Saturday (05-12-2012)

Today we got to sleep in an extra half hour, which was much needed.  I actually fell asleep at the mall last night because I was so tired.  We had our usual breakfast at the hotel and then we went on the bus to go to the Reunification Palace which is a historical site of the Vietnam War (or as the Vietnamese say the American War).  It was the hottest that it has been today but I actually enjoyed the heat seeing as the last few weeks in Pittsburgh were cooler.  The palace was very cool and it had some interesting history that went along with it.  After the Reunification Palace we went to the Post Office and Notre Dame Cathedral.  It was interesting to see the French influence on these two building because it combined the oriental Vietnamese style with the French style.  In the Post Office there was a gift show and I finally started buying souvenirs.  After this we traveled to a Buddhist Temple.  A class of about 20 art students was painting the building under a tree and they were great painters.  When we entered the Temple we had to take off our shoes and the inside was incredible.  It had such a spiritual feel to it and the shrines were beautiful.  There was food and gifts for the dead on all of the tables.

After this we went back to the hotel for lunch and went to the pool for a nice swim.  We met up with some of the UEF students and went to Ban Tan market.  Since this was my second time to this market I was much less overwhelmed and was able to successfully bargain for some souvenirs.  After the market we decided to go the Karaoke bar which was nothing like what I expected it to be.  I pictured the bar to be a public stage setup where we would go up to sing.  The Karaoke bars are actually private rooms for your party and they are extremely fancy and comfortable.  After this we went back to the hotel and decided to try out the club Lush.  We know that this club was owned by Glass Egg Digital Media, which we will be visiting later in the week, so it seemed like a good place to check out.  It was a very nice club and the music was loud.  We got back to the hotel very late which is why this blog post is a little later than usual.