Sarah Vann

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh (An Actual Song)

Hello! Our last week and a bit involved finding out how much ACTUALLY closes over Tet, because we suddenly saw all these businesses we didn’t even know actually existed in our neighbourhood in Danang.

We also made our way to Ho Chi Minh City, formally renamed in 1976, so is still often called Saigon ‘administratively’, whatever that means.

Pals, we probably should have started here. When we had lots of energy, more money, knew nothing, etc. 14 million people, an estimated 10 million motorbikes. We came to HCM, both with brutal colds, in our final 10 days of our trip. We’re here for a full week. We know how to cross the roads and to look both ways, even if you think it’s a one way. But looking for food in such a populous area, figuring out things to do and travelling to them, all of that adds fatigue.

Thankfully, because we know we have time and are not in a rush to do or see a lot of things, we can pace ourselves.

We hit up the Southern Women’s Museum, formed in 1983 by a research group of 13 women formed to document the history of the women’s movement in southern Vietnam. It opened in 1985, marking the 10th anniversary of southern Vietnam’s liberation. This entire work below is BUTTONS.

There are pieces of art, artifacts, stories, information about style, food, family, war and the history around each of them. Women were highly involved in both resistance wars and there are so many images and stories and books that feature the role of women in Vietnam’s history. It’s quite something to see. I think we knew that women played a bigger role in so many parts of history but we are only just starting to learn about the massive impact across the globe and across time. It’s cool to see it being recognized here in such a large and public way!

We also get sidewalk walking back! Sometimes…. Much of Danang and Hue allow all the scooters to park on the sidewalks so you mostly walk on the road beside the curb and hope for the best. Here there are bikes parked on the sidewalks but the sidewalks are so WIDE you can ALSO WALK ON THE SIDEWALK. I actually can’t stress to you enough how excited I was to see this. And notice it.

It is also MUCH hotter here than in Danang and Hue. Most days 28-34 degrees. I won’t say much about that because we’ll be home in -10 in a week and I might be missing it but I will say you have to plan a little bit to be out of the heat at some point in your day. Could be a mall or a coffee shop with AC but you gotta get out of it!

We went to a lacquer shop and saw some artists at work. Originally created to protect the wooden furniture in Vietnam, it has progressed over the years into a beautiful and complex set of steps using mother of pearl, eggshell, varnish and sanding in between to reveal the incredible patterns and images.

We did a great cooking class in HCMC! Made some delicious chicken pho, papaya salad and lemongrass chicken stir fry - AWESOME.

Also, my new fave summer drink is gonna be lemongrass lemonade. UGH. SO GOOD. I will make you some. I will hoard all of the dried lemongrass we are bringing home and make you some. Remind me to share.

We took a little boat ride on the Saigon river last night and saw the city (and the lunar eclipse!) from a lovely vantage point. We found a scary walking street with dancing girls and loud music but it also had killllller tacos….? I love travelling.

ANYWAY. We are in our final week now. We’ll head to Danang and then Taipei over the course of the next week and then fly home! Thanks for following along, can you turn the heat up next week when we land? Thanks so much. Xoxo

More FOOD

Hey pals! We made our way back to Hoian last week and waited out the week of Tet, when many many MANY businesses are closed for 10 days while folks spend time with their families. Here’s what we found:

In a moment of madness, we attempted Mexican in Hoian. It was fine. Needed more lime, more salt. The corn was good!

Chili Honey Chicken at a fab Indian place in Danang

Paneer curry & roti. So much ghee. SO MUCH DELICIOUS GHEE.

Jerky salad. Spicy & loaded with herbs.

Scott is dying to buy a 5KG bottle of hot sauce. Thankfully, even he can see the insanity of this.

A very good ca phe muoi we found near our hotel here in Danang. Cute French messages were a nice touch!

We loved the first one so much, we did a 2nd food tour in Danang with the same guy! He introduced us to this amazing corn dish, lots of ghee and fried garlic and floss and salt. Yummers!

