The first thing Lydia said to me Saturday morning was, "Oh, by the way, there's a cockroach in our bathroom." Turned out that wasn't the only bug sharing our room. I spotted another cockroach in a shopping bag I had in my carry-on. I reacted like any rational person would (threw the bag in the air so fast it hit the ceiling), and calmly removed the intruder (slowly dragged the bag outside the room with my foot while Lydia video-taped. We left the bag in the hall, near someone else's room). We found a few more cockroaches in our shower in the afternoon. Juan-Pablo has killed a few of them so far, and Joey killed half of one last night.
Alyce, our program director, gave us a tour of the city Saturday morning, and we stopped to have phở bò (fuh baw) for breakfast. It's a big bowl of rice noodles in broth with scallions, bean sprouts, and beef. It's delicious, and costs about $1.50.
During our tour, a policeman started following us for a block or so. His jacket said "Tourist Security" on it, but we're not too clear if that means they're protecting us from Vietnamese or Vietnamese from us.
We made our way to Chợ Bến Thành, which is an indoor market with everything imaginable, from pig tongues to suitcases. We had been in there for all of a minute when Devyn starts yelling "Alyce, wait!" Despite about an hour of Alyce's wandering around the market, we didn't find Xuan and Logan again until we got back to the guest house. While we were waiting for Alyce to find them, we ordered delicious smoothies with mysterious tropical fruits in them. Alyce's friend also met us there to interview us about why we came to Vietnam. Granted when the article comes out, we won't be able to read any of it, but it was fun talking with her.
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