Saigon Day 1

Greetings from Saigon,

It's 6:00 am here and I have been awake for 2 hours.  The jet lag hasn't been horrible, but the switch to a new body clock is taking some time.  I decided to use this time while Doug is hunting down some breakfast and the kids are still sleeping to update you on how we are doing.

Yesterday was our first full day in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon).  The hotel is in a very scenic spot located next to the Saigon River.  We see many boats and barges head down the river as well as a surprising amount of vegetation, coconuts, etc.  The river moves pretty fast and is nice to watch.

We spent the morning at the outdoor hotel pool.  The kids loved that and had a great time swimming.  It made perfect sense to me that they could be outside swimming until I walked around the building and heard the hotel office playing Bing Crosby's White Christmas over their sound system.  I saw the kids perfectly content in the pool, heard the music and realized that I wasn't in Kansas anymore.  We chuckle at the scenes of frosted windows and snowmen and polar bears dressed in scarves that are prevalent around this city that doesn't get much colder than 70 degrees ever.  The Christmas lights and decorations are fun nonetheless.

In the afternoon we ventured to a more central area of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC).  We stumbled across a new skyscraper that I had read about in one of our travel books.  You could go up to the 47 floor and see a 365 degree view of the city, so we ventured up.  It was amazing.  It turns out that this is a HUGE city with building and houses spread out as far as the eye could see.  We had no idea that the city was so big.  It was also interesting to see how the Saigon River really winds its way around the city.  I like this kind of thing (view from tall buildings) so this was a lot of fun.

So, those were the highlights from Day 1.  I am not sure what Day 2 has in store yet.  One unfortunate thing is that one of our children woke up vomiting in the middle of the night last night.  We aren't quite sure yet if it is a result of lack of sleep, accidentally getting some tap water in their system or is the stomach flu.  I am really hoping it is not the latter (but fear that it is) as we have all been in close quarters over the last 3 days and have been sharing water bottles, etc. I guess we shall see.

Anyway, the kids are starting to awake, so I am going to sign off.

Take care,

Barbie