A local delicacy, fish and crab meatball soup. Homemade noodles. Great broth. Add lots of lime and fish sauce & take your chances with the dry red chili flakes mixed with pork crackling….

Bit harder to make Che Lien look good but it’s a kind of syrupy dessert, this one has pannacotta, lychee and chunks of fruit with almonds. Nice way to finish the night.

We are off to Ho Chi Minh tomorrow! Take care all!

Xoxo

A Week in Hoian

Y‘know dear reader, last year when we were gone for a good chunk of time and went to many more countries, I kept a running log on my phone every couple of days to remember what we did. Things like “back to eat Burmese with Mona!” And “flea market - good donuts! Very local, we were freaks”. Insightful, thought-provoking things.

Well, I don’t know if it’s because we’re more stationary on this trip or if the novelty of keeping a log wore off (probably a combo of the 2), but my last note is from Feb 12 and says ‘cooking class’. So buckle up and let’s see what I can remember…

One experience that stood out this week was the bbq on a boat tour. Scott caught a wicked cold mid week so he slept for a few days to try to get healthy for the promised bbq boat ride. We both pictured a cute solo boat tour, cook some fish, do some fishing, watch the sunset. He didn’t want to miss it! Or didn’t want to miss what we were imagining, more accurately.

It started off rough. The couple who runs the tour have clearly been doing it for a while and there is a certain element of….playfulness here. Lots of shouting from the husband to create excitement while throwing in a few dirty jokes. There were silly hats. There was teasing. And shouting. Pretty far from our twinkly imaginings.

We were with a young German couple and a foursome that turned out to be a couple from Bosnia via Norway and her parents, who were on their first trip out of Europe! Quite cool.

We took a smaller boat to a small tower set in the river with a paddle wheel on it that Scott and the young German guy peddled and used their hands while being shouted and cheered by the host husband. I wasn’t sure what the result of this would be but slowly, slowly slowly the 4 posts rose out of the river holding a huge square fishing net! A few small fish flopped around at the base of it. Fishing!

We collected the fish with the help of one of the fisher women, shuffling them around the net to reach a hole that was further up and straining them into a small bowl.

We got into a 3rd basket boat and paddled with another elderly lady (ripped I’m sure), and chanted ‘hey la hey lay’ to keep time and paddle. Reader, this is the most exercise I’ve had in about 6 weeks. YIKES. I am weak.

We tried fishing for crabs amidst the coconut groves and then headed back to the main boat to enjoy some lo lot (spiced meat wrapped in betel leaves and grilled), veggies on a skewer and chicken and pork skewers. There were baguettes and beer and a beautiful setting. This was when it got good. Just ignored the freeway above us. We chatted with our fellow passengers, sharing stories of good restaurants and outings and ate some dragon fruit and oranges while the sun set.

A serious game of bladder roulette began after a while as the information spread that there was no bathroom on board. This is genuinely a killer strategy for timing out your outings as the host. Whoever asks to go back first, trip’s over! Who’s it gonna be???

Who do you think it was dear reader? And who do you think pinned it on the elderly mother of the couple? And who has 2 thumbs?

We’ve spent this week floating around a bit, going for more fittings and managing the closing of many businesses for the Lunar New Year. MANY restaurants and shops close for folks to go and celebrate with their families. We took a long walk home last night as there were not many working for Grab, the Uber of SE Asia.

The local market was so crammed on the last day (also why were WE there?), a scooter caught the hat I had hanging from an elastic on my bag and ripped it off!

The streets are draped in flowers and potted trees decorated with lights and wishes for the new year. At midnight on the 16th, locals take turns setting off their own fireworks so it turns into a 20 minute show where you just turn and turn on the street and they carry on so long! Our own host brought out their box, stood about 20 feet away with his family and us about 40 feet away and watched the fire bloom!

We head back to Danang tomorrow and will carry on with a few day trips before flying to Ho Chi Minh City next week!

