Ho Chi Minh City - The Sequel!

Chinook at War Museum

'PE' in the Park

Bee' Cook' on Roo' Ti'

Queen on Tuk-Tuk

Oops, we somehow managed to publish the last blog before we'd finished editing it and adding photos.   Just wanted to mention the wonderful sites we saw as we walked through the park which formed the centre reservation of the wide boulevard in which our hotel was located.   In the late afternoons, there were several classfuls of students from different secondary schools/colleges, all in different coloured school uniforms, and all doing different forms of synchronised keep-fit, Tai-Chi, or martial arts lessons, each to the tempo set by their teachers' whistles.   There were also a couple of band-stands in the park where young people in their twenties and thirties were taking dancing lessons: one concentrating on ballroom dancing, the other on jive.   It was interesting to see, in all of these cases, how unself-conscious these young people were at performing in front of one or two curious tourists like us - although most people passed them by without a second glance.   Don't think UK teenagers would be so unabashed - it probably wouldn't be thought 'cool' (as in 'cool like a rock star', according to our grandson, Rui).   That said, many of the schoolchildren we watched did seem to quite enjoy the attention of our camera every time their teacher was looking the other way, most of them turning to the camera and posing with 'peace' signs whenever they could get away with it.    We were also absolutely spell-bound by several games of what we think was called 'hakky-sak'.   This was a sort of football-equivalent 'keepy-uppy' game, with usually two people kicking a sort of shuttle-cock to each other over a net.   But this particular kicking motion was most unusual:   it used the underneath of the foot, rather than the top or toes, and often the players would allow the shuttle-cock to pass over their heads behind their backs, and then flip their leg up behind them - where they could certainly not have been able to see the shuttlecock - to hit the shuttle-cock from behind their backs over the top of their head or shoulders to their opponent.   It's really difficult to describe, but incredbly skilful and fast, and made our football keepy-uppy game look pretty easy!    We do have a video to show you some time - and will certainly be challenging Cameron, Dylan, Lucca and Rui to have a go, if we can find some shuttlecocks to buy!

Oh, and incidentally, since we didn't caption the photos on the first of these two postings, and for our own record, the photos there were: No. 1 'PE' in the Park;  No. 2, Uncle Ho in his city;  No. 3, White shark ferry on the Saigon River; No.s. 4 and 5, the Bitexco Financial Tower, complete with helipad;  No. 6 Bitexco Tower's next-door neighbours; Nos. 7 and 8, Stall-holder by the Saigon River.