Day 3 - The Zoo

Van, Hai, Holly & I went to the zoo this morning. The weather was a bit cooler early on so it was pretty nice at the zoo. There was this great building just inside the gates and we were going to take a look at it on our way out, but didn't really get a chance to. I love the way it looks!

Holly loves the zoo! It doesn't seem to matter where or when, but she loves to look at all the animals and is totally focused on what they are doing.

She let Hai carry her for quite a while today. She has taken a liking to all of Van's family and I am so happy about that! She and Hai had fun looking at all the different kinds of birds here.

She was especially fascinated with the otter eating a fish. It smelled HORRIBLE (think dead fish in 85 degree heat...) but the otters were fun to watch. They are like little troublesome children.

Holly liked petting the goats through the broken fence that they had eaten through.

This bear was so funny! He just sat up like that forever scratching at his chest. I don't know if he had an itch that wouldn't go away or that was his way of getting attention, but it made us all laugh!

The monkeys were out on an island in the middle of a pond. Here, the guy had taken his boat over to feed them. The monkeys came right down to him just after I took this picture. He handed them something and they took off back up to the top of the monkey structure.

Holly was thrilled that she got to ride the train around the zoo. She would have gone again if we had let her! This girl loves trains.

We looked at the elephants first thing when we came in, but she liked them better from the train the second time we saw them.

I took this picture just for you, Pops! Dopey is hanging out in Vietnam these days.

Van & Hai took Holly on this kiddie roller coaster. Bigger & faster than the one at Silverwood. She wasn't quite sure whether she liked it or not. She didn't scream or cry though, so I guess it was ok.

She liked riding this little peacock ride kind of like the ones you see in front of grocery stores. She wanted to go on a different kind after this one and we put her on it. But it went around in circles up and down, and the bucket she sat in swayed side to side. It scared the ever lovin' crap out of her and I had to grab her out of it really fast! I felt horrible with the sheer look of terror on her face! She clung to me for quite a while after that.

But she did cheer up after that when she got to drive the cars - twice!

Afterward, we went to a seafood restaurant and ate a couple of shrimp dishes and some deep fried crab. The crab would have been good if you didn't eat it shell and all. It was just gross thinking about it...

Then it was back to the hotel for a nap. Holly gets really wiped out in this humidity and she usually takes a 3-4 hour nap in the afternoons. I only get in about 2 hours. :-) This is actually a picture of her in the morning before she woke up. Do you see why I hate sharing a bed with her? She's a bed hog and has not taken to sleeping sideways.

After naptime, Van & Lunh, Van's mom, came to pick us up to do a little shopping for some things she knew I wanted to get. I got a purse for me (big shock) and a couple of A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!!! dresses for Holly. I won't tell you what else I got because some of it is a surprise! Its great to be able to go into a store, pick out what I want, then have them haggle over the price of things for me. I know I'm getting a decent deal, but Van isn't very good at telling me specifically how much money I'm spending. She just says "its really cheap." After shopping, we went to the mall for dinner at KFC - yeah, I know, in a foreign country and eating American food, go figure! We also found some squeeky sandels for Holly. Here is Holly with Lunh at the end of our shopping trip as we were leaving the mall.

Once we got back to the hotel, I pretty much got everything packed up again since we are leaving early for Hanoi tomorrow morning. I think that they will be here to check me out of the hotel at about 7:00 am. This hotel is nice, but they don't speak very much English, so it has been really great to have Van or Hai to be able to ask about something if I need it.

When we get to Hanoi, we will meet up with Van's dad, who works in another town during the week. We will go to the American War Museum (Vietnam War to us) and I don't know what else. I'll keep you posted, of course! At least AM & J, since they might be the only ones reading this that I know of!

PS - If there are misspellings in my posts, its because the spell check doesn't work here for some reason. I double check them all first, but I might not be catching all the mistakes.