What we did: French Quarter, sampled street food, planned Vietnam and India
Budget: 1,200,000 Dong/$60; Spent: 751,500 Dong/$36.66
Patty here.
Didn't realize how much I was missing my sister and my brother. We got to talk to Frank and Dan today on facetime for like an hour and we probably could have spent the whole afternoon talking. We caught up on life, showed them the street outside our guesthouse with the iPhone, and I tried desperately to get the attention of my dogs Paco and Max, but despite my best efforts, they could not care less I was on the phone :( ... :) Catching up with Frank and Dan made us both smile for the rest of the afternoon.
We slept in again, but this time I think we are fully caught up with sleep thanks a new strategy with the pillows. We decided to use the ends of the comforters as the pillows and both slept much better! I went to bed at 9pm while Jeff wrote the blog. We both didn't get up until 10:30am so over 13 hours of sleep made me very happy. We had breakfast and as I mentioned we spoke with Frank and Dan. It was about 1pm when we actually left the guesthouse. We decided to find lunch at a street food vendor before heading to the French Quarter of Hanoi. We ended up eating "banh cuon" which are steamed rice crepes filled with minced pork, mushrooms and ground shrimp. They came with an interesting dipping sauce. I kinda liked them, but Jeff hated them. Surprisingly he finished it all. It wasn't a lot of food though so we weren't totally satisfied. On our way out we saw a lady street vendor selling little bananas. Since we were still kinda hungry, we decided to buy two. Initially we were going to ask her to give us two for 10,000Dong ($0.50 CDN) but then I thought we should just see how many she gives us for that much. She ended up giving us 12 little bananas!! Funny, we later found out back at our hostel from Mary that that's how much locals pay! We had a really good laugh because she probably assumed we knew the fair price of a bunch of bananas and that we would not settle for less. Little did she know we would have bought two for that price.
We decided to drop off the bananas back at our guesthouse at which point Mary gave us the good news about our purchase. We laughed all the way up the 4 flights of stairs to our room. The climb is already an entire day's worth of exercise and Jeff and I are always completely out of breath once we reach the top. Fair to say after laughing and climbing we were ready to pass out. So we dropped off the bananas and mapped our way to the French Quarter. There was another street food vendor we wanted to try that was on the way so we headed there for a 2nd lunch ;) What can I say other than to quote my very smart mother who likes to say "some people eat to live, others live to eat".
We got to the next place called Bun Cha Nem Cua Be Dac Kim which serves a famous Vietnamese dish called "Bun Cha". The variety at this place is a combo of grilled pork patties or crab spring rolls with vermicelli noodles and fresh herbs. Jeff got the grilled pork and I got the crab spring rolls. We ended up sitting next to a nice couple from England. Their names were Chris and Juliette. We ended up having a good chat with them most of the time so I wasn't really paying attention to the food. Though I remember it was quite good. Only complaint was that the broth got cold super super quickly. The crab rolls were great too, but unfortunately they did have some remnants of shell inside them. Really good still. Jeff thought his was okay. If the broth had been hot it would have been 10 times better. The couple we met were just starting their tour through Vietnam which would take them from North to South in 2 weeks. They were engaged and planning a wedding a year from now so Juliette was telling me about how she was considering having her bridesmaid dresses tailored in Hoi An. Hoi An is said to have some of the best tailoring in Asia so that was a neat idea. Jeff and I are definitely hoping to do some shopping there as well. Hopefully for some work stuff. We talked to them a bit about Canada as well. They had both done a trip across Canada. Chris did it by Grey Hound bus!! How cool is that? I had no idea people actually did that. Kinda gives me a sense of pride. I mean I know we have beautiful things to see in Canada, but it's quite a long way, an enormous distance to travel, and it's quite expensive relative to other places in the world. Nice to hear people are drawn to Canada though. When we told them where we were from they even knew of Winnipeg. So suffice it to say we were impressed. They even taught us the difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Great Britain includes, England, Wales, and Scotland. The United Kingdom includes all three said countries plus Northern Ireland. Well ya learn something new everyday...
After this we were ready to walk to the French Quarter. In my mind, I had envisioned walking into a little version of Nice. Well, when we arrived in the French Quarter we didn't even really know it for sure. There were no signs of the French anywhere. No bakeries, no architecture, nada. We ended up walking through a little market and came across some beautiful dinnerware like plates, tea sets, corningware. The prices seemed quite good too. Though that may have been indicative of the quality. We didn't end up buying anything but we might down the road.
We wandered through the streets looking around. We popped into some electronics stores looking for USBs and memory cards since we are looking to send home our pictures to date. Prices weren't overly good though so we'll probably end up putting the pictures on DVDs and sending them home that way.
We still haven't done any planning of our India trip which is quickly approaching so we headed back to the Guesthouse to pick up our India Lonely Planet book and head to a bakery/cafe for a drink and to do some much needed planning. We got back and sat down and were offered some coffee so we hung out there for a bit reading through our book and deciding on a cafe. We chose a place called Kinh Do Cafe. According to our book it was featured on Catherine Deneuve's "Indochine" which apparently is a French film that was made in 1992 that was set in Colonial French Indochina during the 1930's-50's.
On our way there though as we were crossing a street some guy on a motorcycle stopped and commented on the Lonely Planet books I was carrying. He pointed at them and silly me I showed him the India book and he asked how much for it. At that point I got a creepy vibe and told him it wasn't for sale. Then he started asking if it was the newest edition and if he could see it. At this point I'm thinking the guy is gonna rob us. There is no doubt in my mind if we had given him the book he would have drove off with it. We stood there for a few more seconds as he tried to ask us again what year it was from. And I said I don't know, while Jeff was trying to look for the date for him. Then I grabbed Jeff and walked around his motorcycle and crossed the street. It was the first time I felt unsafe in Vietnam. Obviously no big deal, but it was how caught off guard I felt that was the most alarming combined with the fact that Jeff didn't seemed alarmed at all. Anyways we had a good talk after this and I really hope it was a learning experience for us before we head to India. When you're travelling there's a fine line you need to walk between being open and being careful. You can't assume that every stranger that comes up to you is trying to take advantage of you. I think that closes you off to people and possibly good experiences. At the same time though, you need to trust your gut and you need to have your guard up. So anyways, we're both learning and it's better to learn here than in India.
We made our way to the cafe and enjoyed 4 little pieces of different pastries all for under $3.50; A brownie tart (our fave), a sliver of chocolate cake, a vanilla eclair, and a piece of vanilla coconut pastry. After everything was said and done today, we have our trip to Cat Ba Island booked and we have an idea of where we want to go in India and how long it will take us. We're estimating we'll be in India for about 6-7 weeks. There's a bunch of places we want to see and Chandu told us about a festival that takes places only every 12 years that we will be there for so we'll have to plan our itinerary around this as well. We also want to do some volunteer work and the book provided us with some really exciting prospects. There are several that would be particularly beneficial to Jeff as they involve environmental and sustainable economic development projects.
India sounds like an enigma from what our book says of it. People jump between loving and hating it all at the same time. Sounds like it's going to be a crazy experience. But a very positive one hopefully.
Good night,
Patty
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