you would have to be taking a dog to a restaurant...I know...simpleton humour!

Quite cute, it looked a bit like a white peke.

I bent down to pat it but the owner quickly warned me off...apparently it was in for dinner too and wanted a bite of me!

After our meals and a shared plate of fresh fruit the bill turned out to be quite reasonable after all.(only 60,000vd each) we set off for the movie theater.  Thankfully the sound was loud enough to drown out the noise of the audience using their mobile phones all the way through (well, they weren't listening to the dialogue were they?)  and the seats were really quite comfortable.   The back's sort of tilted back like a mini Lazyboy recliner but they didn't lock in place, so you spent the night almost rocking back and forwards; a bit unsettling but I got used to it quickly enough.

What a busy weekend we'd had, we'd found the markets, a great movie theater, and I'd discovered Rosemary's favorite street-side restaurant.