This morning Phuoc made a brown rice noodle soup with shrimp and lots of veg. This was followed by the inevitable milk fruit. We have at least four a day. He scoops the centre out of the skin, which is the size of an orange, and adds condensed milk and ice cubes. There are stones in it and he watches to make sure Tuan Anh and I clean all the fruit off the stone before getting rid of it.
Around 10am Ngan picked me up to take me for a coffee along the riverside where we would sit in hammocks. Half an hour later we still hadn't found the place so we detoured to another location; she thinks they'd moved. I'm getting used to this in HCM - programmes being cancelled because places are either closed or open only at the weekend.
We went to a large park which had an agricultural theme based on an abandoned village. Walls had been built, with no roof, to look like empty homes. All around were mounds of rice stalks, ponds with lotus and water lily, restaurant areas and larger spaces for weddings. One wedding was going on while I was there. When I walked past, the groom was on his knees in front of the bride. People were laughing so I presume it was a performance for the guests. We only had a coconut as everything else on the menu cost a fortune. We were given a spoon so we could scoop out the flesh after drinking the water - the coconuts are kept in the fridge so it's a nice, cooling drink.
I'm hopeless with the money here because there are so many zeros; I think it's around 17,000 dong to the dollar. I do know though, that if there are three numbers before the three zeros then we aren't ordering that meal. Here, you have to get used to talking in the millions which totally befuddles me. The money's plastic too, so it slips and slides all over the place. Oh for the days of paper money.
We went for lunch to a vegetarian place and the food was delicious. Ngan decided I'd been eating too much meat since I arrived in Vietnam and she's most likely right. We had a braised tofu in a tomato sauce, mushroom and vegetable soup, a lovely dark brown rice, and another dish I couldn't identify. It went down well with a cup of ginger and honey tea.
The young folk, while at the homestay, had invited Loony, the man from Switzerland, to meet with us in a coffee shop one evening. A message was sent out on their Facebook page and 21 people showed up. He was asked to share why he was in Vietnam and his thoughts on the environment in the country. Seeing as he is an environmental agricultural engineer the talk was about the tradition of burning, the deforestation and monoculture, worm composting (which I kept hearing as warm composting). It was a lively time. We ordered a drink of some sort and had a question and answer session. 2 1/4 hours later I suggested we should wrap up as it was already 9.30pm and we still had to have dinner. As usual, we were flexible; we were going to have a shellfish dinner but decided it was too late so we just walked up the road and had a noodle soup meal with a sugar cane juice drink. After that it was on the way home on the motorbike. This time we went straight home as we didn't have to hunt for bread, tomatoes or anything else on the way. The three of us took off our shoes, cleaned our teeth and flopped into bed.