Here’s some laundry I saw drying next door:

The other list in my phone at the moment are the nationalities we’ve met and chatted with! In no particular order…

Canada

Finland

Denmark

France

Lebanon

Israel

US

Australia

Sweden

England

Hungary

Iran

Lithuania

Austrian

Swiss

Ukraine

Germany

Bosnia

Serbia

Phillipines

Until next time! Xo

Hoi An Munchies

We did well here! Took a cooking class, found a few delicious street sites. It’s the Lunar New Year here this week so many shops and restaurants are closed for 3-10 days(!!). Imagine that in Canada. I can’t.

Street pork & rice with the locals in an alley. Always delicious

Local market - custard apples, longhan, mandarins, dragon fruit, milk apples, mangos, pineapple, guava, rose apples

There are so many meat vendors in the market, and our guide assured us that nothing goes to waste if it doesn’t sell. They grind it down and make pate/sausage wrapped in banana leaf that is used in banh mi or at home in slices for meals. You can see the metal mold below.

Many many MANY types of shrimp paste. Scott would love to bring some home but the packaging doesn’t allow for it (not to mention the risk of it bursting - ick. In the green banana wraps is fermented pork, kind of sour and served as a side snack in some restaurants.)

We found a killer clay pot restaurant and found out they offered cooking classes so of COURSE we signed up after having a hot, spicy, delicious clay pot chicken & ginger. Imagine loving something at a restaurant and learning how to make it the next day from the chef! What a world!

Nem Lui - ground pork with spices and wrapped around sugar cane stems

Cau Lao noodles (cow low-rhymes), one of our most favourite dishes we’ve had. Vietnamese 5 spice, bbq sauce, smoked noodles and crispy fried rice crackers. DEADLY.

Salad rolls - learned the secret to rice paper - dip once in room temp water,shake it off, put on a plate. Repeat. If you soak it too long or use hot water, the rice paper loses its stickiness, which is why my salad rolls have been falling apart for many years…

Ginger chicken clay pot. Words cannot.

We took a boat ride and did some fishing, here is a coconut in its original form.

Chicken Pho from the noodle house, simple, clean, delicious. Prices were higher given that it is a holiday and it is in the tourist zone.

By that I mean instead of $4 it was $6. ;)

Your accomplished chef(s)

Until next time!

Xo

Hue to Hoi An

Hey pals!

We’ve been in Hoi An now for 6 days after close to 2 weeks in Hue. Our last week in Hue we hit up a few museums as it rained for a few days, did a food tour, a coffee class, and got lost in the An Bang cemetary City of Ghosts. So, normal things y’know?

Hue was lovely, many folks we’ve talked to and things we’ve read have said there’s not much to do there or to only spend 2 days but we didn’t find that. Every town and city has much to offer if you have the time to spend, and luckily we do.

Our host took us on a full day tour with multiple stops, one of which was the above named cemetary. In Vietnam the belief is the greater the shrine, the better the afterlife, so people spend anywhere between $30,000 to $200,000 on these mausoleums. The ceramic work is out of this world beautiful and we found the piles of broken cups and plates that are the source of this beauty. I also enjoyed the casual nature of seeing this trade in the flesh, marvelling at the size and intricacies of these shrines while also passing a guy in a hammock with a cardboard box over his head and phone so he can see it on his break (presumably).

After telling us to walk down the road and ‘turn left to see the big one’, (there was a lot of emphasis on ‘the big one, the big one’, our host drove to wherever he was meeting us and we hiked down the road.

