January 30, 2012

Some of the restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City are very fancy. Ngoc Sung where we ate Saturday night was one of those. It's a seafood restaurant and the lower level had long tables, outdoor seating, and a row of fish tanks on the wall with live seafood. There were four of us, so we took an elevator upstairs to another level which was air-conditioned. It had a bar on one end and several tables in a very modern setting. We noticed a third level upstairs too that also looked elaborately decorated. Our meal consisted of a red clam salad with small really hot red peppers, scallops Saint Jacque which was scallops in a cheese sauce and put back in the shell, and live shrimp in coconut juice. Of course they weren't really live, but they were gigantic. The plate had a ring of fire below a coconut shell and the shrimp were draped over the edge of the coconut. There were small plates of nuc mam, more of those red peppers, and a salt and pepper combination for dipping. For desert we had 4 scoops of ice cream - vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and coffee and little cups of coffee. Ron and I had a glass of Chardonnay with our meal and Carie and her mother had soda water in which they added a sugar syrup from a tiny pitcher and lemon juice from another tiny pitcher.

Yesterday was Sunday. The maids don't come on Sunday. I actually had to make my own bed and clean up my own kitchen! I hate that!  We mostly stayed in - caught up on some e-mails, swam in the pool, read, and tried to keep my leg elevated. It's still swollen. We watched the final of the Australian Open which was the longest final match on record, and retired early.