Day 11 - Casual Day in Ho Chi Minh with lots of rain

An easy day today, nothing really planned apart from breakfast at 8am so we could eat and try and get some idea of what we wanted to do today.

We headed off to some markets, about 1. 5km away, they are much like most markets you go to, just a lot of stalls all selling the same items, we saw a belt and enquired how much it would cost VND 400,000, we said no, and then went to the next stall, saw another belt, pretty well much the same, enquired how much VND 600,000, we laughed and carried on our way.

We left markets and then started roaming the streets, randomly came across a photo exhibition called "Too happy to tell", our entry fee... A Selfie. The Vietnam exhibition is a solo exhibition by photographer Thiên Minh that explores the simple beauty of smiles and everyday happiness through a series of portraits collected during a four-year journey across the country. It was rather good just seeing how out of everything, even if you don't understand someone or their language, everyone understands a smile.

After the exhibition we carried on walking the street, grabbed a quick photo with all of us by the Statue of Ho Chi Minh, the guy the city has been renamed after. Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) was renamed in 1976 after the Vietnam War to honor Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary leader and first president of the unified Vietnam. From there Mum and Dad made their way back to the hotel. While the rest of us continued to browse the streets and decided to check out a glimps of the river. It didn't have the greater smell and it looked pretty dirty as well.

It was then back to the hotel, the others went to lunch and I headed to the hotel gym as I wasn't really feeling hungry. Ran on the treadmill for 5km, first time running in a couple of months seeing I had been sick before starting this trip, unfortunately it appears that the run has caused my cough to come back. It was bucketing down outside so after the gym I relaxed for a little bit in my room until Gill and Mike wanted to head out for a walk, but by the time we were ready too it had started to bucket down again which meant a bit of waiting until the rain stopped. The rain eventually stopped, we took a look out the window and figured we should be all right, we decided to chance it and head out for some potential places for dinner tonight, we made it to the end of the block before the heavens opened up and let the rain fall.

We got to the point where the rain lightened up enough so we could carry on, we carried on and looked at some more spots, finding more people recording videos of them dancing away, after a bit of a look around we decided to head back to our hotel to chill. One thing I kept spotting is a building called The Bitexco Financial Tower, it looks a lot like Stark Tower from the Avengers movie but surprisingly, it's not based on the Movie, nor is the building in the movie based on this building. On the way back Gill and I noticed an umbrella sitting up amongst a couple of bags, at first thought I was puzzled then wondered if there was someone under it, as I walked past I heard someone talking, turned around to find a lady on her phone.

We found a place on the way back to the hotel that we thought would be good for dinner, but then we found out it didn't do beer, so it was ruled out. In the end we went back to a spot we had dinner at a couple of nights before, Tom was our server again, but this time Andrew was replaced with Audrey. We had a good laugh with them both, one thing we have noticed is they are all so friendly and enjoy a good laugh with us. As we were leaving I spotted Audrey's phone sitting there so took a quick selfie with it to leave a surprise for her when she next opens her Camera Roll. It WA then back to the hotel room to blob out and rest.