Now, dear reader. It is 30 degrees. There is not a cloud in the sky and we are walking down a dirt road with no end in sight and mausoleums on either side. After seeing that the turn in the road was quite far down we (foolishly?) decided to cut into the cemetary and perhaps shorten the walk a bit. It is beautiful and quiet and very, very, hot. We found a little stream and hopped over that and found a bit of shade to take breaks. We did find a main road (all surrounded by shrines, PS) and another tourist taking a few photos. We found a Vietnamese family coming back from a close by beach who invited us for beers (should’ve said yes) and walked to where the endless sandy beach was. We were getting a bit grouchy looking for ‘the big one’ -because, dear reader, THEY ALL SEEM BIG. Bigger than any grave I’ve ever seen at home. As big as a house.

We ended up messaging our host as we weren’t sure where we were supposed to meet him and dropping a pin to show him where we were. He came a kilometre down the road to pick us up and then brought us back to show us ‘the big one’. Which, yes, was big, and bigger than any that we had seen so far.

The kicker was, when we got back in the car and started driving, we saw the place where he had dropped us off was about 30 METERS FROM WHERE WE HAD STARTED. Lord. Sometimes Scott and I just say “the big one” to make each other laugh.

We got to stop by a house where a mother and daughter were making the conical hats for the locals. They sell for approx $4 and take about 4 hours to make and they make 3-4 hats/day. I believe they last for 2-3 years.

We took a little ride in a lagoon to see the fish farms and marvel at the huts that folks sleep in 10 feet above the water in their harvest season.

We left Hue and our lovely host family on Saturday to drive 100 km down the road to Hoi An. This trip took 3 hours as the max speed on the highway is 50-80 km/hr but you also go through many towns and twists so it’s a lot of stop and go. Hard to imagine taking 3 hours to drive 100 km in Alberta…

Hoian is tourist Mecca. Very different from Hue. It grew to fame for the beautiful old town and the many, many, MANY custom tailors, shoe and bag makers and the lantern boats every night on the river. Many tourists bus in just for the evening to frequent the markets and many locals are in the tourist trade as it is very powerful here.

Many of the online reviews of Hoi An are quite dismissive, saying that there are too many people and sellers are too aggressive. Scott and I take it all in stride. We aim to have our own experience of places and yes, there are so many people down by the river in the evening. Many of the sellers are selling the same types of things and the haggling culture is real here though I’m not great at it and the difference in cost is usually only a few dollars so to hold back feels a bit gross. (Though do ask me about how much I’ll haggle over after I’ve had a few beers - ha!).

And there is much to Hoi An past the ancient town and lantern river. We did a food tour the other night where we met a 70 year old man who has been making rice noodles for 60 years by hand. He might weight 100 lbs and is ripped like a panther (as Scott would say). We met another lady who is 68 and sells 50 kg of bean sprouts everyday that is grown in fresh sand (only once! And then the sand gets changed!). We got to taste some and they were the freshest, crunchiest, most glorious bean sprouts of my life. We ate a warm, black sesame pudding on the street that was initially sold to the locals by a man who lived to 108 and his wife (still alive) who is 105. Their daughter sells it now. How old must she be??? I didn’t ask. My other question is, as our guide told us the next generation isn’t interested in doing this work, what will happen to all this food artistry? Will it come back around in 20 years like knitting and pickling?

The locals in the market are shy but usually friendly if you greet them with a “xin cao!” And a smile. We’ll try to hit the market again before Sunday as I believe it will be closing for 4-5 days for Tet (Lunar new year) celebrations.

As we know the importance of taking a little time off from each other, Scott did a knife making workshop where they formed knives made from the metal of bombs left behind during the American war.

We are getting a few items of clothes made and even that is such a novel experience. The measuring, the fabric picking, the pricing. On our food tour we walked quickly down some to the back streets and alleys and saw the folks (mostly men) sewing the hundreds of items that people order. They were typically shirtless, barefoot and there were piles of fabric scraps on the floor. Quite something to see.

We did a wonderful cooking class yesterday and made the best best BEST ginger clay pot chicken. Thankfully Scott has all the tools for such a dish at home (but of course he assures me he needs a few more things ;) ). Today we will relax a bit and then head out on a BBQ basket boat tour - what will it be like? Who knows!

