Monday

The fact that I keep having to talk about yesterdays, that I've been a day behind these Updates all weekend, becomes a boon today, since I punked-out and didn't leave the house all day. I suspect I contracted some type of twenty-four hour thing: I was already feeling terrible last night, and woke this morning unwilling to do a damn thing. Now I'm already starting to feel somewhat better again, and predict I'll be out-and-about, like a good host, as early as tomorrow. Luckily, I can begin the next sentence with another "yesterday". Yesterday was almost unacceptably hot and sunny (though this might've affected only me because of getting sick). We took this opportunity to wonder around the shade-free area near the river at the southeastern border District One, and then get a little lost for an hour trying to find the city art museum south of Bến Thành Market. Somehow, we had left our apartment without first knowing exactly what street the place was on. We asked a cabbie parked beside the road and were familiar enough with the area to know he gave us directions to the wrong destination. Later, we even asked some other tourists. They didn't know either. Later still, I began to fantasize about fleeing, about sodas and sitting down. Finally, Sunshine found a shopkeeper familiar with the block, and in this way we were finally directed around the corner to the relatively dour and one-track exhibits* on offer at Hồ Chí Minh City's Fine Arts Museum. Predictably, the moldering three-story yellow colonial building, beautiful in its need of a coat of paint, was the darling of my experience: there was even an old cage elevator, supported by two poles and operated by ropes, sitting unattended in the shaft of the square stairway. [Cavin]