Sai Gon: Day 4

My last day in Viet Nam began at 8:00 am when I awoke and went into Monica's room to join in an early birthday celebration. I then went around the corner and had breakfast (the usual) with DiDi at Windows cafe. She played the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and we cried a bit. At 10:00 I left, stopped at the room, and then met Jill at the French bakery. We talked for a bit (I saw Monica, Tica, and Cathy there too) and then I went off to choose some baked goods for the next day's long plane rides. I began talking to this young guy in Vietnamese about flying and eating the baked goods on the plane. He gave me my breads for free, which was sweeeeet. I guess it was the dep qua giam gia (Being pretty discount) ;)

I dropped the food back at the room, got Jackie, stopped at ABC Bakery, and then met DiDi and Brittany at the internet cafe for a short chat. Around 11:30 Jackie and I left and began our walk to Benh Thanh market to do some last shopping and I got Monica some weasel coffee for her birthday. Weasel coffee is special because the weasels pick out and eat the best coffee beans. When they poop it out, the Vietnamese make it into coffee! I love this country. Anyways, Jackie began to feel ill and we were both overheated at 1:30 so we took a taxi back to the guest house.

I went with Jill to the photocopy place just outside VLA and stood there while they printed off hundreds of pages of her online research. Some of it was about premarital sex in Viet Nam but they never knew. I also grabbed a couple of blank cds and then we walked back to the dorm before 3:00. Jackie, Brittany, and DiDi joined us and we grabbed a taxi to Sai Gon Square. It's an inside market of mostly clothes. I found a couple things and Jill and I left in a taxi to the post office at 4:00. I spent some time picking postcards for my room.

We then walked across the street to Diamond Plaza and walked back to the room by 5:30. I took a really quick that overlapped a bit with the beginning of DiDi's shower, threw on a dress, and Jill braided my hair. We all met in the lobby at 6:00 and got taxis to this hotel where our last group dinner was being held. The dinner was a buffet full of my favorite Vietnamese foods including trung vit lon (fetal duck eggs), fried rice, and a lot of fresh fruit. We all went around and said our ten favorite things about Viet Nam and our trip and then the five "most daunting" things about this past semester. We had our thank you’s and eveb our last "mot, hai, ba, yo!" which made me cry. It even rained a bit right as dinner ended, which is rare for December, and the semester came full circle. We peaced out at 9:00, got a taxi to Acoustic to hear Jerome, surprised Monica with a birthday cake, and then left in another taxi to Apocalypse Now at about 11:00. We danced for a bit but they were playing bad techno so we left and took a taxi to Crazy Cocktail, where the rest of our group was chilling on the roof of the bar.