Thanks for following along - xoxo

Hue’s World! Hue’s World! Party Time! Delicious!

Beef noodle salad with rice crackers - my fave

(there’s a reason it’s been on here once already…)

We did a cute coffee class one afternoon and drank 4 coffees (!!!) -

Scott and I were both vibrating…

Mystery street bun bao - pork? And veggies and hot and fresh

A fun mystery snack - we thought all thinly sliced sweet potato deep fried but there was a mystery flavour and eventually we found the banana part!

On a full day tour with our home stay host, we stopped by a local market. Folks were friendly and chatty and let us wander around their completely beautiful daily bounty!

One of the other stops that day was for crispy egg pancake, and you can pick your toppings! This one had a whole fish - probably caught that day…)

The last stop on our food tour one night was for che cam, a syrup-y drink where you can pick your mix-ins. We had taro, banana and coconut - DELISH.

Ok, so, we’ve been eating quite local and all Vietnamese for over a month now! I haven’t missed bread too much as the banh mi is delicious but I’m truly a prairie girl at heart. We decided to splash out tonight in Hoi An to try some brisket burgers and corn ribs. Scott gave it a 3.5/5. Good, but not as good as beef at home… The ketchup has a pinky hue, no?

Our sweet hosts presented us with a honeymoon cake on the last night of our stay - so sweet of them!

Flavours are a mystery but maybe orange, chocolate & maybe…pistachio? The green wasn’t matcha but we couldn’t quite identify it.

More to come! We arrived in Hoi An yesterday, land of lanterns, tailors and new friends from Blackfalds (!!) (AB, for those out of province…).

Xo

You Can Go Your Own Hue

Hue! It’s Hue! We came the right Hue! No Hue! And other phrases that sound like way…

We took the train from Danang to Hue about 2 weeks ago. It was the ‘Heritage train’ which meant a bit more of a scenic route along the ocean at points and also a train car where they were performing….something? In Vietnamese, loud backing track, pretty poppy…

When you travel with your spouse or friend as an extrovert, you tend to crave interactions with more and different people after a few weeks so of course I struck up a conversation with a nice Ukrainian guy along with a Swiss couple sitting in front of them. We exchanged stories about where we’d been and where we were headed. My fave part of traveling!

It’s the same on any tours or classes, you have a few new friends for an hour or 2 and then you never see them again. In my 20s I probably would have insisted on taking their street address and email and phone number and being their best friend until we were both dead but who has that kind of energy mid-life?

When we were booking our DeMilitarized Zone tour, Scott suggested we book a private tour and looked at him over my glasses dubiously. “No Scott” I said “I need to talk to literally anybody else for a little while - k love you”. He understands.

Anyway - we checked into a little apartment we found on booking.com. It was in quite a big complex and it seemed a little rough and dirty on the outside but the apartment was ok. Lots of delicious local places to try out and locals to smile and say hi to. Unfortunately we noticed the smell of sewage pretty quickly and didn’t stay the full week - the joys of travel…

Hue is a pretty, small city. It was the site of major conflict during the American war.

We toodled around the Hue Imperial City for a few hours, the places housing the imperial family during the Nguyen dynasty. I won’t lie, I can’t keep track of the many dynasties we read about when in SE Asia. The imperial city itself is close to 1300 acres so naturally we hired a giant golf cart to carry us around. It was designated as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1993.

Our hostess My (Me) has been a great help, making us delicious breakfast every day and suggesting a bunch of delicious places to eat. (See previous post for food pics and descriptions). We consume 1-2 coffees a day and tend to get a bit snacky in the afternoon so we’ve hit the local grocery store quite a few times now. The fun is just picking a bunch of random things and seeing what they are. Recent faves include choco-pies (SE Asia’s answer the wagon wheel) and sweet rice crackers. A lot of the familiar brands of chocolate are made with milk powder here so if you want the good stuff you gotta spend the good money.

