Friday

Sunshine gave an International Women's Day* presentation near the apartment this afternoon, and so was able to come home from work a little early, enabling her to spend a little exclusive family time with her mother. This mother-daughter thing resulted in the pair striking out for the nest of travel agencies crammed into the alleyways of the "Backpacker District" south of the New World Hotel. They were in search of something special to do this weekend. At the time they left the house, their plan was to buy us all tickets to the Mekong River Delta, including an overnight stay in Cần Thơ, a number of short river cruises, and guided romps through the early morning floating markets lining the myriad waterways of the famous effluvial delta. While this sounded like much fun, I was unsure it was a very good plan: it would take up a whole long weekend I'd imagined would be better devoted to further exploration of very own vast Hồ Chí Minh City, something I don't often get to do with guests. Plus, it was already too late, by late today, for us to properly guard against contracting malaria (not that this is a very large concern, considering the way we were planning to travel: by agency car, employing nice hotels, etc. Honestly, it's Dengue Fever that presents the more applicable danger. But I digress). We'll never know how that might have turned out, however, because the only available tours were on the wrong days. What Bet and Sunshine returned home with, a couple hours later, was a one-day trip to the Cao Đài Temple compound a hundred rounded kilometers north of us in the little town of Tây Ninh. Departure time: very early tomorrow morning and returning before dark. Stud* update in comments. [Cavin]