December 1,

I awoke around 0600, but went back to bed. The Karaoke went on until around midnight. I had my ear plugs in, but I could feel the percussion or reverberation clear up here – 24 stories! Upon really getting up around seven, Jeff looked out and it was all cloud cover! I went and we both really looked out to a couple blue patches in the sky, but yeah clouds. We stayed out a bit on our balcony to the views over the city. Quy Nhon is very nice, indeed. The sea crashing onto a long beach area, that gives way to the streets of the 300,000 or so population, ending to a backdrop of mountains. Yes, it's quite lovely. So we had our Javas (with the mugs our hostess brought us last night) and came up with game plan. We had a yogurt each (that Jeff had got last night) and set out. We decided to go shopping. The weather app had said 80% chance of rain, which clenched our plan.

We set out around 1000. First checked out our apartment place. The atrium of 30 stories is even more wild with the sun streaming in from the skylight. We noticed that there are four working elevators out of five, but we have only been in the same, one elevator – that's kind of weird. Also noticed that three elevators are windowed to the outside. It's one of these that is not working. We were bad and skipped our normal elevator, waiting for one of the outside viewed ones. When we got it was a bit nerve racking, but cool!

Anyway, we set out exploring as we walked to the shopping mall with a GO store. It's like a smaller version of the old Walmart stores, a bit of everything – well almost everything. But along the way we were side tracked and saw a local restaurant: Bun Hue O Chan. We were still hungry so we went in, pulled up our Google translate, and both got a bowl of Bun Bo Hue – beef noodle (fat spaghetti type) soup. When we received the soup it had the beef- in addition, a fish-ball; an unknown loaf type meat; and a square of blood pudding (which we both skipped). It was great broth and UMM, UMMM good! It cost us 70,000 Dong (($2.76) total! We left quite happy and finally arrived at the mall. We perused the mall a bit, checking on the cinema – that was a no go. We found most of our list at the GO. We checked and decided to walk back as it was not raining, and we weren't carrying much stuff.

Arrived back at our place, unloaded and went back out to explore more since the weather was cooperating. We walked along the promenade next to the beach. We only saw two people on this part of the beach. We passed a small kids ride/park that seemed abandoned(?). Next we passed a statue of a guy playing a guitar – this (I looked up) was Trinh Cong Son, a great Vietnamese songwriter. The statue had the song Bien Nho– The Sea Remembers. He sounds interesting – I went into a rabbit hole here – I won't get into it all, but this song is melancholy. Then we came to a restaurant on the beach, so we diverted off the promenade and came upon another monument. This was much bigger. It was two men many feet tall- like 50 or so. Jeff stood at the base for scale and the base was double his height. The men were statues of Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Tat Thanh) and his father, Nguyen Sinh Sac. There was a huge wall-carved mural behind the statues of scenes in life of Vietnam. We walked though a little park and Jeff had a rat run over his foot! We seem to only see rats in parks in Vietnam, but they are very few and far between sightings, thankfully. Anyway, now we went back to our place and had a siesta.

Around supper, we went back out and retraced our steps some to go by a night market area that we had seen earlier, but it was not a food market, rather a “things” or “stuff” to buy market. We passed by the statues at night, and went walked back along the promenade. We did not find what we wanted to eat, so we meandered and found a restaurant, called Quan Nhau Rung Ba Mien. It specialized in Goat! We were their first customers that night, I think. There seemed to be some kind of “business(?)” going on upstairs. Anyway, we ordered two dishes through google translate. First was a stir-fried dish of goat, lemongrass, and chillies – which ended up being goat stir-fry with lemongrass, onions, and red/yellow/green bell peppers, and a very few small but mighty red chillies. It was great! The goat was tender and flavored well. Then we had # 2, grilled goat, which came with a small dish of salt mixed with a green herb (it said chilli, but wasn't hot) and lime wedges. We squeezed the lime in the salt mix and then dabbed the smoked goat in this. It was so different from the first dish, but equally good. It was not overly salty either. Great experience!

Finished we went back to our place. Then did a WhatsApp with my mother. Lastly we Zoomed with our church back home. Bed by 2330. What a great day… and no rain – those weathermen!!