Birthday Shopping

On Friday, I planned to go down to Pham Ngu Lau, the backpackers are in District One to get some DVDs to go with Steven's new DVD player that I would give him that weekend. I had also planned to buy bus tickets for our trip to the beach at Mui Ne, but having heard of a 2K fun run on Saturday, we decided to stay in town for the weekend and do a little sight seeing.

Have spent a week in Pham Ngu Lau in 2005 and then two weeks in the Ben Thanh area, not far from Pham Ngu Lau, I have a fondness for this part of town and enjoy its familiarity and its convenience. I even like the smiley xe om guys asking "moto-bike?" every 10 feet.

I took the #1 bus down Tran Hung Dao to the southern end of Pham Ngu Lao and made my way down the street until I saw a selection of DVDs for sale. I didn't really have a specific movie in mind, besides Steven's favorite movie, Raising Arizona, which I very much doubted I would find because it is so old, so I just started perusing the new releases. Halfway through, I saw that they did have old movies in alphabetical order, in separate bins labeled "A-E," "F-H," etc. I went straight to "R," but didn't find the one I was looking for, so I went back to the new releases. As I was looking through the individual DVDs, I noticed box sets displayed up on a higher self. The one that caught my eye was a 12 movie collection of Cohen Brothers Movies including "Raising Arizona." I was thrilled, knowing how excited Steven would be, because the Cohen Brothers are his favorite directors and many of the 12 were on his top movies list. The woman at the store walked up to me quoted 80,000 (less than $5) for the set. Knowing I wanted it, but wanting to look more, I put it back in its place on the shelf and told her I wanted to keep looking. She then said, "tell me how much you want to pay and I will tell you if we can do it." Always one for a bargain, I said, "how about 50?" She shook her head and said, "No, she would never go for 50,000. She might go for 70." I said "okay," thanked her and turned back to the single DVDs. "Ok, they lowest she'll go," she said, referring to the woman behind the cash register, "is 60,000." Knowing that I had planned to get the set anyway, I said, "Okay, I'll take it" and took the set back off of the shelf. I picked out "The Sound of Music" and "Life is Beautiful" for myself and then paid for the DVDs before heading back out onto the street.

From Pham Ngu Lao, I walked back towards to Ben Thanh bus stop where I had found a great French bakery the week before and picked out some tasty rice donuts, a donut twist and looked at the cake selection for Steven. The cakes were over 200,000 ($12 US) which seems cheap in dollars, but is a lot in dong, so I settled for a piece of chocolate cake for 26,000, knowing that Steven would appreciate it and wouldn't want to spend 200,000 on a cake.

After making my purchases, I caught the #1 back home, where I spent 15 minutes setting up the DVD player and making sure that the movies would play. Once I was satisfied that everything was working, I hid it all back in the suitcase and waiting anxiously for Steven's return from work, so I could give him his surprise.