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My hands are tingly this evening, so I'll try to keep this short...
Breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall:
Chicken and fish soup with "yellow noodles" as my stepmum described it. Her English isn't great; what she meant was "egg noodles":
It was delicious. The soup was especially rich.
I went to use the toilets and met two adorable little kittens who accepted my chin-scritches and then, when I went on to find the toilet, promptly pounced each other.
Rule #1 about eating at hole-in-the-wall places in Asia: if you want absolute cleanliness don't eat at the hole-in-the-walls. I passed the 'sinkroom' on my way back - the bowls were being cleaned off in a bucket on the floor. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that.
Lunch, by contrast, was at the Park Hyatt with a business colleague of Dad's. Swankorama:
Some really good baffling in the restaurant: it dulls the noise that you usually get in a restaurant full of people. (And I've dined in plenty of upper-class places where you had to yell across the table to be heard.)
See the bricks behind my dad and stepmum? Apart from adding texture to the walls, they're also acting as further sound baffles to keep the noise down. Very clever design.
And the food is typically what you'd see in a high-end restaurant in Australia:
Okay, so there were snails, which aren't usually on the menu in Australia. They were tasty. If I have issues with them, it's mostly the texture, which tends chewy:
Here is me on a motorbike, with an accidental photobomb of Vietnamese lady:
She's probably thinking, crazy tourist girl! And no, I'm not driving - my Dad is, and I'm taking photos when I spot something that wants snapping.
Such as this lovely French-influenced mansion...with a whole bunch of junk in the yard, and a safe-shop right in front:
That's one of the sad things about Vietnam architecture: they cast out the French after WWII, and then pretty much wrecked a lot of the French-influenced stuff. Understandable, IMO, but also saddening. My dad could (and did) rant about the Presidential Palace (which was apparently built as a model of the Palace at Versailles) which was knocked down and built in the 1960s 'modern' style. Let's just say: he's an architect, and he's not a fan of the 1960s 'modern' style...
This is more the style of most Vietnamese buildings, a kind of hodgepodge of various modern styles above street level, and a great clump of squeezy shops below:
Squeezy shops with wonderful fabrics:
No, I didn't buy any that day. But I think I might buy some tomorrow (we're going to check out another fabric market) and send a package home. I'm debating whether I'm going to need even the second of the two warm things I brought.
Oh, and for something else that I thought was worth snapping on the ride to the markets:
Research shows that this is the Tân Định Church and was built during the French Occupation period, in the early part of the 20thC.
I think I'm going to run a day behind for these updates; partly because it's actually kind of tiring to put them together.
Breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall:
Chicken and fish soup with "yellow noodles" as my stepmum described it. Her English isn't great; what she meant was "egg noodles":
It was delicious. The soup was especially rich.
I went to use the toilets and met two adorable little kittens who accepted my chin-scritches and then, when I went on to find the toilet, promptly pounced each other.
Rule #1 about eating at hole-in-the-wall places in Asia: if you want absolute cleanliness don't eat at the hole-in-the-walls. I passed the 'sinkroom' on my way back - the bowls were being cleaned off in a bucket on the floor. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that.
Lunch, by contrast, was at the Park Hyatt with a business colleague of Dad's. Swankorama:
Some really good baffling in the restaurant: it dulls the noise that you usually get in a restaurant full of people. (And I've dined in plenty of upper-class places where you had to yell across the table to be heard.)
See the bricks behind my dad and stepmum? Apart from adding texture to the walls, they're also acting as further sound baffles to keep the noise down. Very clever design.
And the food is typically what you'd see in a high-end restaurant in Australia:
Okay, so there were snails, which aren't usually on the menu in Australia. They were tasty. If I have issues with them, it's mostly the texture, which tends chewy:
Here is me on a motorbike, with an accidental photobomb of Vietnamese lady:
She's probably thinking, crazy tourist girl! And no, I'm not driving - my Dad is, and I'm taking photos when I spot something that wants snapping.
Such as this lovely French-influenced mansion...with a whole bunch of junk in the yard, and a safe-shop right in front:
That's one of the sad things about Vietnam architecture: they cast out the French after WWII, and then pretty much wrecked a lot of the French-influenced stuff. Understandable, IMO, but also saddening. My dad could (and did) rant about the Presidential Palace (which was apparently built as a model of the Palace at Versailles) which was knocked down and built in the 1960s 'modern' style. Let's just say: he's an architect, and he's not a fan of the 1960s 'modern' style...
This is more the style of most Vietnamese buildings, a kind of hodgepodge of various modern styles above street level, and a great clump of squeezy shops below:
Squeezy shops with wonderful fabrics:
No, I didn't buy any that day. But I think I might buy some tomorrow (we're going to check out another fabric market) and send a package home. I'm debating whether I'm going to need even the second of the two warm things I brought.
Oh, and for something else that I thought was worth snapping on the ride to the markets:
Research shows that this is the Tân Định Church and was built during the French Occupation period, in the early part of the 20thC.
I think I'm going to run a day behind for these updates; partly because it's actually kind of tiring to put them together.
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I think the fabrics I photographed were silks - or possibly polyester satins, although I'm thinking silks.
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The church is a riot! I wonder how they keep it that bright color.
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If I stop and think about it, I have a ridiculous range of interests. :)