Halong Bay, Vietnam (2008)

We got woken up the next day by the hotel staff at 4am; they had been trying to wake up room 402 and accidentally dialed us in 502. We were cranky but were able to get a few more hours of sleep before heading down to breakfast at 7:30am. The menu had several options on it, and we thought we could only choose one per person, but then we saw other people ordering multiple items. Anyway, Danny had pho and I had a crepe.

Our tour company (Huong Hai Junks) arrived to pick us up at 8:30am, and we started on our 3 hour bus ride to the docks at Halong Bay. There were a total of eight tourists on our bus, plus a few people who seemed to be with the tour company. One couple was from Columbus, Ohio; they were very talkative and friendly. Another couple was French-Vietnamese; the woman lived in LA and the man in Toulouse. The last couple was from Oregon, with a daughter living in California, so they were excited to learn that we were from the Bay Area too.

We finally arrived at the dock around noon, having made really good time. In fact, our driver was beyond crazy; he spent more time in the passing lane than in our lane. We were greeted by the sight of tons of tourists, and correspondingly many boats. We were checked off a list and herded onto a small boat with about 10-15 other people. Then, that boat tied up with our actual junk, and we hopped on board.

Our room turned out to be quite nice; although the "shower" was basically the entire bathroom. After dropping off our bags, we went upstairs to the dining room for lunch, where we were served juice, some wine (sweet and light), fresh shrimp, steamed clams, steamed crab, fried battered sweet potatoes, cooked cabbage, fried fish, sauteed squid and vegetables, and rice.


We set sail while we were eating, and I kept popping out to grab some photos, because the views were gorgeous.



After awhile a staff guy came by and said something about kayaking and changing. I thought he meant me, but stuck to my capris and tevas. It turned out that he meant himself, since he soon reappeared in a T-shirt and warmups, instead of his uniform. D and I were the only ones who had chosen the kayaking option, so when we stopped at the kayak shop we hopped off and the rest of the boat continued on to the beach. We kayaked around for about 30 minutes, and then rejoined the rest of the group on the beach, from which we climbed up some stairs to a pagoda with a great viewpoint.


Afterwards, we got back into our kayak and paddled to Luon Cave, past the Man's Head Island, Tortoise Island, a "goat" shaped rock and some other interesting formations. We ended up paddling for a good two hours, and then climbed back on the boat for a shower.


We had about an hour before dinner so we just sat around chatting with our fellow passengers as we watched the sun set on the bay. It was amazingly beautiful. One couple was from Paris, and other from Denmark. Another seemed to be speaking German, but I couldn't tell for sure. Several of them had personal tour guides with them.

For dinner, we had vegetable soup, giant fresh shrimp (even larger than at lunch), a cucumber salad, crabs stuffed with a crab mixture (very yummy!), fried calamari, fish cooked with tomatoes and onions (reminded me of escabeche, almost), and chicken sauteed with carrots and beans. We were amazed at the quality of the meals; all fresh seafood was delicious.

Afterwards we hung out on the upper deck for awhile enjoying the twilight, but soon went to bed, as there were mosquitoes around.


The second day of our tour started when we were called for breakfast around 7am. It was a continental breakfast; baguettes and pastries with jam and butter. Afterwards we were taken to a cave which was gorgeous and very well marked with displays. We took tons of photos there.


We got back on board around 9:30am and checked out so the staff could clean the room for the next group, who would come on as soon as we'd disembarked. We were served "brunch" around 10am; it started with ham and fried eggs, french fries, shrimp with veggies, fried squid, spring rolls, radishes and cabbage, and more. We got back to shore shortly after we finished eating, and got off just before noon.

We got back on the bus for our ride back to Hanoi, but halfway back we stopped for 30 minutes at a rip-off souvenir sweatshop warehouse-type place. It was really annoying there, but the drivers insisted we had to stay the full time despite the fact that no one was buying anything. We arrived back in Hanoi around 3:30pm, and checked back into our hotel. To our surprise, we were given a free room upgrade, from a standard ($35) room to a superior ($50) room! We guessed it was probably because of the 4am wakeup call fiasco. The room was a huge upgrade; it was much much larger and slightly nicer as well.

We stopped by the seamstress to pick up my ao doi, and then went back to Quan An Ngon for dinner (we'd gone to the branch in Saigon on our first night in Vietnam). We ordered bun bo hue (beef noodle soup; very spicy and very good), BBQ beef with salt and chili (also too spicy for Danny, but I loved it), and glutinous rice balls with mung bean (turned out to be similar to Chinese sesame balls). We'd learned that the "che" dessert drinks were delicious, so we ordered two: black bean with coconut, and jelly, tapioca, water chestnut, and pomegranate seed. Once again, everything was excellent.

