After our holiday in Sri Lanka, we came back to give us a couple of days to get ready for Monday and the work week. We did laundry, caught up on email and settled back in for the long stretch leading up to the Christmas break.
Friday was Vietnam's Nation Day of the Woman. We didn't know this or we would never have tried to go out for dinner. We wound up driving around for an hour and a half, finally having to just come back to the apartment and eat peanut butter sandwiches!
We had been invited to a fashion show at the Sofitel Plaza. The GM told us that there were very few tickets but that we were VIP's and would get two. The runway was placed in the middle of the pool and the place was extravagantly lit, so much so that the power went off for about half an hour right in the middle of the show. The creations were very modern and looked great on the extremely tall models, most of whom were at least 1.75m. The crowd was mostly Vietnamese with many children included. Unlike the US, where parents go out without the kids, Vietnamese parents usually bring theirs everywhere. After the show we went upstairs to the 20th floor bar and encountered several more youngsters racing around the place. We had never before attended a fashion show, but were impressed by the fashions and the models.
On Saturday, we had tickets for a symphony concert at the Opera House. The program was all Vietnamese and the four works had a certain sameness to them. They are all loud, with fanfares and cymbal crashes predominating. It was OK, but both of us agreed that we much prefer Mozart.
Sunday was a day of watching Game 1 of the World Series, going to the gym and then settling down to watch "Lawrence of Arabia." The DVD was a bit messed up so we missed a few scenes, but we got most of the three hour plus epic. Of course then we had to look the movie and the man up online to differentiate between fact and fiction.
In the evening we then watched "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash biopic. This was nothing special but better than the TV shows we get here.
Vacation is fun but life is more about the day-to-day so we will continue to tell you how things are going here especially as we awaint the APEC Summit in November.
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