Our second week at the resort began as all of the others, enjoying a relaxing breakfast watching Jessie and Alyssa. We all the next few days were a waiting period while Alyssa’s Vietnamese passport application was being processed so we actually we able to have a bit of a vacation in a wonderful setting.
Later in the morning, Jessie and Nancy went to the beach where they swam in the South China Sea and collected more shells. In the afternoon, Gracie came to play with Jessie in our room. It was fun to hear them as they pretended that they were a family who was adopting a new baby. Jessie was the mom and Gracie was the big sister. Emily, the doll, was the newly adopted little sister. Through their imaginary play, one could really see the impact that getting a baby sister was having on these two girls.
By now we were starting to learn more about Alyssa’s personality and habits. She was a very easy baby to care for, who loved to lie on the bed and look around the room. Her favorite position was flat on her back with her hands held high while she stared intently at them. She ‘talks’ a great deal, too. It’s very comforting to hear her cooing and burbling as it is clearly the sound of a contented child. And fortunately for us, Alyssa is a good sleeper. The sleep pattern that she exhibited on the first couple of nights we had her have continued. She generally wakes up once in the night for some food and then very calmly goes back to sleep. We couldn’t really ask for more.
Since Grandma Patsy’s room was adjacent to ours, Alyssa spent much time with her new grandma. Over the several days that we’d been waiting at the resort, we’ve been taking Alyssa to her grandma’s room, where she lies on the bed and then quietly falls asleep for her afternoon nap.
Later in the evening, the whole group got together to go to a local seafood restaurant. The restaurant that Thao had selected was a few kilometers up the coast from the resort so we drove for a while, taking advantage to see more parts of Phan Thiet. Along the way we stopped at some old temple ruins on a hill overlooking the city. The view was glorious in the early evening. You can see a couple of pictures here - Phan Thiet. We then journeyed on to the restaurant. Thao had clearly picked out the most popular seafood spot in town because when we arrived there were several large tour buses parked outside. Unfortunately, that meant there were no table available for the next 45 mintues.
So, we drove back along the coast until we found another seafood restaurant, which to me looked about the same as the first one. These restaurants were not ‘touristy’ at all, but instead were patronized by locat Vietnamese. The decor was plain, just long tables with paper covering the tables and plastic chairs. The restaurant was on a cliff overlooking the South China Sea coast with open windows. Of course, there was no air conditioning, which meant the restaurant was hot and sticky. A large open fish tank ran along the back side of the restaurant containing about any kind of live seafood a person could want. Crabs, eels, prawns, rock lobsters all mingled together in a giant jumble while smaller shrimp floated along the top of the water. Large spiny lobsters were in a separate tank as were some larger fish that appeared to be groupers. Needless to say, this restaurant had tremendous choices on the menu, as long as you wanted seafood.
As you can imagine, we had a feast of lobster, crabs and shrimp. Alyssa dozed off early on so I spent much of the time walking around the restaurant holding her while she slept. It gave me a chance to observe all of the activity in the fish tank, which was quite interesting. For some reason, the restaurant had a glider exercise machine like Suzanne Sommers used to hawk on late night TV sitting near the entrance. While the adults finished their meals, Jessie and Gracie had a great time playing on the glider under the watchful eye of the restaurant staff.
And so another day in sunny Phan Thiet came to an end.
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