Afterwards we went to check out the night market. We stayed there for a good hour and a half, and bought some cute souvenir magnets, Vietnamese cookies, postcards, bookmarks, and T-shirts, before heading home.

On our last day in Vietnam, we had a morning flight, so we didn't have much time after breakfast. We spent a little time walking around the area immediately outside our hotel, and bought one more silk embroidery picture, before catching the hotel car to the airport. We connected through Taipei and had just enough time to eat some beef noodle soup and pick up some Taiwanese pineapple cakes and sun cakes, before flying the rest of the way home.

Hanoi, Vietnam (2008)

It was another early flight to Hanoi, so we were up at 5:30am. The hotel didn't officially start serving breakfast until 6:30am, but we went down at 6am and guess what, they had almost everything ready. After breakfast we took our hotel car to the airport, checked in, and went through security. We were momentarily confused by our gate number, which was listed on the boarding pass as "Front Door". It turned out the airport had only one gate, and all flights were serviced by bus. The Vietnam Airlines flight was a bit bumpier this time, but despite only being an hour long, we were served a pork and cucumber sandwich and some chocolate.

After landing we found our car and drove about 45 minutes to our hotel. In the front passenger there was a girl who seemed to be a friend of the driver. She must have heard me speaking Mandarin to D, because she asked if we were Chinese. I told her that we were Taiwanese, and we chatted a bit in Mandarin. It turned out she had just come back from three years of studying Chinese in Guangzhou. Anyway, she suggested we check out the weekend night markets, and told us a little bit about Hanoi.

Traffic in Hanoi was even crazier than in Saigon; drivers were less accomodating of pedestrians and of other drivers. We got to our hotel, the Hanoi Elegance 2, around 10am. Again our room wasn't ready, so after a quick change in the lobby restroom, we stored our luggage and set out to explore the city.

First was the Museum of Ethnology, which was a very well-done and thorough presentation on the different ethnic groups that populated Vietnam. I especially liked the replicas of the various traditional houses. Then, after some trouble trying to flag down the right type of taxi so that we wouldn't get scammed (finally hailed a Hanoi Tourist Taxi), we headed to the Temple of Literature.


We ate lunch at Koto, another youth training non-profit restaurant, where we ordered passionfruit and mango lassi, an appetizer sampler, chao tom, and beef with morning glory. Afterwards we walked through the temple, checked out a nearby park, and then went to see the Ho Chi Minh complex.



The mauseleum wasn't open since it was after 11am already, but I'm not sure we'd have wanted to see a dead preserved dictator, anyway. We did visit the One-Pillar Pagoda, the Presidential Palace, the House on Stilts, and the Flag Tower (meh).




We decided to walk home, and along the way we saw yet another statue of Ho Chi Minh, lots of impressive looking buildings (I guessed embassies), and some military buildings with lots of security. In fact, I stopped to take a photo of some cool planes in a gated courtyard and we were quickly shooed away by a scary-looking uniformed guy.

As we neared our hotel, we stumbled across a pastry shop, where I bought a bag of about 15 Belgian macarons for less than $3. I also got some treats that tasted like Ferraro Rocher inside but had a green rice krispy-like exterior, and a coconut flake confection in the shape of a cone. All three were yummy, but the green one was my favorite.

We got a little lost in the Old Quarter trying to find our hotel again, as the streets were narrow, winding, and not well labelled, but eventually we found it, checked in, and showered.

For dinner we went to Hanoi Garden, across the Old Quarter, where I had soft shell crab (cooked with garlic, onion, chili, and basil) and D had grilled pork with coconut milk. We also split a sampler of six types of spring rolls. Two were pretty basic, but there were some really interesting ones; one was a shrimp cake sandwitched between two layers of fried stuff, another seemed to have squid and/or other seafood in it, and one had a textured flaky exterior, and was strongly mushroom flavored.


Afterwards we walked to Hoan Kiem Lake and checked out the Ngoc Son Temple, which was lighted up after dark.


We happened to walk by the Water Puppet theatre five minutes before the last showing, so we bought "first class" tickets for $5 apiece and watched the 45 minute show, which was much better and less cheesy than I'd expected.

We thought about taking a Perfume Pagoda tour the next day, but decided against it as it was a full day and would have left us no time to do anything else. Instead we "slept in" until 8am and enjoyed a leisurely brefakfast at the hotel.

