Most people take their last day of vacation pretty easy and end up lounging in the hotel lobby for the last couple hours waiting on their ride to the airport...not us. We're up at sunrise and I'm at reception trying to arrange babysitting, I'm taking Heather for a cruise on a motor scooter today. Last night when I tried to arrange babysitting for this morning, the front desk told me to just come back in the morning and there would be someone available at 7am, but that's not the case this morning, they claim that babysitting doesn't start until 8:30. Well that's not going to work for us, we have things to do and places to go! So after a few minutes of telling them that they messed up last night and that they needed to make it right, one of the front desk girls volunteers to come to our room to watch MD sleep until the babysitter gets there, who they've just called and asked to come in ASAP. It's $7 an hour for an in room babysitter, can't beat that.

So with the front desk girl situated in our room with our sleeping baby, Heather and I set off on our motor scooter adventure. The first step to starting our adventure is figuring out how the ignition works, I'm trying to push the key in too far, so after like 3 minutes I finally figure it out and we're on our way.
"Do you want to take a test drive without me on the back first, to make sure you know what your're doing?" Heather asks me.
"No babe, don't you trust me, jump on and let's go!"
Lol, luckily I didn't betray that trust and run us into a curb in the driveway of the hotel! It's just like riding a bike but faster and thankfully its about a 2 mile drive down the beach road before we get to Cau Dai Road (cow die) where the defensive driving starts, wait hold that, the survival driving. It's weaving and dodging, watching for cross traffic, bicycles, dogs, people, and of course other motor cycles. Heather is having a blast, she's wanted to do this since the moment we arrived.

It's about 7:15, still considered sunrise viewing time, and the tourists and backpackers haven't made it to the main Cao Dai beach yet, which is quite beautiful when its not covered with people, like right now, so we stop at the beach for 15 minutes of sunrise viewing and quiet time just the 2 of us and a couple lone swimmers down the beach.

I need to pick up my suit, so we head there first...I know where the shop is, but Heather is totally turned around and has no idea which street is which or where to go, yet she questions me the whole ride about whether or not if I know where I'm going...figures! I drove us straight to the door of the shop! I had told the tailor last night that we'd be by around 10am to pick up the suit, so she's not at the shop yet (all the shops are the front half of someone's house) but the home owner is in the back and calls the tailor when she sees us walk in. No time to waste...I try the suit on while waiting for the tailor, thankfully they've made the adjustments and it fits like a glove! This was an excellent purchase, even Heather is impressed.

Next we need to drop Heather's dresses off at her tailor, neither one of them fit properly, its close, so we walk. This shop is closed up tight, but luckily right as we walked up the home owner poked her head out the front door (presumably to check the weather!) and I surprised her by jumping into her field of vision. She lets us in and calls her tailor...who shows up in less than a minute, so she must live in one of the adjacent houses. Ok, lets see you work some magic, you have 5 hours to make the changes and redeliver it to our hotel! While Heather is getting refitted, I walk down the street a couple blocks looking for a luggage or bag store...we're not overweight with our total luggage allowance, but these new Samsonite bags we bought will hold a lot of stuff, both are individually over weight by about 17 lbs! The only bag I can find worth buying ends up being in the store right next to the tailor, and its a bad immitation North Face backpacker's pack.

The drive back to the hotel on the motor scooter involves Heather video-taping for most of the ride, almost getting wiped out by an oncoming dump truck who swerved into our lane, driving as fast as the motor scooter would go for all of 15 seconds, and overall just having an awesome time and enjoying our last few hours in Vietnam and the only moments of our trip with just Heather and I. Not that we didn't enjoy traveling with MD, quite the opposite actually, it was quite rewarding to take her along with us...but Heather and I have made a lot of memories travelling the World together and it was nice to have a few moments just to ourselves.

Back at the hotel, MD has only been up for about 30 minutes and she's having fun with the babysitter when we open the room door. We thank the babysitter profusely, slip a few bucks in her hand and say good bye; then we headed down to breakfast...where it didn't take 5 minutes for MD to be out of her seat and back with the babysitter in the corner of the restaurant at the kids area!
So after finishing our breakfast, we thank the babysitter again and Heather and Maclaren headed to the beach while I checked us out...its only about 11:00, but we're planning on being down at the beach until the car arrives to take us to the airport!

Out on the side beach again, no one else but us. Why everyone wants to sit up on the manmade beach and look at the sandbags is beyond me, but I'm not complaining about having a private 300 yard stretch of Cao Dai Beach to ourselves 3 days in a row! We stretch our time on the beach to the last minute and then head over to the locker rooms under the beach restaurant where we catch a quick shower and a change of clothes. Which turned out to be ok for the girls, but did nothing but make me sweat even worse than out on the beach, so I walked back to the hotel lobby shirtless and still in my trunks...I need to find a bathroom with some AC to change into my travel clothes! But, we walk into the lobby to find our van already loaded and waiting on us, time to go...so I act like superman and change clothes in the blink of an eye in the closest, un-air-conditioned bathroom and jump on the van a hot mess.

But, I'm a savy traveller, "sir, can you pull over real quick, I need to buy a couple cold drinks." Plus this is my last opportunity to haggle a better price, so despite being in a hurry to the airport I beat the seller down from 65k dong to 40k dong for a beer, a coke, and a sprite. We get to the airport in plenty of time, Da Nang looks is a bustling metropolitan city, but its midday so the traffic is light.

At the airport, I'm still trying to email with the hotel in Saigon to arrange for airport pickup, it looks like the emails are going through, but who knows! Guess they didn't because when we arrived there wasn't a sign placard with our name on it, that was sad moment. However, the hotel we're staying at is one of the closest to the airport and its a business hotel, so their driver is there holding a sign with other people's names on it. I'm able to convince him to drive us to the hotel, we just need to wait on his friend to get there and take over duties on holding the sign.

After checking in, I try to convince the porter to just leave the bags on the dolley and leave it in our room...we're leaving in 9 hours. "no, its ok, I'll come to help you in the morning."...he's just trying to make a tip...b*****! The bed is actually 2 queens pushed together with a pillow top all the way across, by far the largest bed we've ever seen. And its just to nice, to big, and Heather is too tired to go out to the market one last time, so its showers and baths for everyone, room service, and 5 hours of sleep.