To Vietnam and Back: A little this and that

**I added a few extra pictures to the previous post, if you want to check them out**

Yesterday was a free day!! It was nice not to have to rush around and make an early morning appointment. I was hoping to really be able to sleep in, but I made it to 8:00 am when I woke up. Jayda slept in a little bit longer. We finally made it down to breakfast for around 9:30 am. Have I said before how much I love the staff at this Hotel. They are really so nice. Because the Hotel is quite small, every morning they know us and they are so accomodating. They love Jayda and they are so helpful. We finished up breakfast and they sent us upstairs with a big bowl of Congee (Rice and Porridge), not really appealing, but she loves it, its the only thing she ate for the first 2 years of her life. Jayda sat on the bed, while I caught up on some emails, I guess the time just flew, because 2 hours later, they were knocking on our door and brought up some scrambled eggs for her lunch, which they didnt have to do, but they knew we hadnt gone out, so they wanted to make sure she had something to eat. So kind of them. After lunch we decided to wander around, I was meeting up with Mary, but hadnt set a time, so we wandered through the streets, and discovered some really neat little shops, eventually we made our way to Mary's Hotel where we met up. We went back to do some more wandering and decided to go to a place called Cafe de Paris, a specialty French Coffee shop that served Lattes, so we hung out there for a bit and ordered coffee and crepes. We also received an email from Catherine and Sebastien and they asked if we would like to meet up with them, the kids could play on the playground that they have at their Hotel and than later we would go for dinner. Once our Lattes were finished we headed over to the other Hotel. I am very fortunate to be in this city with these 2 families. Mary and Loc have been enjoyable to hang out with and Catherine and Sebastien are such a nice couple, they have a 4 year old they adopted from Vietnam 4 years ago and as well the little boy they just adopted. After a little play on the playground, actually Jayda and Loc didnt play, because they had fallen asleep on the way over, we decided it was time for dinner. Sebastien went to the room to put a few things away and came back and said that he just found out that the restaurant at their Hotel (Jaspas Steakhouse) was offering free dinner and drinks as a Grand-opening and that we were all invited. We certainly couldnt pass up on a free email so in we went. It was pretty amazing food, they were doing samplings of all there dishes, buffet style, very delicious and very impressive, the food was wonderful. After eating, we just hung out for a bit and talked while the kids got there second wind and became everyones main attraction, dancing around, wandering to all the tables and saying ther hello's it was quite fun to watch. The restaurant was defintely not a family restaurant, it was catered more to adults and the majority of the people were those that were here on business from overseas, but everyone enjoyed the kids as they got under everyones feet, there must have been hundreds and hundreds of guests walking around and socializing, it was a typical bar type restaurant. We stayed till around 9:00 pm and caught a cab back home. Before we left, Catherine had asked me to email her to make sure I got home safe, which I am very thankful she did. I would never have opened my email otherwise only to discover that we were to meet at another Passport office tomorrow morning with Thuy at 9:00 am, it was an appointment that none of us were expecting. Unfortunatly, it left me in a little bit of a panic, one of the papers I was needing for tomorrow was an E-Ticket showing that Jayda was returning back home with me. When Cliff left the day before, we discovered we didnt have a copy of this which originally I wouldnt have needed till Thursday morning, So now in less than 12 hours I had go get this ticket, Cliff still flying in the air and not arriving home till 2:30 am my time. I sent him a message and decided to set my clock for 7:30 am in the morning in the hopes that he would have seen my message and it would have been dealt with and emailed over to me to print, but I couldnt sleep and ended up getting up out of bed at 2:30 am , realizing Cliff & Shae-Lee had just arrived. With the help of technology and some wonderful friends, I was able to text and email and ask them to get in touch with Cliff asap because I needed that ticket 7 hours from now. Fortunatly, Cliff was able to get in touch with them and my E-Ticket arrived within minutes on my email. Now, I knew I couldnt sleep until I actually had it in my hand, so I left the room (Jayda still sleeping, I had no worries leaving her in the locked room) As I closed the door, I thought I would just check to make sure my key worked (my swipe card tends to demagnatize itself on a regular basis) so of course this was one of the nights it happened. I quickly go downstairs, fully expecting to see staff at the front desk, but what I find are lights out and the Manager sleeping on the couch and the Bell Boy sleeping on the big chair. I probably would have waited to have my ticket printed since they were sleeping but I had no choice but to wake the manager up as I needed to get back into my room. So yes, a little awkward, as I kept whispering "Excuse me" . He woke up a little startled, but he kindly obliged me with a new swipe card, and since he was already awake, I had him print my Ticket. so all was well. Now, I was wide awake and afraid I would sleep through my Alarm Clock or the Clock wouldnt work, so I debated going back to sleep. Eventually I did, after texting back and forth with Cliff but ended up with only 1 hour of sleep. The morning came fast, I had to wake up Jayda, and quickly head down to Breakfast before Mary arrived to make our 9:00 am appt. We rushed and Mary showed up with the Taxi and we all headed down to the Consular Office. I'm actually not quite sure what we were doing here, I can absolutely say, I really have no clue how this process works with paperwork, I just show up at the appointments, fill out forms, show passports etc. Once we arrived, we waited and waited, and were told to come back at 11:15am so we all went next door and enjoyed a yummy Vietnamese Coffee until the time passed. After our appointment, we all departed to our seperate Hotels and made plans to meet later to to go the Market and Dinner, the Market didnt work out for that night, but we were able to meet up for dinner. Catherine and Sebastien took us to a wonderful little restaurant, upstairs looking over the streets while the children ate and played together. Tomorrow is another appointment 9:00 at the Canadian Embassy, here we will be applying for a Temporary Canadian Passport. This will be end end of the paperwork and forms, we will just need to wait for the passports to be issued and hope they arrive before my scheduled flight out next Sunday Dec. 17th