The stores displays for Tet (Lunar New Year) are really starting to ramp up with carefully constructed towers of gift bags and boxes, red-coloured cases of beer and pop, kit-Kats with a Year of the Horse theme on the outside. Every company gets in on it. It falls on Feb 16/17 this year and we’re not sure where we’ll be yet so once in a while one of us says “we should book a place for Tet soon” and the other says “yeah”. Eventually this will devolve into full out panic. It’ll be fun! It’ll be fun…

We’ve done a cooking class and an afternoon tea along the Perfume River, I’ve had 2 shirts and some pants custom made and found a hat to fit my gargantuan head, which I did NOT expect to happen in Vietnam. I was happily trying on the hats the saleslady kept pulling out for me at the clothes market, convinced she wouldn't have one big enough, but of course she did and of course I probably overpaid for it. By that I meant I paid $15 but probably should’ve paid $10. So. It’s…whatever…Haggling is very intimidating for this Canadian…unless I’ve had a few beers. Then I will haggle over .50. (10,000 Vietnamese Dong). Ask me about this later…

When we did our DMZ tour one of our stops was the Vinh Moc tunnels, a series of tunnels that were built between 10-30m underground to shelter people from the intense bombing in that area. The total length is nearly 2000m with 6 entrances to the tops of the hills and 7 entrances to the South China Sea. The tunnels are 1.5m tall and about 1m wide so folks our height need to crouch for the duration.

I’m quite claustrophobic so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it but I stayed in the back and left lots of room in front of me so I could keep moving. It was something else. 1200 people lived there for about 6 years and approximately 16 babies were born in them. They had wells, kitchens and a ‘maternity ward’. Taking pictures making heart signs with our hands and smiling felt a bit weird, y’know?

It’s been raining the last few days so of course we’ve bought a couple of plastic raincoats, one which I lost and the other I’ve ripped. We’ve hit a couple of museums and gift shops and are heading out on a food tour later - maybe they can show us something we haven’t eaten yet? I get some surprised looks in my tank tops when it’s raining and 22 degrees here. Chilly for the locals…

Tomorrow we’ll do a coffee class and if the weather gets nicer again we’ll head to the lagoon with our host for a tour. We head to Hoi An on Saturday in search of more adventures! Love to you!

Xoxo

Pho Real???

Hello from Hue! (Hway)

We’ve been here about a week and eating this town to the ground. Feels more successful here but perhaps we’re just getting the hang of things now… It helps to have a homestay host who tells us where to go. :) Speaking of, our lovely hostess makes us breakfast each morning with lots of options! Beef Noodle soup, omelettes, fresh bread, freshly squeezed OJ, fresh fruit, coffee - feeling pretty lucky!

Breakfast at Lam’s Garden Boutique Homestay

We did a cooking class that felt quite authentic! After we’d cook each course we would sit to eat and our teacher would sit in the corner of the room on her phone.

Spring rolls! The cooked ones drain standing on the ones still cooking - a spring roll waiting room, if you will.

Mixed mushrooms & glass noodle stir fry:

So much garlic - so delicious.

Coconut coffee in the market - see my impatient hands in the background.

I booked us an afternoon tea on the Perfume River (because of course I did) to pretend I was a princess. Scott happily complied.

Our host recommended this restaurant down the road - steamed rice wraps with thinly sliced roast pork, basil and lettuce with peanut sauce & chili. (Pineapple juice to drink, natch.)

Kind of a petite spring roll stuffed with minced pork, woodear mushrooms, shrimp, vermicelli and spices and served with a simple fish sauce dip with lots of garlic.

Beef with fried noodles

One of my faves, beef salad with tons of veg and a sweet and salty lime fish sauce dressing with rice crackers, lots of garlic and herbs

And of course - Scott’s fave - salt coffee. I’m still determining mine. Maybe coconut coffee? Maybe egg coffee? Maybe any coffee?

Xoxo

Danang - Don’t Get Distracted!

