February 4, 2012

I seem to be blogging a lot about the food here, but there is such a difference between here and home that I am amazed by everything we see and eat! Yesterday we walked around our neighborhood and found a small restaurant called Bread & Roses. It was very good. Ron had seafood pasta and I had a sandwich. My foot did real well. So we decided to go to the Co-Op market again. Ron pointed out a sign that said NO CAMERAS, so I guess the last pictures I took were illegal and I better not do it again. There are so many items at this market that I have never seen before and have no idea what they are. We needed some fruit, so I picked out a beautiful watermelon. Their watermelon is wonderful - sweet and sometime seedless. I also got a dragon fruit, a pommelo, some limes, some nectarines, and some real small bananas.

You can't separate the bananas, but these only cost about 25 cents. They look pretty green, but they'll ripen in no time.

We bought some vegetables - lettuce, onions, tomatoes and garlic. They had some good looking pork tenderloins and the chicken was either whole (with head and feet still attached), or in pieces. We got some drumsticks but I'm not sure how I'm going to fix them yet. We also got some frozen shrimp that I can maybe stir fry. I needed some rice. But wholly cow - the rice comes in HUGE bags and I knew I didn't need that much. I found a small bag but I'm not sure what I got. It looks like our rice back home, but it says Nep Thom Thai. The rice here is very sticky and not fluffy like mine. I also needed some flour. But the only small bag of flour I could find (that I could understand) was High Wheat Flour or Bot Mi. On the back it says "Special in Sponge Cake. Suitable for baking soaked seafoods." Not sure about that.

We meet Carie after her work at a bar called Ice Blue. It seemed to have mostly Ex-pats as patrons - lots of Australians. The waitresses were beautiful all dressed in black and in this really small bar there must have been 6 or 7 of them. There were several men in the back playing darts. Then we took a cab to a restaurant called Al Fresco's and shared a couple of salads and a marguerite pizza. Sharing is the way to go here. You order several things and then everyone gets to try whatever they want. I like that.

We took a taxi to Carie's house and then the driver continued on to our apartment. When we drove next to the Saigon River, our taxi stopped for traffic, when all of a sudden the car in front of us started backing up and WHAM! hit out taxi full force. Our driver got out and started yelling but left the cab in neutral and it started rolling backward, and WHAM, we hit the car behind us! They all started yelling at one another, our driver got on his phone and called someone and all this time the meter was still running! I said "Let's get out of here!" So we paid the driver and started walking and only got 1/2 block when another taxi pulled up and took us the rest of the way home. Ron comes to Vietnam every summer bringing students for Study Abroad and said he's never been it by a motorbike or gotten in a taxi accident. I guess it just must be me!

My foot was a little swollen when we got home, but I'm so pleased that I was able to do a lot of walking today with no pain. I just have to take it one day at a time.