I'm a Little Tea Pot...

Today we decided to do a little site seeing. The town we could be going to is Vung Tau. Some fancy town on the ocean. i think it was about a three hour drive? i forget. When we go to the town my mom wanted to stop at one of her friends houses. Her friend is the choir director for her church in PA but his sister-in-law looks runs the furniture business which is the first floor of the house.
After looking around this closet caught my eye. i don't care what you think i like it. With the crazy white action and sliding doors. All the other closets were boring wood and opened up with hinged doors. But i had no way of getting something this big to Chau Doc. i don't even know the next time i'll be in vietnam to use this thing.

For some reason my mom is holding bananas in this picture. i have no idea why.

After visiting the furniture shop we headed to get a tour of the President's Summer House. The president would use this crib back before Vietnam was united and turned communist.While walking around the palace i found a secret corridor! It was behind one of the display cases filled with China that was found in a ship that had sunk a couple hundred years ago...

My awesome secret passage led me to a bathroom...a nasty bathroom. Ugh.

Here is the entrance to the crappy bathroom...

All the other asian tourists were getting their picture on the cannon so i decided i would too!

Look at this bad boy! i need to get one of these for my house!

Fire!

Sometimes i wonder where i get my silliness...

After touring the summer get-away palace we went to get some sea food. i wasn't even hungry but my mom ordered a ton of food anyway.
On our way back to Saigon we stopped by this fancy tableware outlet called Minh Long.You should see the tea sets in this place. My dad said he wasn't allowed to take pictures but he snuck a few in and i got some video of the crazy merchandise.
Here are one of the tea sets. This is one of the more affordable once with little color. The other sets with blue and red go way up in price and have gold coats on them.

Wouldn't be a trip to Minh Long without a silly picture!

For dinner we went to our favorite 'food court' with the crazy kitchens and waiters running all over the place. i ordered bun cha gio. With some extra stuff such as beef and grilled pork.
i forget what this drink is called or what is in it...blue martini is my best guess but it looks much better tasting than what it actually tastes like. i had trouble putting it down it was so gross. But at least i could taste the alcohol.

My parents ordered a feast for 5. They finished most of it but plenty of fried rice left over.

Woot! Cheri, Marie, Steve, and the kids come in tomorrow!

Pig Heart! Its What's for Lunch!

Pretty sure i have my days mixed up at this point. About two days before Cheri and Marie and her gang flew into Saigon my mom wanted to go to the city early so we could do some hotel hunting and of course more shopping.Our mode of transportation was a crazy 15 passenger van for the 3 of us. A little overkill but whatever.

On our way to Saigon we stopped at the first town which is about an hour east of Chau Doc. The name of the town is Long Xuyen. One of my uncles actually have a house here but he is in the states and his daughter who is taking care of the house in a little debt due to some pawning and gambling...i don't know the details. Probably better that way.

My mom was hungry and wanted to eat at the 'best noodle shop" in town. The noodle place is owned by my cousin Trinh's boyfriend! i had my hopes pretty high and asked for a bowl of white rice noodles.

As soon as i saw the bowl of soup i was greatly disappointed. There was all kinds of mystery meat in this thing. i held up a piece of meat and asked,"what kind of meat is this!?". My mom said pork. Me -"i know its pork, what kind of pork?"
Mom: "Oh, that's pigs heart"
Me: "And what about this?"
Mom:"More pigs heart."
Me: "No, this is different.."
Mom: "Um, that's pig kidney"
Me: "And this?"
Mom: "pig liver..."

Don't get me wrong i'm open to trying new things. i just need to prepare myself of it. i can't just dig into crazy pig organs on a whim. i drew the line with the funky pig joint filled with tendons and cartilage. Everything else though i ate. i didn't particularly care for it but i finished the bowl and was still hungry. i then ordered another fun bowl of pig organs but this time with yellow noodles.
When we arrived into Saigon it was about lunch time and we were hungry again. We went to our friend's Pho shop but he wasn't there. It was probably better he didn't know we were coming or else he would have had a feast prepared for us like last time.

After lunch my parents went to pay but his daughter wouldn't take our money and said if she let us pay for the meal then her father would kill her...oh well, i don't have a problem with a free meal.
After getting settled in the hotel room we walked around a bit so my dad could give me a brief history of his days in Saigon back in the 60's...lucky me.

For refreshments we got some funky milkshakes. i had the pineapple i believe. My dad probably got the avocado and my mom got durian. Durian is also known as stinky fruit. It is so sick nasty. If the smell doesn't get you the taste will.
Here we have a fancy bakery. We got some crazy "pati shoa". i spelled that totally wrong but its like a pastry with ground meat in it. i was pretty good. A little too sweet but still enjoyable. Would have been better if we got them in the morning when they were fresh out of the oven.
At this point i was tired of fish. i wanted some good ol' meat for my tummy. We decided to try out this barbecue joint. Pretty much everything on the menu comes out raw on a plate and you cook it on a grill located at the center of the table.

