The last few days have been
totally action packed, and as usual totally unpredicatable and unexpected..
We have survived our first major
scare, and also our first karaoke night..!
I’m going to have to break this
down into chunks because there is so much to say – I could write pages about
each experience but I’ll try and keep it brief. I’ve timed writing this pretty
well though as it’s 10:55am and the girls are all still fast sleep so I have
the full use of the rather dodgy broadband J
Siagon Zoo:
This was nicer than I thought it
was going to be actually, and only cost about 4p to get in. I was expecting
concrete pits but most the animals seemed to be in pretty good enclosures.
Though not always as enclosed as you would expect!...
These monkeys freely escaped
their cage to steal leaves from the nearby trees before squeezing back in again.
Sadly the elephants/tigers and
lions were kept in far too small a pen. And the elephants had chains round
their legs which was upsetting.
Food tour:
We were all in our PJs ready for
bed when we had a knock on our door. Candy was inviting us out for icecream, so
we thought well why not. Quickly pulled on our clothes again and headed
downstairs where Candy then told us we were going by motorbike of course.
She also very unsubtlely paired the
4 of us girls up with Daniel, Tung and the two Vietnamese personal trainers who
live here. Thoroughly enjoyed the company and the icecreams! We then assumed we
would be going home but o no, we were now on some sort of late night food tour
again…
We went to some totally different
part of the city where we were presented with a hotpot (cook it yourself stove
on the table) full of cockles, clams and crabs claws. It was delishous.
We also had chicken feet…
And snails…
The journey home was eventful but
we all arrived in one piece and were very glad to have the boys to look out for
us.
Shopping:
Went into district one with soph
and julianne to do some shopping and get Candy a present to thank her for all
her hospitality. Ended up singing ‘happy
birthday’ to try to convey I wanted flowers as a gift (I was worried I might be
accidentally buying funeral flowers!).
Had a lovely lunch, we are getting
to be more Vietnamese in our eating now – ordering 2/3 meals and then sharing
them. Had an amazing chilli lemongrass fried chicken dish.
Still find this city so beautiful
and exciting. Am no way bored of it yet!
Also managed to book for the
Mekong and Dalat which I’m excited about.
Our first karaoke night… How to
describe this one?! We were instructed by Tung that we couldn’t look like
trampy backpackers.. He told us we would actually have to put on some makeup
and dress up properly so we got dolled up
and had a few drinks here before getting a car taxi to the karaoke
joint. This was not how I expected it to be – but nothing is! We were taken to
a little room with our own machine and huge ‘Argos catalogue’ of terrible English
songs to choose from. Tungs friend Sean joined us too, but singing to just 6
people was pretty intimate. And not helped by the fact the micro phone had some
sort of weird echo distortion on it which meant we all sounded bloody awful..!
Had to have some cocktails to get
in the mood. But we soon were LOVING it. George Micheal, the Spice girls, Pink,
Red Hot Chillis, ABBA… the boys sang too – they were miles better than us
sadly.
Then we went to a rooftop bar and
met up with Daniel which meant I got to ride on the bike again. Karaoke and
motoring biking round siagon, it really couldn’t have been more of a Vietnamese
party night! Though I did burn my leg on the damn bike exhaust which hurts a
lot still.
The we went on to a street bar
again, where you sit pretty much in the middle of the road on tiny plastic
chairs and everyone drinks beer. At this point someone suggested shots and the
evening descended into far too much laughter and silliness till 7am J It was great though,
we all had such a good night – even if we did pay for it the next day…
Bringing the Potato:
We had been telling Candy how
much we already miss potatos and bless her she went out and bought 4! God knows
where she found them! Anyway then the pressure was on as she wanted us to cook
them… There being no oven we decided to go for mash. No milk here of course but
there was something which looked like butter. Candy was really taken with the
mash, she was amazed we had potatos instead of rice/nodles and wanted us to
tell her the recipe <3 Eating potatoes with chopsticks is going down in my
memory forever.
We also had the chance to make
spring rolls and fry them ourselves which was great – I’m really missing
cooking so I loved it. Unfortunately due to the hang over we did all keep having
to take it in turns to run upstairs to our room… Poor laura was the worse off
she had to give in after only one spring roll and retire permanently. In the end there was nothing for it but to
crack open another beer. Candy had been out and bought 20 beers especially for
the occasion so it would have been rude not to…
The food was amazing. We all sat
on the floor in true Vietnamese style and Candy kept piing our bowls high.
Then someone suggested karaoke
and before we knew it we were singing Wham’s Last Christmas and Jingle Bells…
Totally surreal, and absolutely wonderful.
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