My Birthday in DaNang, Vietnam: Roses, Rain and Live Music (Part 2)

Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday! Well, we're back at Bắc Mỹ An. Today is Friday, it's my birthday, yeah, and I'm here to pick up roses, and it's, we're having the funkiest day weather-wise. This morning was bright and sunny, bright blue sky, and then downpour, and it was blue sky and sunny again, and then absolute downpour, and I thought, oh no, I missed my window to get out to the market. And now it's cloudy, but slightly, it's very pleasant, let me put it that way. It's very pleasant. It's not sunny, but at any point in time it could be a downpour and never stop all day.

So I jumped on and grabbed a motorbike, came down to the market. I'm going to go straight across over here, and let's see if we can buy some roses for the birthday get-together tonight. If it's nice enough outside, I'll walk home, but I can feel a few little raindrops too. It's too early to tell. We kind of take the weather as it comes. It changes in five minutes. I have an umbrella, I have a poncho. See what we can do. This is what the market looks like, and these are all the flower stands. There's more flowers down here, but this is the one that I went to when I bought the lilies, so I thought the guy was so nice, maybe I would just come back to him. Let's take a look and see what they have. Hello! So sweet. I'll just check, I think I'll just check the colors and availability and prices of a few of these stands and then make a big purchase. Wow, aren't those so pretty? These were not here the other day, yellows, but I kind of lean towards pink ones, that's what I have in my room, and red.

So I'm getting 12 of the pink. So you can see she's pulling in here 12 of the white with the pink trim and 12 of the red. That's going to be so fun to put in some glass vases and put them around the table at the birthday get-together tonight, and I'm just going to put them, like, in glass. I have some glass Mason jars with handles. I'm just going to put them in there, because then I can hold them all to where I'm going, and then I can bring them back to my apartment tomorrow. That's going to be so fun to have a room full of roses. So quick and easy. What I have feels so pretty, can't really see them in this bag, but and just relatively so inexpensive compared to what I'm used to paying. So these were 25 cents a stem, so three dozen, it's like $10, three dozen roses. Fun! All right, I couldn't resist. I rarely see these lilies that are, they're like ruffly and light pink, and they smell so good, and they're perfectly open, and we're getting more flowers.

But here's a good thing, you can always give flowers away, and people love flowers. I can give them to my friends, I can give them to reception. They're so reasonably priced, they make people happy, they make me happy. So this, it's three stems, but they're very full, is 150,000 Vietnamese dong. That's the equivalent of six US dollars, and they smell, look at that. How pretty those are, so pretty. Three big stems. It's my birthday, that's why we're buying extra flowers. So one of the things that I just really love and appreciate as I walk down the street with my lilies in one hand and bag of roses in the other is when things are reasonably priced, like flowers. It's such a joy to give them, it's such a joy to receive them, it's so nice to have them on a table. But I feel like in the last years they've gotten so outrageously expensive, not, I guess outrageous is the wrong word, they're very pricey, so it's something that we do more infrequently.

And when they're priced so reasonably, it's, there's no reason not to have them around more often, and that just feels, it feels really nice to be able to do things like have fresh flowers and go to a coffee shop and have coffee every day, because it's not a, it's not breaking the bank, for a figure of speech. It's not like, oh, I shouldn't be doing this, or this is a big treat, I really need to appreciate it. It's something you can do on a pretty regular basis and just feel good about it. You're not so stressed if the flowers don't make it past a few days. Oh boy, the little puppy on the back of the motorbike! So funny. And that's it for the market. Next we'll go home, put the flowers in water, and take care of a few other birthday hostess activities, and in a few hours I'll head over.

And so looking forward to seeing some friends I've not seen in like 5, 6 weeks now, since I was out of town for a month and just been back for a week, you know, readjusting and getting on top of things, my sleep and responsibilities, so it'll be great. I also think I might walk outside for a bit, because now that we're just on the cusp, it's Friday afternoon, of what's supposed to be a very wet and rainy weekend, I want to take every opportunity that I can to be outside and walking and moving. And I just enjoy, I really enjoy walking around the streets, because there's always something to see. And should it start to downpour, like, I can see some really dark clouds that way, I don't know which way the clouds are moving, then I can just duck in somewhere or jump on the back of a Grab and have a poncho and whatnot. But it's just nice to be out, out walking while I can.

