Don't you just love Saturdays? Time to sleep in after a busy week, a relaxing coffee with family, maybe a walk around the shops, time to socialise. This is what I was looking forward to one Saturday morning. Matthew was in Australia but that was OK we had things to do and places to go, as the saying goes. The list of things to do kept growing on Friday night from dropping kids at social functions, buying caluculators, grocery shopping, getting camera's fixed and Bella still wanted to buy Ugly Betty. Friday night should have given me an inkling to what Saturday would bring but I didn't listen to the warning signs. Josh was going to meet friends and go ten pin bowling in the morning, he had to be there at 9am (there goes the leisurely sleep in) anyway at about 9pm plans were changed and he wasn't going till 11am (great the sleep in is back), all I had to do was text our driver and let him know. Mikaela then informs me that she has missplaced her phone since Tuesday! nothing much we can do about it at 10pm, but it's something else to do on Saturday.
Off we set in the morning with a very excited Josh. On the way I rang Mikaela's phone thinking maybe it was in the car and we would hear it, instead it was answered in Vietnamese of course. We gave the phone to Joe (our driver) for translation - apparently someone had her phone - she had dropped it at school and it was now in District 10. Great we knew we could pick it up sometime today in all our running around.
So first stop, off to District 1. It was very strange dropping my 11 year old at Diamond Plaza Shopping centre on his own - so I walked him up just to make sure. Diamond Plaza is a new shopping centre in HCMC - it's very fancy and very expensive even for Australian standards certainly not a place I would be shopping. Unfortunately while we were there Joe rang to say he had a flat tyre and would be a little late. So we decided to sit for that leisurely coffee, unfortunately it rained as we were drinking our coffee but that's Saigon for you.
When Joe picked us up we continued on our errands for the day - planning on meeting Josh at a neighbouring shopping centre where he was having lunch. We stopped to get my camera fixed, yes they could fix it but come back at 4pm, yet another place we have to get to on this already busy Saturday. Time to collect Josh so I decided to grab lunch at the same place. You can imagine my surprise as I am standing in the food court on the phone to Josh saying where are you, he is saying near KFC, I am saying so am I but I can't see you. As it turns out they had gone to a neighbouring Shopping centre of the same name but District 5, 20 minutes away. Back to the car and a mad dash to find Josh, half way there my phone runs out of credit. So using Bella's phone we stay in contact with Josh who is now on his own, his friends having gone on to the movies, (who said vietnamese kids don't go out).
Finally we get over to District 5 collect Josh then over to District 10 to collect Mikaela's phone. As Bella's phone has also now run out of credit, adding credits to phones is yet another job to be done on this busy Saturday. Off to get the calculator from yet another District, District 3 this time. We get to the calculator shop only to find that the shop doesn't take Credit cards on Saturdays!!! So off to ATM's to try and find money, I will note however that my Australian credit card has not been working here, and my Vietnamese card has not arrived - the machine broke down and it couldn't be made, so I am reduced to using Bella's card (I think she is charging me rent to borrow her card). Anyway after 4 ATM's I gave up, the calculator can wait for another day. Back to District 1 to collect my camera and of course Bella finally found Ugly Betty at the right price right next door to the Camera shop and then finally home to District 7.
Not everything was done - no calculator, no phone credit, no grocery shopping. But we did manage to go to Districts 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 all in one day - which I can tell you is an impressive Saturday in Ho Chi Minh City.
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