Next we headed to a tailor, where I bought a custom-made ao doi for 1.1M dong (about $135), to be picked up in two days time. Communication was pretty difficult as no one in the store spoke English; even asking for timeline, price, deposit amount, etc. was a bit painful. We did bargain from 1.28M to 1.1M; I'm guessing we could have done better, but the storekeepers were really nice and tried really hard to help us so I didn't mind too much.

We looked at some (super-expensive!) art galleries, souvenir shops, and pottery stores in the area, and then headed back to the lake.


We made brief stops at Le Thai Lo monument and St. Joseph's before going to Pho 24 (a fast food chain) for lunch. Their pho was really cheap, tasty, and filling, and it came with something that tasted like bits of you tiou. We also liked their cans of sugar cane juice.


Nearby was the swanky Sofitel Metropole Hotel, which had been open since 1901 and was super posh. We briefly contemplated the $15 chocolate buffet but in the end we decided we were still too full and it was kind of a rip-off besides. We spent $1-2 buying postcards at a bookstore instead, and amusingly were given the last 1000 dong (12.5 cents) of change in the form of two pieces of 500 dong gum.

We looked briefly at the exterior of the History Museum (not as cool as expected) and the Opera House, and then went back to the Ngoc Son Temple, for an actual visit this time.

The interior was pretty nice, and the exterior was pretty and peaceful, so we hung out there for awhile and wrote up some postcards.

On the way home, we stopped at Memorial House, right next to our hotel. It's a traditional Vietnamese house which has been converted into a small museum, and only cost about 50 cents to enter, which I thought was a bargain.

For dinner, we ate at 69 Bar, a few doors down. We had beef and papaya salad and bun cha, plus sauteed bananas in orange and lime for dessert. They also had a very interesting drink made of coffee, milk, pineapple, and lemon, which sounds terrible but was actually quite good.

Hue, Vietnam (2008)

We'd wanted to visit somewhere in Central Vietnam, and for awhile I debated between the imperial tombs of Hue and the "charming" city of Hoi An. In the end I decided that Hue sounded less touristy, so from Saigon we took a 7am flight there. We got up at 5am that morning, and when we got downstairs we found the receptionist and the shuttle driver asleep on cots in the lobby. After waking them up, we checked out and went on our way. Amusingly, we'd planned to use the ATM in the lobby, but at 5:30am apparently even that was not turned on yet.

Upon arrival in Hue, we realized I'd given the wrong flight information to the hotel car. Luckily the Orchid Hotel had a reception desk in the airport (!!) and they set us up with a taxi. We arrived a bit before 9am but our room wasn't ready yet, so the receptionist invited us to have free tea/coffee, juice, and watermelon while we waited. We also used the free internet stations in the lobby and set up a boat tour for the next day ($5 per person including lunch). Actually, everything was amazingly cheap in Hue; the hotel car only cost $9 and the room $32/night, including buffet breakfast for both of us.

When we got to our room we discovered lots of nice touches; a DVD player with DVDs available for loan at front desk, free tea/coffee, a scale, modern decor (including a stained glass bathroom window), high quality towels, and a very comfy bed.


It was nearly 11am when we headed out to grab some real breakfast. We wandered around for awhile before stumbling across a local place where the owners barely spoke English. We were most definitely the only tourists there. We ended up pointing at some pork chops, which cost less than $2, with rice. We'd planned to visit Hue's famous citadel afterwards, but found ourselves caught in a torrential downpour. In the three blocks between the restaurant and our hotel, we got completely soaked, giving us little choice but to go back to our room to change and wait out the weather.

It took about an hour for things to clear up to a reasonable degree, so we set out again a little after noon, walking across the Trang Tien bridge towards the Citadel. Shortly before crossing the bridge, we had our first encounter with Hue's unreasonably aggressive cyclo drivers. It took quite a lot of effort to get rid of the first one; we finally stopped into a souvenir shop for several minutes, at which point he gave up. We encountered another after entering the Citadel gates, but managed to ditch him by quickly reversing directions a couple of times (he couldn't keep up). We finally found the front gate to the Imperial Enclosure, noted the nearby 9 cannons and flag pole, and then walked through the Noon Gate, with its raised pavilion, to the gardens inside. We spent several pleasant hours there, exploring a variety of gorgeous temples, palaces, and other structures, including the ruined Forbidden City.