So right here is a really nice French restaurant, very popular, like fine dining, and here they have, like, a wine and bread little section, you can buy things separately. It's very close to the kitchen store I've shown before. I just want to go in and see if they have a nice, easy, lightweight tray. If not, I bet the restaurant has one, but since we're in the neighborhood, we'll just see what they have. This is what the kitchen store looks like. I think that a lot of restaurants come here to buy their supplies. Like, look at the size of those pans! This is if you need quantity of, excuse me, quantity of dishes. See all the silverware here, it's all rubber banded together, like groups of probably 10.

I might just set these flowers down somewhere for a moment, look around for some trays. Okay, something like this is just perfect, really lightweight. Smells good, smells like it's freshly woven. I think this will do it. Stack of a, stack of dessert treats. So I just came up the stairs. Here's all kinds of porcelain. They have a large staff, so I think it's, I think it's a lot of restaurants. Water containers, glassware, everything's out on display. This is where I picked up some coffee cups, so cute. One or two, let me just see if they have a vase. Oh, water pitcher, that, oops, that would work.

I actually have some at home, I'm actually set. We're going to be resourceful, it's just one evening. All right, let's go purchase our tray. Oh, it's raining again outside. Here we have what's typical in different stores, this is a little altar. Well, we got the tray. The good news is we got the tray. Pouring out, it's pouring out. I think what I need to do is stop and put on my poncho and call a Grab to get home. That's what we're going to do. All right, I'm all in, ready, my poncho. When the Grab gets here, I'll put the hood up, and then you put the helmet on top to keep the water from, like, going down your neck and inside. It's pouring. I've got two huge bouquets of flowers, a backpack, and a tray, and well, we're heading home. So we're an hour out, and I just stopped by the venue, and they have it set up so nicely, so nicely. There's a break in the rain, so I made a run for it so I could deliver the flowers and the tray and not get soaking wet. So here's their setup.

Just kind of give a little tour of this place. We are up on the second floor, and there's the entrance down below, and then there's the stage, and the stage is covered, so they'll play rain or shine, so we'll hear the music, and then we can go downstairs and dance, and there's seats all set up along here. And we go down below, this is what it looks like. We're back at the venue, and it looks so pretty. So they brought balloons and delivered them. This is what it looks like. Here's my friends Gem and Fa Ny from the UK and France, been friends with them for years and years and years. Balloons flowers and then I went to a bakery, and then the gal who brought the cookies from the bakery, look what she did. She individually wrapped and packaged in these cute little packs every single cookie. There's 30 of them.

All the cookies, and then these are the shortbread caramel bars, and these are the lemon cake. Birthday girl! All right, look what just walked in, my absolutely favorite kind of cake, watermelon and fruit. My friends made it. They also, okay, So I just opened this hat they had custom made. It says the name Mayor with a bowl of phở, and then on the side it says the name OG. That's when I first came here, 2019, it's in my YouTube. And I am the unofficial supervisor, construction project manager of all the construction projects going on around here, self-appointed, so they put a little construction hat on the side. I love this gift! How fun and sweet are these girls right now? We have Badr over here, he's a coach.

We have Barb, Dina's a coach, we have Barb from Slovakia. Back here we have Gosia from Poland and Brian from the US, and Diana from Romania, and Ksenia from Russia, and Greta from Lithuania. What is a word or a phrase that you think of when you think of Susan? Oh energy! Endless energy, okay. Good! Everyone stares at the camera like, uh oh. Are you going to have good vibes? Good vibes! The energy of everyone here is just the personification of life. Oh, thanks guys! Everywhere, just saying everybody here is just so nice, so happy. Paul was just saying everywhere he looks, everyone's smiling. That's a good the name attracts a good crowd, does for sure. The right people get attracted. How are you? Happy birthday! And I love this song!

Susan, happy birthday! We love you, thank you so much for this awesome party. It's banging, the food is great, the desserts are amazing, the music is awesome. Thank you so much, we love you, Susan! You're an inspiration to us all. We love you, happy birthday! Susan is an inspiration to everyone, everyone who doesn't believe that they can do videos or get out there and put themselves out there. Believe in yourself, Susan did! Happy birthday, Susan, and I hope this year brings you so much happiness.