I awake around 8:30AM and everyone is up except for Sonny. I wash up a little bit and taxi home to my cousin's. I shower, help out Linh with her homework, eat lunch and then taxi back to Nhi Sam's (pronounced "Some") house.
The taxi ride between the two homes is around $6 and I usually tip $1. This is a hefty price to pay for a ride across town. I looked at the alternatives and discover a new means of transportation: the city bus. Price tag: 2,000 VND. That's $0.10 USD. Sixty times cheaper than the taxi ride. Now granted, it won't pick me up and drop me off at my specific destinations but the bus stops are really close to both destinations. A very small sacrifice for a huge payoff.
So I'm back at the Aunty's and she makes me a bowl of bun bo hue. It was decent and my stomach tumbled like a storm later in the day. After my second lunch, Monkey (Sonny), Mommy, Nhi Sam, Hoa (Dinhy's Mom - Dinh grew up with us in the States - my parents brought him along in '75), Hung, Hang, Trong, and myself taxied to Su and Nhon's house. Su and Nhon's kid, Ba To, was getting married that following Monday so we were there to pay a visit. Su and my Mom are cousins. Su's mom and my Mom's mom are sisters. Nhon was the only person home when we arrived. She has 4 kids. Ba To is the eldest son. He comes home first, followed by his Dad.
On our way over to Ba To's house, we saw a bunch of cops as we drove by this ghetto neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. We saw uniform officers escorting a middle-aged woman in handcuffs. Our taxi-driver said the arrest was due to the selling of cocaine or meth. He also said that it's also punishable by a gunshot to your heart if you're dealing over 2 kilos. Ba To's house is also in Tan Pho (tan pho = city) Ho Chi Minh. They're northeast of the airport. Anh Hung's house is south of the airport. Nhi Sam's house is east of the airport.
Nhon made some excellent banh canh with fish as a courtesy - it ended up being an early dinner. The fish was crazy good. I'm definitely visiting this house again next time, just for the banh canh (banh canh is a soup with Udon noodles). Before the banh canh, we snacked on some dried squid, guavas, and some other random fruits that were freshly picked by Ba To in his massive backyard (they even had two sideyards). After banh canh, we walked a good quarter mile down the quiet street to the big street where the market vendors stationed. Some of us got ice cream, some of us got shakes, and some of us got accessories. Actually, just Sam got accessories (no pun intended).
Street market.
It started raining when we were walking back so we had to run the last couple hundred meters. This made it a little extra fun. My aunt and uncle actually ran pass the house without recognizing they had passed it lol (they woulda kept on going if we didn't yell out to them). When we got back to the house, the rain had stopped. We chattered for a little bit and then called a taxi home.
I kept the taxi after we dumped off everyone, went home, cleaned up and hopped into bed.
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