We finally left to find some food, and decided that since we hadn't eaten much all day and it was nearly 4pm, we'd splurge on a set course meal at Y Thao Garden, past the far wall of the Citadel. We arrived very hungry, hoping they would serve us despite the very odd hour. Y Thao turned out to be a spacious traditional Vietnamese home, surrounded by a lovely garden.


The setting was amazing, but it was a little odd to walk into what looked like someone's home and then wander around asking if they were open. Luckily they were, and since we were the only customers, we were given a prime table on a little patio overlooking a fish pond. Later on we discovered that the pond was also inhabited by several frogs.


The menu was $20 per person (very expensive by Vietnamese standards) and included: spring rolls arranged on a pineaple in the shape of a peacock, vegetable and chicken soup, Hue-style Vietnamese pancake, a very interesting dish of shredded pork with sesame, peanuts, and basil, served on large shrimp chips, lemongrass grilled beef, lotus rice, and fresh shrimp served with sea salt and pepper.

For dessert we had oranges and green bean cakes molded beautifully in the shape of fruits. The entire meal was amazing, and I took photos of every course. Even the drinks (mango and lemon juices) were delicious.

Afterwards we walked back around the Imperial Enclosure to the Dong Ba market, but were somewhat disappointed; it was mostly clothes and trinkets, and many stalls were already closing just after 6:30pm. We left the market, but on the way home, D managed to buy two more silk embroidered pictures for less than $4 apiece, which made him quite happy.


The next day we were up early again. The hotel's free breakfast was amazing: fried rice, fried noodles, bacon, crepes (plain and with bananas), several kinds of spring rolls, many kinds of fruit, several kinds of cake, made-to-order omelets, and more. (We really liked the Orchid Hotel!)

Our tour started at 8am; at that time several motorbikes arrived at the meeting location, and each of us climbed on behind a driver. We were taken down to the river where we boarded a small boat with six others; a Korean-AUstralian couple, a French couple, and two brothers from Holland. There, we met our guide Ngu, who was very nice and spoke pretty good English. She was also well under five feet tall and looked about twelve years old, but when she spoke it was clear she was much older.

The boat first took us to the Thien Mu Pagoda, and then to the Tombs of Tu Doc, Minh Mang, and Khai Dinh, as well as a smaller temple near the Minh Mang tomb. My favorites were Thien Mu, which had an amazing view, and the interior of Khai Dinh.






We paid the admission fees ourselves; they were usually 55K dong ($7) for foreigners and 30k dong ($4) for Vietnamese. At least once the ticket seller asked if we were Vietnamese, and seemed ready to give us the lower price. It's unfortunate that neither of us speak a word!

We often used motorbikes to get from the river to the sites, and there was one amusing incident when D's motorbike ran out of gas. Luckily, another person from our tour (the Korean guy) was nearby, and the driver for his motorbike motioned to D to climb on. I arrived first and was very amused when the last motorbike arrived several minutes late with three guys onboard, especially as both D and the Korean guy were quite tall and the seat was not very large.


Along the way we were fed a lunch of rice, fried noodles, and some kind of pancake-looking veggie omelet. One thing that I really disliked about the tour was that people were constantly trying to sell us things. First, the older woman (not our guide) on the boat tried to sell us drinks, and then paintings/cards, and then a "deluxe lunch" (for $8!). Then, the motorbike drivers at Tu Doc tried to get us to buy them drinks, and all along the way people were trying to sell us water, pineapple, postcards, and various other souvenirs. It was all very offputting.

On the bright side, the tombs were gorgeous, the boat ride was pleasant, Ngu was a good guide, and I took a billion pictures. On the other hand, we were starving after the light lunch and the active afternoon, having wandered all over the sites and climbed up 127 steps at Khai Dinh. So, after giving Ngu a "generous" $3 tip (she was surprised and very grateful), we headed to second lunch at 4pm. We ate at the Mandarin Cafe, where the owner is also a photographer, and his photos decorate the walls of the cafe. They were quite good, and the food was cheap and delicious; we paid maybe $3 per entree.

Afterwards, we walked back towards our hotel, stopping to by some sesame candy along the way. By the end of our second day, I seemed to have mastered the art of fending off cyclo drivers; apparently the trick is not to speak at all, but to just smile and wave them off. I guess it's the only way to possibly pass for Vietnamese.

We got back the hotel early and spent the evening catching up on photos and email with the free internet. Around 7-8pm, we heard a soft knock, and were pleasantly surprised when we opened the door and found a hotel staffer with a complimentary bunch of bananas. As you can probably tell, the hotel left a really good impression on us.

