A royal day

There are so mnay joys to parenting.  One of them is messing with your kids whenever possible.

The kids had a day off school Friday, so we told them we were taking them to the Vietnamese Embroidery Museum, the largest museum in Vietnam.  The kids rolled their eyes but did not protest.  We also warned them that we expected them to be on their best behavior.

Of course, we had no intention of taking them to the "Embroidery Museum", which doesn't even exist.  Instead, we surprised them by spending the day at the Vincom Mega Mall, an extravagant place for Hanoi filled with over 200 shops, a movie theater, an ice skating rink, even a waterpark.  Libby and I had spent some time there a few weeks ago with Viet, and we said, "we gotta bring the kids here."

Here's the front of the mall, complete with grecian statues and a fountain.  It is difficult to describe how surreal and out-of-place this feels in Vietnam.  We didn't tell the kids about what we were actually doing until we walked inside.

The mall is three stories, underground, and huge -- very easy to get lost in.  Here we are wandering around trying to find the movie theater:

We found the arcade instead:

Noah enjoying the ambiance of Skyline coffee:

For lunch we took the kids to Quan An Ngon, a restaurant in the mall that served lots of traditional Vietnamese foods from different regions.  While Carter enjoyed the banh xeo...

...Finn went all out on the adventure scale and got some snails.  I've had snails several years before at a French restaurant and they are usually already out of the shell and smothered in melted butter and garlic.  These snails we ate in Hanoi were cooked in the shell and served on a plate.  And they were quite good.

Then we moved on to the waterpark.  That's right, there was a large indoor waterpark in the mall.  And there were only about 20 people inside the whole area.  It was well-maintained and a lot of fun.

After the water park, it was on to the bowling alley (we think the only one in Hanoi), followed by a little spicy Korean fast food for dinner.

By the end of the day we were pretty tired, but everyone agreed that we probably enjoyed the Mega Mall more than we would have enjoyed the embroidery museum.  The kids now swear they will never trust us with anything we tell them, and we don't need to do anything for April Fool's Day.  But Libby and I are already planning our next "museum" visit for the kids.