Anniversary

Today is New Year's Day. We made it back to Saigon last night, and the entire city celebrated 2009 well past midnight. In the afternoon, we met up with my aunt, Di Oanh, who took us to Saigon Plaza for some shopping. Saigon Plaza has the latest western fashions and brand-name attire, but on New Year's, the immense shopper crowd inched along, pushing and shoving. How merchants conducted business among the throng of browsers was quite commendable. Each shop was the size of an average American bathroom, and merchandise hung stuffed to the brim.


We toured the city for modern dresses but didn't find anything we liked. We also dropped by the Cathedral of Notre Dame, one of the most famous cathedrals in Saigon.






For lunch, Di Oanh took us to Quan An Ngon ("Delicious Restaurant"), which used to be a buffet where you went around and picked your dishes from several cooking stations with chefs preparing their specialty. Your choices were then brought to the table. Now, it was a regular sit-down restaurant where you ordered and paid per dish. The specialty there was the "che" dessert. We ate a type called "suong xa hot lu," made with pomegranate seeds and the most delicious coconut milk ever. I told the story of how, when my mom was pregnant with me, she craved "che" every night and made my dad run down from our multi-story house to buy some from the lady selling it across the street. Di Oanh laughed at how I has craved this dessert while still in my mother's womb.




At night, we went to Ong Dung's and Ba Nguyet's (our landlord and -lady) 25th anniversary dinner. The couple renewed their vows in the little church near where we stayed, and we all gathered at Saigon Star Hotel/Restaurant for a buffet dinner and, um, unless karaoke.