Day 4: Ho Chi Minh City Tour with Tien & Khai
left: the flower grows downwards-facing and many will have it grow over water so that they can look at the flower reflected in the water. (sorry, forgot the name...)
The night before, my mom and I mentioned we wanted to try the infamous Vietnamese noodle soups - raw beef, cooked beef, beef ball, etc., etc. And then Tien and Khai whispered and talked and then invited us to Khai's home for breakfast! I was excited as I think home-cooked meals are always THE BEST.
Tien came to pick us up from our hotel to go to Khai's home, and when we got out of the taxi, we were at a beef noodle soup shop! Tien walked in, and I was right behind her. I couldn't help but say, "his family owns a beef noodle soup shop?!?!?!?!" I was really surprised! Never had it occurred to me to ask what Khai's family business is, but I never thought his family would have a beef noodle shop! hehehe, but it was delicious!
We met Khai's dad, who is a retired teacher and now sits at the front of the store taking orders and collecting money. Khai's mom opened the beef noodle soup shop after she gave birth to Khai and left her teaching job to stay home to take care of Khai and his sister. The shop opens daily from 6am to 10am, and the soup that is the base of all the noodles takes an entire night to stew and extract all the yummy goodness from beef bones and other ingredients.
left: Khai's father; right: Khai's mother in the black pants with colored top
top right: all the staff were running around and making beef noodle soup
All the portions in Vietnam are smaller than what we are used to usually, but that may not be such a bad thing. First of all, I never feel SO FULL that my pants are too tight; and also we can eat so many different dishes and snacks because all the portions are small and it's more like a taster.
Then we went back to the area near my hotel and visited City Hall, The Notre Dame Cathedral, the main Post Office and Independence Palace.
top: City Hall; I was laughing/smiling like this because there were a group of tourists walking towards us like a wave
left: Notre Dame Cathedral; right: Main Post Office
The Independence Palace is the Vietnamese White House. There are two wings, one wing is the Presidents' rooms and the other is for the Vice President. It's the place where they work, live and entertain.
Under the Independence Palace are military rooms where they strategized and sent orders out to troops.
After touring Independence Palace, Tien brought us to Ngon 138. The restaurant is very close to the Independence Palace, the exterior is decorated in the French style, the interior in traditional Vietnamese details.
The lower floor has a mini food court where you can order from, but there's also a menu that you can order from. My mom ordered a coconut again, and we had a jackfruit salad, this pancake with mushrooms (we tried to make this in Toronto, but failed because we didn't have the right wok and material...), this chewy steamed rice cakes with cheese and ham, steamed clams in soup and eel noodle soup.
After lunch, we went to a famous ice cream store, but the electricity was out (I think this happens often in Vietnam, not something that surprising to the locals), so we quickly had their famous ice cream in coconut. The empty the juice out of the coconut and spoon coconut ice cream into the cavity with fruits on top. The ice cream did not taste very coconut-ty, which I appreciated. And it appeared to have some chocolate sauce on it... still very yummy!
Afterwards, we split up, my mom and I went to the shopping centre - called Tax Centre, near our hotel (btw there were lots of shopping centers and markets around our hotel). This one sold local products as well as imported goods. We spent two hours there walking around, and then returned to the hotel to get out of the heat.
I also packed for my three day trip to Nha Trang and Tien and Khai came to pick us up for dinner. We went to Co Do (means ancient capital city) and had cuisine from central Vietnam.
The interior reminded me of a Chinese restaurant in some ways, with redwood furniture and very simple decorations. We had another type of steamed rice cake and then something wrapped in banana leaf (this one, to me, is probably one of the disappointing dishes), a stir-fried eggplant/mushroom dish with crispy rice paper, spring rolls wrapped in lettuce leaf, deep fried tofu and fried rice with lotus seed wrapped in lotus leaf.
A very nice meal, and we enjoyed the company of Tien and Khai very much.
As our train to Nha Trang was at 11pm, we went back to the hotel and waited for a friend, Thuy - she had visited Hong Kong last year with Tien and N.T.
Once Thuy arrived, we all went to a nearby coffee shop for a drink and to kill time while waiting for the train. Ho Chi Minh City is surprising as I often hear Tien tell me that she meets with her friends at coffee shops in the evening. Never would I have imagined that there are this many coffee shops in HCM, and these are not the local kind, these are the chill kind like Starbucks, but not as noisy as the ones in Hong Kong. I can see why Tien and her friends and the young generation of Vietnam like to gather in these shops. Actually I think these ones are better than the ones in Hong Kong, because there are not many chains and each one is individually unique in how they decorate. There's one that has a huge book shelf built into one wall! My kind of coffee shop!
I order hot Vietnamese coffee with milk. First thing to be clear about, Vietnamese coffee is STRONG! Or as they say Bold. So all the Vietnamese were saying to me, are you sure? You might be REALLY Awake later on the train... hahaha... but I just felt like a coffee at that time and it was the right temperature cuz I was in air conditioning and a hot coffee would be nice.... and Second thing to know is that when you order coffee in Vietnam, you have to say whether you what coffee with milk or not. Because just Coffee is just black coffee. You have to say "Coffee with milk" to get ones with the condensed milk.... yum!
At 10:00pm we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and made our way by taxi to the train station.
Taxi's are really cheap (when compared to Hong Kong, and especially Canada and the US!), it starts off at VND 10,000 (= USD 0.50) and each additional km is VND 15,000 (USD 0.75). I think I mentioned this before, travel only on VINASUN (available only in HCM) and MaiLinh (available across Vietnam).
We quickly made our way across the platform and found our car, we were in the 1st car and after some confusion, we found our seats. This is an overnight train and we would arrive in Nha Trang around 6am the next day... see you then!
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