Bringing you up to date

After Caleb's Medical exam and filing his application for his passport we spent one night in HCMC. On Tuesday we finished up paperwork and went shopping at the famous Ben Tahn Market. (I think that I might have spelled it wrong) Anyhow, I can't find the pictures of it to upload for you to see, but it is an experience none the less. People go the market daily to buy their food for the day. They do not have the luxury of large refridgerators and pantrys to stock up on items so if they want eggs and fish for dinner then they go to the market and buy it fresh. So fresh in fact that the fish are still swimming. The butcher pulls it out of a bowl whacks it with a board to kill it and then throws it on the table top to clean the scales off. Some Vietnamese eat frog, snails, and some even eat dog. We didn't see any dog at the market for sale but we did see a mo-ped carrying a cage full of about 6-8 small fox sized dogs headed to sell them for eating! Willow should be very thankful that she lives in America!! Anyhow, we spent that rest of the day waiting for all of our documents to be completed and gathered. By 4:30pm we had them and so Henry took Mark to the local airlines office so that we could purchase a ticket for Hanoi that night! We flew north and arrived at about 9:30pm. Henry did not come, he needed to stay back to meet another family. We were met by his assistant and she took us to our hotel. We were all settled in by midnight! By Wednesday morning we were feeling a little bit better and headed down for breakfast at the hotel, Caleb loves soup for breakfast, actually for most meals! So we loaded him up with a bowl of egg drop soup and I thought wow looks good until I noticed that the "mushrooms" were not really mushrooms but snail! Aagh!! Mark thought it was good and had a bowlful, I ate toast. After that we looked into tours of the famous Ha Long Bay. We were able to get in on a two day one night trip last minute and rushed up to our room and pack a bag to leave right away.