Final Night in Saigon

For my final night in Saigon, Laurel had agreed to meet me for dinner.  She needed to get up early for a flight the next morning, so we agreed to make it an early dinner (my plan was to grab a drink somewhere else afterwards).  She suggested a really amazing place (ah, the joys of going out with locals!!) called Nga Hang Ngon (don't ask me how to pronounce it -- at least with Thai, all you need to do is throw in a couple of "aaaah" sounds and you'll be close; I couldn't grasp the Vietnamese sound at all).  Check the link for some amazing pictures of the food that they make. 

We passed on sitting on the "stage" that was originally offered to us, and instead sat with the peons.  hehe  I ordered what I thought was going to be crab with a special sauce.  Well, ok -- lemme clarify that; I thought it would be "crab meat" with a special sauce.  It showed up, and there was no mistaking this for imitation crab meat...

The server probably hates patrons who order this because she then spent the next 2-4 minutes cracking the crab's legs and cutting open the shell.  Huh...I picked around it the best I could...

During our convo, I recounted some of my adventures in Bangkok thus far.  I mentioned some gifts I had purchased (at a great deal, I thought), and instantly Laurel's face dropped and she told me that she had recently read about this scam on Lonely Planet.  I'm sooo glad that she told me this -- I hadn't shared this with anyone else, because I didn't want to ruin the surprise.  Unfortunately for our dinner convo, my heart skipped a beat, and my mind instantly began to calculate ways to get out of this deal.  I tried to stay focused at the task at hand, but my mind was a million miles away.  Ugh!

We said our goodbyes -- of course, she had to exit stage left on a scooter...hehe and I passed on going to a bar by myself in order to head to my computer to start some research.  Let the "fun" begin...