Grace and Gretyl

So on the bus from Phnom Phen to Ho Chi Minh city we met these really nice girls from the phillipines, Grace and Gretyl, who were teaching english living in saigon. We were all waiting around at one these interminable bus stop where they try to fill more seats (and for you to spend some money at their friend's roadside cafe) and starting talking. They gave us alot of good info about Ho Chi Minh city and we gave them the bood luck chinese new year phone.
After we got settled into the backpacker ghetto of Phangu lau, aka little Khaosan Road, we contacted them and the next day Gretyl showed us around some different spots. First we headed out to the Saigon Water Park (which was our first choice, naturally). We picked a bad day for the waterslides, though- a weekend. The place was wall-to-wall pimply adolescent vietnamese humanity. The "Lazy River" was more like being on the gunboat in Apocalypse Now- we were beseiged on all sides by hostile little natives intent on flipping our innertubes and engaging us in splash warfare. The lines at the water slides were immense but got a few in before heading back into Saigon proper.
We went to the war crimes museum which i think deserves a log entry to itself. It was interesting, though, while we were there to look over and see Elsa from provincetown, who i used to work with at the Surf Club. Quite a random encounter, but not inexplicable when you consider that all of us summer-employment people must find something to do for those winter months.
Later we tried to get into the reuinification palace but it was closed. We went to a beautiful vietnamese restaurant nearby- it was like a massive shady courtyard filled with green leafy plants and low, old hard wood tables. The food was cheap and excellent for us, but they couldn't seem to understand genevieve's vegetarianism and were making no attempts to accomodate her- absolutely everything on the large menu had meat of some kind in it.
Later that night Grace took us to a Western American style bar to (THIS PART IS FOR YOU REJANO) see a Phillipino band that played there. It was absolute cultural clusterfuck time as we sat in a bar decorated to look like a southwestern truck stop (but with drink prices that seemed more like Japan) with phillipina girls, a german and an australian, prayed upon by vietnamese cocktail watresses and watching a Phillipino band play covers of things the the Eagles and the SCORPIONS! mindboggling. We had a great time with Gretyl and her friends.
The next day Grace and Gretyl gave us two framed pictures of us that she had blown up from ones she had taken at the bar and water slides, along with a woderful note. On our last night Gretyl had us over her apartment and made us some phillipino food. It was awesome to have some homemade food for once. Thank you so much to Grace, Gretyl, Rob, Jin and all their friends in Saigon for giving us such a friendly welcome- we didn't want to leave the city. We'll see you guys again- maybe the phillipines?