January 25, 2012

Did I mention that we have maid service here at the Somerset apartments? Every day the maids come and clean the bathrooms, replace the towels, they make the bed, wash any dishes I have in the sink, and clean the floors. During the last few days of Tet, the maids have had the days off, so I have had to do everything myself! There is a restaurant here and a small store and they have both also been closed. The restaurant does open up a short time for breakfast, but that's all. Last night we walked down the street (very carefully) and stopped in at a restaurant called Ocean Palace. We think it was more Chinese and the food was very good. They displayed ducks near the kitchen and had live fish tanks in case you order fish. We had a duck dish that was bar-b-qued, and a rice dish with shrimp and lobster along with some vegetables. We were almost finished when they brought our vegetable which was broccoli and a green onion of some sort. I passed on the onion. Then we ordered fried ice cream. It was chocolate incased in a sort of donut. Wonderful!
But today we took a cab back to Carie's house. After Vietnamese families have had the traditional Tet meal for 3 days, they fix chicken soup. We were invited to share this with them. There was a salad which was cabbage, chicken pieces and mint. In the center of the table was a big bowl of chicken soup which was made with rice and more creamy than my chicken soup. Next to the soup was a platter of chicken which she had boiled. The chicken had been cut into small pieces and the whole chicken was there. Even the feet! It was very tasty, but I didn't try the feet. They do use the whole chicken!
For desert they brought out some triangular shaped leaves wrapped in a very gummy substance made with coconut milk. It was sweet but chewy. Another one was made with green beans, but I didn't care for it at all. We had taken them a bottle of champagne but Ron, Carie and Luon had Coors Light. And there's always bottled water to drink too.