Can I Slap Your Kids?

Best Way to Ruin a Meal

This is the second day this week I’ve been aggravated to death while dining. It started with a few screams from the corner as I was ordering my chicken sandwich. A quick glance revealed a birthday party of about 20 + kids. Now, at this point, they hadn’t gotten their food yet so it wasn’t too bad, but, they were sitting pumping sugar into their veins gulping down their cokes. I didn’t think too much of it, went back to my seat and joined my 4 other friends. We proceeded to eat a pretty sorry excuse for Cajun style food. If you do feel like fast food in Saigon, and, insist on going to Popeyes, stick with the very basic chicken thighs or drumsticks. Beyond that, it was basically garbage. Chicken sandwich, chicken tenders, and seafood mix were all pretty bad unless you like unflavored grease soaked food.

Towards the end of the meal, I heard this super loud explosion and was sure terrorists were going after the new Vincom center. Suffice to say, it was just some kids popping their balloons. Within minutes, there were swarms of them around us, bumping into our chairs and knocking balloons onto the middle of our table. All the while, the parents just sat as if nothing was going on. The Singaporean manager looked like he was about to have a heart attack. All I could see in his eyes were thoughts of caning this little rodents.

As we got up to leave, this one little girl was staring us down. For a minute, I thought I saw the Vietnamese version of Bebe’s kids. No sooner than we were out of our chairs did i see what she was really after, it wasn’t our wallets, it was our Coke! Yes, she proceeded to quickly pounce on our table, anticipating the arrival of the boy who had asked 10 times already to clear it in the middle of our meal.

So, just a little warning. If you haven’t been to China or Vietnam, you will quickly learn that parents exercise NO control over their children. Be prepared to be beat down, yelled at and just plain abused by all children you meet on your journeys to these two countries.