Mekong Delta, Vietnam (2008)

Before arriving in Asia, we'd already booked an overnight Mekong Delta tour with the highly-reviewed Sinhbalo Tours. The cost was only $125/per person at the time of booking, and it got reduced to $90/pp later, when some other people joined our tour.

The tour van arrived bright and early the next morning, but we did have time to grab some banh mi for breakfast, from a street vendor outside of our hotel. We were soon joined by two other couples; one from London (they were in the midst of a 4-month trip!), and one from Chicago (the girl was interviewing to teach at the international school). We drove 2.5 hours to catch our boat (somewhere near Cai Be) but it was a nice van (Mercedes-Benz, no less) and we had a good time chatting with the other travellers.

Once we got on the boat, we just cruised around, stopping occasionally to check out locals making various foodstuffs; coconut candy, rice cakes, peanut candies, ginger candies, dried banana and sweet potato chips, coconut rice crackers, etc.



Of course we ended up buying some; the coconut candy was particularly good.

The canals reminded me a bit of Venice but with only very primitive buildings and much cleaner water.



For lunch we ate at a small restaurant on the shore, which was raised up on stilts. They served us fresh fish spring rolls, pork, beef and rice, noodle soup, spring rolls, and fresh fruit with chili salt. The food was tasty (D especially liked the fresh-caught fish in the rolls) and the location very picturesque.


After lunch we cruised down to Vinh Long where we got back in our van and drove to Can Tho (via car ferry). We arrived around 4:30pm and checked in at Tay Do, our hotel. It was billed as a 2-star by the tour company but turned out to be quite nice. For dinner (not included in the tour) we all went together to a restaurant called "Mekong" on the riverfront. They had a mix of cuisines, but we wanted more Vietnamese food, so I chose chicken with lemongrass and D had another banh xeo. We also had some fresh spring rolls, and paid a total of $9 for the two of us. Afterwards we swung by the local market to look at some craftwork before heading back to the hotel.

We were up even earlier the second day; packed and down to breakfast before 6:30am. The free breakfast was not very exciting; mostly just rolls, jam, and cheese. We met up with our tour guide and were on our way again by 7:30am.

Our first stop was the Cai Rong floating market. The guide explained to us that each boat advertised its goods by running them up on a long pole. So, for instance, the boat which was selling watermelon had an entire watermelon tied to its pole.


We cruised around on a small boat looking at the various goods, and then asked to stop on a pineapple boat. We hopped over, and paid about 50 cents for an entire pineapple. The pineapple vendor figured out that we meant to eat it right away, so she peeled and cut it nicely for us, so we could eat it right off the stem.


From there we went to visit a local elderly couple's house, where we were fed snake wine (we didn't know what it was until we drank it), banana wine, and more fruit. There was a funny episode where the husband tried to communicate using charades that the snake wine was good for male fertility.

The couple was super friendly, although they spoke no English at all, and their garden was lovely. Our guide told us that although they were in their 70's, the husband still shimmied up their coconut tree every morning to harvest coconuts.

We noticed that all along the river, everyone was super friendly, especially the children. Every person would wave back with a huge smile whenever we waved at them. We kept cruising and soon found the Phong Diem floating market (much smaller than Cai Rong). On the way, the mother and son who were navigating our boat fed us some fruit (papaya, pineapple, and banana), which was really nice of them, but by this time I was getting kind of sick of fruit. We finally arrived at the dock by mid-morning to catch our bus. Soon afterward, our tour guide (not knowing that we were sick of fruit) took us to a fruit stand. Luckily there were some new varieties, though: jackfruit, sarsparilla, and a small round fruit almost like longan but much tarter.

It took quite awhile to get on the car ferry this time, so it was past noon when we stopped for lunch. Our guide asked us what we wanted to eat, and we told him that we wanted to eat "what you would eat". He was a little horrified at that and said that the places that he ate were "dirty", but we insisted that we would be fine, so we ended up at a very local eatery which barely a restaurant at all; more like a bunch of tables outside of someone's kitchen. It wasn't that dirty by Asian standards, but there were definitely flies in the vicinity, and chickens wandering around under the tables. We were served stir-fried pork, catfish in a sour soup in a clay pot, sauteed pumpkin blossoms, mango, and candied lotus fruits. The bill ended up being about $6 per person, which was more than I thought it should cost, but it's hard to complain when the difference is so small. From there it was another 2-3 hours back to Saigon.

