February 20, 2012

Ron is off all this week because his students are going on a field trip. So, we decided to take a few days ourselves and see some sights. I haven't been out of Ho Chi Minh City since I came here. Carie told us about a program called "Free and Easy" which Vietnam airlines is promoting. It's a package plan that includes airfare, hotel, transfers, and breakfast to many different places, and we want to be gone for 3 days. We chose to go to a town called Dalat which is north of here, in the mountains. So we walked down to a travel agent just down the street. The 2 women behind the desk took all of our information, found a flight that was acceptable, but when they tried to book a hotel for us, they said they couldn't do it and we'd have to walk down the street to the official Vietnam Airlines office. We took a number there and when it was our turn, the receptionist told us she couldn't help us either, that the "Free and Easy" office was next door. We walked next door, and sure enough, they had an actual "Free and Easy" counter to help us. So, we booked a trip to Dalat leaving Wednesday the 22nd early in the morning and return Friday afternoon the 24th.

The Lonely Planet travel guide says Dalat is mountainous with banana shaped Xuan Huong Lake in the middle, and the temperatures are cooler than Ho Chi Minh City which lends itself to many outdoor activities such as trekking, mountain biking, kayaking, canyoning, and rock climbing. It's also a veggie-grower's heaven, along with their famous strawberries, black currants, plums, persimmons and peaches.  Not to mention their heavily salted hot apricot drink??? Their Dalat wine is served all over Vietnam and we've bought the red several times and it's rather good.

Friday evening we took a cab to Carie's house and her mother fixed us a duck dinner that was out-of-this-world good.

There were big bowls of duck soup with big hunks of meat and noodles and then the duck was chopped up in chunks and we could eat it with our hands. She also served a mushroom dish with several kinds of varieties in a broth that was really good. We took them a couple of bottles of red wine from Chile that went very well with the meal. It was a great evening spending time with her family again. Her aunt and uncle joined us, and the uncle and Ron had a lengthy discussion about U.S. history even though he doesn't speak any English.

Saturday night we decided to walk down the street to a restaurant that looked rather nice. It is called Nón lá which means "cone hat." Two women opened up the door for us and another 2 women stayed right by the table while we ate attentively refilling our glasses, emptying our plates, and handing us napkins for the entire meal! We ordered a rice dish with seafood, barbecue pork ribs (which were really tiny) and chicken wings that were spicy.

I'm not sure what those little things on the plate next to the ribs were, but there were kinda good. For desert we had a fruit plate with watermelon, pineapple, guava, and Vietnamese cherries which I though were disgusting. They had so many seeds in them, that it was impossible to eat!

We're looking forward to our little out-of-town vacation on Wednesday.