Hey pals!

The night before we left Taipei we did a food tour with Cyndi, tried fermented tofu (pictured below - stinky on the streets, way milder dirty socks taste in your mouth…), soup dumplings, oyster omelettes. Lu Rou Fan -famous Taiwanese dish- soy-braised pork belly or minced pork served over steam rice below:

I was stunned by the young woman who was on a 13 hour layover from Manila to the US who climbed a mountain and booked a food tour in her layover. Oh to be young….

Our last day we dined on fried chicken, wandered through the park and picked up some dessert & coffee - Scott was jealous of these workers grabbing a wee siesta after lunch at their work site.

Red Powder Puff flower

Vietnam!

After a brief delay in the our flight, we climbed onto TigerAir in the front row aka ‘for tall people row’ and flew to Danang. It’s the 3rd largest city in Vietnam and carries the energy of such a place!

A million scooters & cars, rules of road seem to be the bigger the vehicle, the more right of way you have. As a pedestrian you are at the bottom of the heap. No one will pause for you at a crosswalk so you step out and hope for the best. Don’t step out in front of vehicles, they don’t pause or swerve. The bikes will move around you and you around them. If I feel nervous, in my head I recite “trust trust energy energy”. So far this prevented severe injury and death so I’m gonna go with it.

It is winter here. That means temps 19-26 degrees. So of course I, along with all the other tourists, am wearing a tank top and shorts while all the locals are wearing light puffer jackets or long sleeved shirts and pants.

We tried our first Banh mi (Vietnamese sub) at a local restaurant that employs folks who are hearing impaired. The bread was fresh and crunchy, the Vietnamese coffee was sweet and powerful, and our food experiences have just gotten better over the last week.

Bun Cha

Things we have learned:

how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in Vietnamese (phonetically ‘sin chow’ and ‘gong oon’)
the better the restaurant, the lower the chairs. This one’s tough for Scott as he loves great food but he also loves to sit in a comfortable chair while he eats it. On our food tour, some of our chairs (stools) were 12”. If you were lucky they had backs on them. These places always had the best food.

the markets are enormous. ENORMOUS. It is hard to know where to begin amidst the piles of clothes, toys, snacks,coffee, kitchen tools, fruit, vegetables, wet markets, etc.

Egg coffee is delicious. As is salt coffee. Strong, sweet coffee with a cloud-like layer of whipped cream, condensed milk and a touch of salt.
Food here is cheap. 2 Vietnamese subs + 2 coffees at the place around the corner was $9
The more locals in a restaurant, the better the food. They will fit much better on the tiny stools than we ever will.
Our knees work, as exemplified by scrambling around Marble Mountain. This is a mountain that has hundreds of steps of all different heights. Covered in caves and temples and incredible carvings out of the mountain. The tallest point requires you to maneuver your way up NOT steps, just loose rock. Worth it, somewhat terrifying

This is all carved out of the mountain…Wild!

Scott can find a kitchen store in every city.

($17 for this small haul)

Laundry service is $1/kg. If you want less scent, ask for no fabric softener (I forgot this was a thing!)

Things we are learning

the more expensive the food, the worse it will be
eyes on the sidewalk when you walk. Loose pavement and holes and lots of garbage
marble is slippery to climb
if you find a restaurant you like, just go to that one for that dish. Don’t get lost in the google reviews
The need to stretch before/after a walking day
Try every Banh mi. I ordered one the other day that came with a sizzling skillet of sliced pork/beef and a fried egg

We’ve wandered around a few museums and thrift shops, tried a bunch of restaurants and did a food tour with Anh, a handful of Americans and a couple from Edmonton. (Of course!). We’ll hit up the my son sanctuary (UNESCO heritage site!) and the lady Buddha in the next couple of days. Mayyyybe try to hit the gym at this hotel. Maybe not.

The greenery here, of course, is incredible. So nice to look walk around the wildness of unfettered plants and trees.