On the Friday morning, Alice was feeling a lot better and could lash out a bit on breakfast.
That was fortunate because I cannot stress how nice the breakfasts were. And they served different stuff each day; potato salad, three kinds of green beans, bread with butter, tomato salads, tubs of yoghurt or creme caramel (which tasted a bit like salt…?), three or four kinds of fruit, small pancakes, pastries; basically more things than you could have a hope of fitting on one plate. And in among the pastries one morning we had these little soft-dough fried parcels, smaller than a doughnut, but filled with custard.
Post-breakfast we would go and try one of the other nearby cafes, slowly working out which one had the best coffee.
On Friday, we spent a lot of time picking photos for the website and working out how to get the trick-functions in photoshop to automatically convert, resize or even name pictures for us, thus saving a lot of time in future. Hong Kong had been a shopping paradise so I started daydreaming about new lenses for our camera and looked these up on the internet.
Eventually, we did have to leave the hotel room and do something; we wanted to find a bank to cash our traveller’s cheques, so after lunch in the restaurant next door we walked around the block trying the various banks, which we noted would be closed on Saturday and Sunday. After three or four shakes of the head we went back to ask the hotel, who advised to go to the ANZ bank over near Hoan Kiem lake. They even called a taxi for us.
Along the way we watched where we going, and how far, and decided we could quite easily walk ourselves back and skip the fare, which was only 18,000 VND anyway. We couldn’t find the ANZ bank but the driver seemed to be pointing that it was around the place somewhere. Instead we went into the closes bank where the commission was slightly higher and walked out with our next Intrepid local payment organised.
The walk back from the lake was fun, what with all the tiny stores selling random stuff, like a shop full of teddy bears and another full of pots and pans, and only those things. Furthermore we went past a quality bakery and so that was afternoon tea sorted; custard scroll and a chocolate sponge cake slice for 10,000 VND. And on the way back we picked up our clean washing. Nice.
On Friday night we spoiled ourselves with dinner in the hotel restaurant, and once again we were almost the only people there, and once again we got our corner table with the best view. I had a fried rice (for people who asked), while Alice thoroughly enjoyed the beef noodle soup. The menu said something about Bananas fried in rum and sugar, but apparently they didn’t have any that night.
(sigh)
OK… 18th October: Saturday morning.
On saturday, having had two days of stuffing around, we began to seriously consider trying to get our travel journal up to date. But given the opportunity and the time, we decided first to update some of the engine parts that keep the website running. This meant backing stuff up and changing some things around. It’s easy but takes a little while. Also we put some descriptions on all the old galleries which didn’t have any descriptions, organised all the galleries from each country into albums, and other stuff like that which we have been wanting to do. It was fun.
During the day we also went on a great lunch adventure, which began with buying pineapple from the pineapple lady on the street corner to tide us over, moved on to buying some snacks from a bakery while we were walking, continued with us sitting down for tea and coffee to consider where else we could go, and ended with us deciding that we nearly full with snacks anyway. And then on the way back to the hotel we found an old lady on the street selling what we thought might be deep fried potato scallops, but they turned out to be filled with mashed banana. Which is much much better.
For dinner on Saturday night we went wandering the neighbourhood, and I twice nearly slipped over walking on the edge of the road. There is usually an interesting combination of things in a Vietnamese gutter, and most of them are slippery. Eventually we found a small restaurant at the edge of the West lake where got rice-paper rolls with salad leaves, bean sprouts and mint in them, and a dipping sauce on the side. Alice had beef in hers, and also a fun time explaining to the staff that I didn’t want beef in mine. It was cheap and filling, and with a couple of glasses of beer it was just what we needed.
After that: 19th October. Sunday.
Sunday morning we put even more effort into catching up on the old journals, but upon arriving in Hanoi we were something ridiculous like 17 days behind… so if any of the entries in October seem slightly hashed over (for instance this one), please send complaints to the usual address. On Sunday Alice really couldn’t stretch herself as far as leaving the hotel room, so I went out for coffee on my own, tried the third cafe along the street from or hotel, and finally confirmed my initial impression; the first cafe was the best, and we would be going there again tomorrow.
I was of course quite satisfied that our room had cable TV because it meant I’d be able to watch the Chinese Grand Prix in peace and quiet. After the coffee errand I also fetched pineapple from the pineapple lady, and went looking for the fried banana lady but she must have been having the day off.
On Sunday night we once again could not resist the temptation of room service, and ordered more fried with vegetables, tofu in a superb tomato-coriander sauce, garlic bread (with smashed instead of minced garlic), and a fruit platter or dragon fruit, watermelon, and something else which had green skin (shaped like a lime) but looked and tasted kind of like mandarin. Then I went out take some pictures of the lake, and was only interrupted by an odd noise from about 5 metres away. I identified this noise as a man going no #1 in the lake.
And that’s about all we did.
Greg