We were dropped off at our individual hotels, but we agreed to meet up again for dinner. We ended up at Quan Nuong 3T, a very popular Vietnamese BBQ place, located above Temple Cafe and Fanny's Ice Cream. We were told the Temple Club was a favorite with "Brangelina".


The six of us were joined by some friends of the Chicago couple (teachers at the international school), and as a group we ordered lemongrass beef, beef with cheese, live shrimp (one giant shrimp per skewer, still moving!), squid, garlic rice, morning glory, veggie soup, and venison.

Of course everything also came with lots of fresh veggies. My favorites were the shrimp and the lemongrass beef, although some in our party were cringing while watching the live shrimp cook over the flames.

Saigon, Vietnam (2008)

On our last day in Siem Reap, we spent a leisurely morning at the hotel before heading to the airport ($5 by hotel car) for our flight to Saigon. The airport was super crowded but we got on our flight without incident. We arrived around 2:30pm and then took another prearranged car ($15 this time) through 30 minutes of crazy traffic to our hotel.

After checking in and dropping off our bags at the An An Hotel, and verifying the next day's tour, we finally had time to eat "lunch". We wandered around for a few minutes before stumbling across a super casual pho place where we happily slurped down large bowls of beef pho. It seemed like the broth was clearer and less salty than in the US. Also, it only cost about $1.50 per bowl.

Since we were leaving the next day for the Mekong Delta, we thought we'd take advantage of the few hours before dinner to look around a bit. First we visited the Hindu temple, where I got really annoyed at a guy who was insistent about trying to sell us incense. Next was Ben Thanh market, which was huge, but hot and crowded, so we didn't stay there long either.



We walked up Le Loi to the Opera House and the post office, stopped by Notre Dame, and then went to Quan An Ngon for dinner.



The restaurant served lots of traditional Vietnamese street foods, but in a sit-down setting (and for a slightly higher but still very reasonable price). We ordered vermicelli with pork, pork chop with rice, Vietnamese pancake (delicious!), some spring rolls, and dessert-like drinks of coconut milk with mung bean, tapioca, peanuts, and some kind of jelly. Overall, we were very happy with our first Vietnamese dining experience.

We spent the next two days in the Mekong Delta area, before returning to Saigon for one more full day. On that day, we started with yet another fresh banh mi from a street stand. We tried the "pork sausage" this time, which turned out to be quite similar to Chinese sausage. I liked it better than the more generic meat combo that we'd had before. Next on the agenda was "bun moc" (pork and mushroom noodle soup) at another local stand. When we arrived, the stand was completely full, with tiny chairs and low tables all over the sidewalk, and there was apparently no real line. We must have looked pretty confused, because a nice local eventually waved at us and helped us find a seat. We soon figured out that he spoke Chinese! He said he was originally from Guangzhou. He also helped us order a large bowl ($3) and some kind of mung bean drink (50 cents, and very good).

After breakfast, we went to see the "Reunification Palace", formerly known as the Independence Palace, which was historically interesting but not very pretty.



Nearby was the War Remnants Museum, which we enjoyed much more than we'd expected. It sounded like a grim topic for a museum, but the displays were actually kind of uplifting; they often showed people making the best of things. The exhibit that made the biggest impression on me was a black-and-white photograph of a woman rowing down a river in a boat made out of an old hollowed-out missile. Practical, indeed.


From there it was a long-ish walk to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, which sounded cool but turned out not to be that impressive.

For lunch we "splurged" and spent almost $40 at a gourmet Vietnamese place called "Lemongrass". We started with really yummy lemon soda, Vietnamese coffee, and free shrimp chips. Then we ordered shrimp on sugar cane (served with fish sauce and veggies), bun bo xao (sauteed beef with rice noodles, my favorite), and chicken and egg noodle soup for D (light and refreshing but rich in flavor).

We enjoyed that lunch very much, especially because the restaurant was air-conditioned.

Since we were full and happy, we decided to brave the Ben Thanh market area again, and this time we actually picked up some souvenirs; chopsticks, purses, embroidered pictures, and greeting cards. We also munched on some waffle-like snacks that we bought from a street vendor.

For dinner we decided to hit the famous Temple Club. It was really nicely decorated, and they made great cocktails. For dinner we had beef salad with lotus root in a vinegar-y sauce (excellent), steamed clams, and tamarind fish. Afterwards we went downstairs to Fanny's for some "kem" (aka Vietnamese ice cream). We tried three flavors: "young rice", green tea, and peanut, of which the peanut was by far the best; not too sweet and very peanut-y.