day 3 - shopping day

today (or yesterday since it's already 2AM), we did a lot of (shoe-)shopping!

but first we had to go to a lot of shops that were disappointing like Cholon and the Tax Trade Center. Cholon is a Chinese shopping district. it's like Ben Thahn market but here you can't find anything good. it's like going to Divisoria expect except the lights are dim that it's kind of depressing to be there. but if you find some nice items there, for sure it's cheaper than in Ben Thahn. the slippers we bought in Ben Thahn which cost us 135000VND was only 35000VND there (grrr).

anyway, we decided to walk towards their Makati-like area and found this nice leather goods store named Cincinati! i don't really like leather bags. in fact i don't own one because i don't like the smell. but when i saw the bags in this store, i wanted to buy 10 bags or so. erik bought me a shoulder bag! yey!

then we went to Ben Thahn market to shop for gifts. we bought Weasel coffee which the vendor said was 100% Weasel coffee. i doubt it though because Wikipedia said the original Weasel coffee costs around $6600 per kilogram! we bought ours for just $30 per kilo hahaha! that expensive for something defecated by an animal?!

Asian Civet

coffee beans in Ben Thahn market

after buying some more pasalubong, we went shoe-shopping! this is a haven for shoe lovers especially Onitsuka because this is where they are made.

i bought my first Onitsuka! i also saw a nice looking Reebok but i stopped myself from buying it.

love the color!

anyway it was a good day except for this taxi driver who conned us. actually we thought his taxi was Mai Linh, the legit taxi company but when we were already inside, we realized we got in a fake Mai Linh because the fare went up to 151,000 VND to the hotel. our usual taxi fare for short rides is just 15K-20K VND so that was just so obvious! we were already victimized twice so we will be more careful next time.

this is what the original Mai Lihn looks like:

original Mai Linh. look for the green and white color

dinner was so good after so i immediately forgot the taxi experience.

anyway we started out with 9M VND, bianca and osh had 5M VND(?). we spent all our millions in one day!