Wednesday, January 18 - Part 1

Wednesday January 18

I was awake early today – ugh.  They say for every hour time difference it takes a day for you to get acclimated.  We will be home before that completely happens, so I guess that means we’ll be ‘out of sorts’ for about 24 days!  I wonder if we could pick Vietnam up and plop it down somewhere around Italy or Portugal … just a thought.

Anyway, for years I had read how you can get eye glasses made here much cheaper than in the states.  Last year we finally tried it out.  I got new progressive lenses (put in old frames I had) and the same with prescription sunglasses.  Julie also got new lenses.  Loved my prescription sunglasses, but one of the lenses kept popping out of my regular glasses.  (I tried to have this remedied at Walmart optical – but it didn’t last)  So this year we popped back over to see if they could do anything with them.  

They speak pretty good English at this shop, so maybe it is me who has trouble with the English language, or I have poor ‘explaining’ skills.  I was trying to explain how they had replaced the lenses for me last year, but put them into old frames I had brought with me.  The problem was one lens kept popping out.  It was obvious my girl wasn’t ‘getting my explanation’, so Julie gave it a try (she’s usually better at this).  However, about 45 seconds into Julie’s explanation a male colleague at the opposite end of the store yells down (politely and in English), you are going to have to slow down and talk s-l-o-w-e-r.  I sometimes forget that as good as their English may be, it is ‘at best’ their 2^nd language (who knows how many others they may speak) and I need to be cognizant (probably a word I shouldn’t use with them) of making my conversation as straightforward as possible and without using too much lingo (or words they may have to use the urban dictionary to look up!)  J 

Anyway, even slowing down was causing confusion so they sent another woman to help me.  I remember she was actually the same woman from last year and she is absolutely delightful and helpful.  She ‘got’ my problem and although I thought I might need to buy new frames, she quickly said ‘Oh no, we’ll fix this right now’.  Well, this was so quick and easy I decided to go for a new pair of prescription sunglasses (the USD is actually going further this year in vietnam)  Last year I bought the ‘cheaper’ sunglass lenses, this year the woman was able to ‘upsell’ me to the more expensive ones.  I’ll pick them up Monday night or Tuesday morning, we’ll see if I was a sucker or if I can tell the difference to the less expensive ones.  Either way they are still a great deal compared to US.

After our lens mission was accomplished we decided to walk around this area a bit.  It is near the area we stayed a few years ago so we wanted to check out our old stomping ground.  Many, many changes taking place as they are building a metro (badly needed, the traffic seems even worse than in past years).  As an aside, our friend Long says some of the additional traffic is due to the introduction of UBER.  We did see a motorbike UBER (easy to see because he was wearing a jacket with huge white letters on the back – UBER, but Long says there are many additional UBER cars, and all these cars simply clog the streets.

View from seat at Baskin Robbins.  

But I digress, back to our wandering the area.  This is where we saw the Baskin Robbins and since it was so hot I wanted a little refreshing delight.  I remembered going to this BR the first year I came to Saigon and it was my first introduction to the realization that the Vietnamese culture doesn’t believe in organized lines.  It was pure chaos that first year and I soon realized it wasn’t being rude to elbow your way to the front of the line, it was simply the only way you would get waited on.  Fortunately, we were the only ones today – so no elbowing needed (especially since Julie wasn’t getting one and that meant I didn’t need to ‘take her down’ to get mine first!!)

I wish, I wish, I wish I was an adventurous eater, but it just isn’t so.  I should probably write a book on the best ‘western’ eating establishments in the countries I have visited.

We have found in past years a place called Pizza 4 P’s.  Their vision is to deliver Wow and Hapiness (I didn’t misspell – that is how it is on their website J)  However, who can turn down “Wow and Hapiness” and a good wood-fired pizza in the mix?  I had read they had opened a location near where we were, so I asked Julie if she was interested.  Duh … stupid question.  Off we went for lunch.

They seated us at a bar overlooking the prep area and the ovens in the background.  It was really very interesting to watch them work.  They had one worker who’s job was simply to do a quality check when the pizza’s came out of the oven.  One pizza that came out with too much - charcoal?, a little burnt?, had to be shaved down before going off to its customer!  I had a white pizza – delicious - and although it is only a 20 minute walk back to our hotel we did take a taxi because it is so hot here (and our bodies have not adjusted at all).

Our seat - watching all the preparation.  Man in back with arms crossed was 'quality control'!

Part Two to Wednesday coming later.  I’m already so many days behind I want to get something out there to catch up to Julie Bulie!!