A Not So Exciting Day In Vietnam

Day 12 July 26th Thursday
Written and submitted July 27th

We are just one day away from our second hurdle in the process. We have more down time today because we are just waiting to get Gracie’s passport and medical check tomorrow.

We made our daily trip to the restaurant down stairs for a visit with the other parents and some breakfast. There weren’t many people there today so we quickly finished our meals and headed to the tourism center to read the comments on our blog. We get such a kick out of some of the comments from the folks back home. We left the tourism center and went straight back to the hotel to meet David and Christy and their little girl Grace to go to the VITCOM (pronounced vincom by the Vietnamese). The place is a five story modern shopping mall. We met them in the lobby and jumped in a cab for the mall. Becky was looking for something to swim in on our trip to Halong Bay. She hardly gets in swimming pools back home so I don’t know how she thinks she will jump in the bay. The mall is typical of any mall back home. It’s just good to take a walk without someone trying to sell you something every 10 feet. We made it up a couple of floors before both babies (Grace & Gracie) started to stir and needed to be fed so David, Logan, and I took the babies to the coffee shop at the front of the mall to feed them. Logan was having a ball riding the escalators up and down between floors. It’s not taking much to keep him entertained these days. The coffee shop was called Gloria Bean and it had large windows that faced the busy street outside. We picked a table next to the window and setup camp and started feeding the babies. When the babies were fed, I orders some black coffee and David and Logan had strawberry smoothies. I sampled Logan’s and it was excellent. The girls eventually arrived with their bags and sat down to join us. We sat there for a couple of hours. It is nice to sit on some cushioned seats. The furniture at the hotel is beautiful but it is all wood so my tailbone is a little sensitive by now. We started to get hungry and the only thing I could see at the food court was more Asian food so we opted for a cab back to the hotel. Once at the hotel, we walked a couple of blocks to a restaurant called the Little Hanoi. This is the third time we have eaten there but we seem to find many items on the menu we like and we thought David and Christy would enjoy it also. If you want to be on the safe side, then this is the place to eat. It’s geared more for Westerners. After lunch, Logan and I took Gracie back to the room for a nap and David did the same with his Grace while the girls went shopping.

Gracie hit the bed for a three-hour nap. Logan watched some TV and I did some tying on my journal.

Becky finally made it back to the room around 6:00pm and Gracie started to awake shortly after. The phone rang and it was Joe who is flying out tomorrow. He asked if we wanted to join him and Amy downstairs for a couple of farewell drinks. The Allsup crew gathered ourselves and headed to the restaurant to meet Joe, Amy, and Collett. Joe has to get back because he must start seeing patients while Amy and Collett should be leaving sometime the beginning of next week. They have had some long nights trying to change their flight plans. There are now more single mothers here because the husbands have had to leave so you can sense the imbalance of testesterone vs estrogen. We had a few drinks and a good visit. Joe’s an easy going person for someone who was a Lt. Colonel in the Army and was also Chief of surgery in Baghdad. He’s very concerned about leaving Amy and Collett in Hanoi by themselves, but I get the sense that Amy can take care of herself. After a couple of hours, we said our goodbyes and we all retired to our rooms. Logan watched part of the Relic (not age appropriate I know) and went to bed. I hope Logan doesn’t have scary dreams from the movie.