Last night was taken over to BFs new house, ostensibly for a meal, but when I arrived a surprise Birthday party had been organised and three generations of his family had turned up to greet me, along with 2 or 3 cute friends of his, which was very nice - and yet more flowers for me!! I politely nibbled at the vast array of Vietnamese food which had been laid out but I was more at home with the birthday cake, and the Chivas Regal which his father seemed very keen to keep re-filling my glass with (as he refilled his own at the same time).

So it was a late night back to the hotel (don't even remember leaving his house actually) - and we did not wake until 11.00am, meaning I'd missed the breakfast yet again.

Basically my trip has been totally taken over by BF and sister who are arranging everything and I just get ushered into a taxi periodically and get taken places. It's fine by me because I didn't have any specific plans anyway, so I don't feel as if I'm missing anything - and I haven't paid for any of the taxis yet!

For lunch I was taken to SH Garden restaurant, which has a rooftop dining area overlooking the city. I would recommend this place for food, service, and location - not to mention a ride to the top in what seemed to be a very very old and small elevator with the old-fashioned iron "gate" inner door that I haven't seen in the UK foR about 40yrs. BF ordered a wide variety of small dishes of chicken, beef, pork, rice of course, and some kind of fish soup. I was able to eat everything on offer and it was all very tasty. I had 2 beers and BF & sister had iced tea. Since they had put on the party last night and paid for yesterday's bowling excursion (tho I got the drinks/snacks) I thought it fair to get the bill and it was roughly 1,200,000 Dong which I guess must be about ┬г25-30, which seems reasonable.

Coming out of the restaurant and attempting to cross 3 roads (same as Thailand in that pedestrian crossings count for absolutely nothing) I spotted the rather famous Rex Hotel so decided to take a wander through that. The ground floor is crammed full of top-end shops - Rolex, Versace etc etc - none of them with a single customer in them! Hotel itself is extremely opulent and I'm sure I raised a few eyebrows with my shorts, sandals, and casual shirt.

As for tonight - who knows!

PS: Christian - yes the army issue got sorted out somehow - around April this year. I can't say with any great certainty HOW it got resolved (something about having studied for over 2 years outside Vietnam as far as I could make out) but it did. I'm certainly much happier to see him in his own country with his family there for him and he seems to be doing well in his new study. Much better situation than those 2-3 years he was continually flitting between Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand etc etc