The sun finally came out (albeit a little weakly) this afternoon. It’s warmer today too. The week so far has been grey and a bit foggy, but very mild – temperatures around 15 degrees. This afternoon, it felt closer to 20. It’s quite funny – most days in meetings, I’ve been wearing short-sleeved sweaters, and not bothering with a coat, and all the Vietnamese women keep coming up and asking me if I’m cold! They’re all swaddled in puffy jackets and think it’s chilly!
Finally escaped the hotel around 4.15 and had a mad hour and a half racing around the Old Quarter, doing some (possibly final) bits of shopping. Have I mentioned yet how bad the air quality is here? After an hour or so of walking around in the city centre, I get a heavy feeling in my chest – almost like there’s soot in my lungs. Others have noticed it too – it’s awful. Can’t imagine what it’s like for people who live here.
Got back to the hotel around 6 pm to meet Tho, the brother of our former secretary at work. He was very kind, and brought me a bag full of fresh mangoes, which I shared with the others here. Then at 6.30, Thao arrived at the hotel again, so she, H. and I could go have dinner. First, we stopped at the theatre downtown where there are nightly performances of the Hanoi ‘water puppets’ – tried to get tickets for this evening, but they were sold out, so we’ll go tomorrow instead.
Then we jumped back in our cab and headed for one of the outlying districts in the city, to a restaurant which is one of Thao’s favourites. It was just a neighbourhood restaurant, but quite good, and very typically Vietnamese, according to Thao. It had bamboo furniture and low tables – we sat at chairs downstairs, but the dining room upstairs had even lower tables, and everyone sits on floor cushions. On shelves all around the walls of the restaurant were these rows of large jars, filled with dark-coloured liquid and foreign objects:
Anyway, we got some local beer, then Thao ordered all the food. After we’d tasted everything, she told us what it was. With a moment’s hesitation, we dove in. First, we had wonderful fresh spring rolls with beef and greens, in rice wrappers, and with lots of fish sauce for dipping. Next came little bowls of soup with mushrooms, vegetables and eel (!). There was peppered tofu, lightly battered and deep-fried, then a platter of thinly-sliced, seared goat with sesame seeds. The final dish was rice noodles with beef and lots of stir-fried veggies. I must admit, I was not wild about the goat – I’ve had it once before and it has a very strong flavour and is quite chewy. But it wasn’t awful or anything – and everything else we ate was really quite nice.
At the end, Thao brought out some fresh fruit she’d bought at the market, for us to try. I’m going to have to find out the names of them later today – the first one looked like a tiny kiwi, but grows in bunches on stems like grapes, and once peeled is a little grape-like. The other was red with white segmented flesh, and absolutely delicious – H. says it’s called mangosteen (sp?) in English. Honestly, I’m going to do a whole blog entry just about the fruit here – I keep taking pictures of it. It’s so good.
We settled up our bill (a whopping US $8 for all three of us), bid Thao goodbye, and got a taxi back to our hotel. Still early (only 9 pm) but I decided on a quiet evening of reading and TV in my room, and writing this blog entry. I was awake at 5 am again this morning so I’m pretty tired! Plus, tomorrow will be a very long day.
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