The menu said that these dishes served 3-4 people so my mom only wanted to get one. After looking at the pictures of these dishes i knew i could easily eat one of these platters by myself. But my mom insisted that we only get one...

Turned out i was right and we got the all meat platter after finishing the 'surf n' turf' plate.

To was everything down i had this fancy beer from france, Kronenbourg 1664. It was kind of expensive compared to the other beers but i wanted to try something different that i have not had yet.

Look at that gangsta grill action!

Getting Over the Sickness

Man have i been slackin' on this blog. I think the main problem was that sickness thing. Also i was distracted a lot. You know, because there is so much to do in Chau Doc? Okay, i'm just lazy...as always. i guess lucky for you i have forgotten all the crazy details of my trip so i won't be able to write as much as i could have if kept this blog up to date.

To help me get over my deadly sickness i was chugging vitamin C pills like no bodies business. They tasted alright. The taste resembled a watered down orange soda. Plus it was cool to watch the pills dissolve in the water!

Look how orange that is!

For dinner my mom wanted to do something special. So she went to the market and got some beef. She thought she got tenderloin but found out later it was a different cut so i'm not really sure what part of the i ate...or if it was even cow.

Anyway, my mom knew that these cows aren't like the cows in the states or the fancy cows imported from Brazil, New Zealand, or Australia. Vietnam cows are tough...really tough. She pounded the heck out of these cows. She wanted to soak them in lemon juice so that would help tenderize them but she ran out of time and thought what she did with a mallet would be fine.

Turned out she was wrong. This was the toughest meat i have ever tasted. Plus i was weak from this virus or whatever and i barely had the energy to put food in my mouth let alone chewing this crazy meat. i would bite into it several times but the piece of meat would still retain its shape and you couldn't even make a dent in it.
i'm not sure what we did with the meat...no one ate it. My mom ordered some food from somewhere to replace this silly cow. i guess the only thing Vietnam cows are good for are roasts or stews.

After dinner we took a ride to our favorite dessert place. Took a rickshaw there? What do you call these things?

Here is Lam looking gangsta in his hoodie and the back of my mom's head.

Lam likes to pose as a model occasionally. He'll walk around with his hands on his hips, then stop, and slide one of his feet out. Its pretty hilarious if you can get him to do it.

On the River

Today we checked out the shack behind Lac's house. Supposedly my mom owns this but the title is in her brother's name? No idea. But we went to check it out anyway wondering if it should be torn down and have a nicer shack built.

Though once the builder designed something up he asked of way more money than in the planned budget so not really sure what is going on with that.
After checking out the shack we hoped on a boat to tour around the river! At this point i was starting to feel kind of ill and cold.
Pretty crazy how families just live on these boats and provide for their families by transporting fruit and fish up and down the river.

There are a ton on these boats too.

Here we have a asian woman sculling on the river. Kind of looks fun, like rowing in school but standing up! One day i'll get me one of these boats.

more boats..

Floating gas station..

My mom kept pointing out every dog she saw on a boat. Like it was so fascinating that an animal that belongs on land lives on a boat. There are so many dogs here. People mostly keep them for security. At least that is what it looks like. They don't typically get the nurture and love that dogs get in the states.
We finally docked at an island where there is a Cham village. This crazy group of Vietnamese that are muslim! Pretty crazy if you ask me. Seeing a mosque in Vietnam. Here we have a Muslim chicken...

Checking out the merchandise.Cute little Cham girl.

On the way back to the boat we saw a post that marked the highest water level for each year. Each year it gets lower. What's that all about?

Rickety dock.

Fish being dried.

Our next stop was a fish farm! i went to these last time i was in Vietnam when i was ten. Its basically a floating house with nets that stretch to the bottom of the river and the floors lift up to feed and collect the fish. The fish in this picture are catfish.
This is my fish face. My dad was suppose to get the fish too...but he didn't and it looks like i'm squatting for no reason.
From the fish farm we walked over these ghetto planks to the next fish farm. Not sure what kind of fish they were but they were much smaller. The fish food is made from grain and fish ground and dried into pellets. Pretty silly feeding fish, fish.
We got back on the boat and went up this canal to see where my uncle had a coffee shop. Its now run by his daughter. By this point i was feeling horrible. i was freezing and my left ear was killing me. When i got back to the house i had a fever and just felt awful. i then laid down until dinner.

For dinner we had steak! Hmmm! The only problem was that it was beef from Vietnam cows...and they're tough. My mom tried to tenderize the meat by beating the crap out of it but it was still tough. One of the other courses was Bo Luc Lac (sp?). The beef on that was kind of tough as well. Seems that the best way to have Vietnamese beef is in a stew because it not very grill friendly.
i barely ate anything. Didn't even have the energy to chew on the tough meat. i went back to my room and popped some more drugs and watched Get Smart.

My fever got even worse and i kept waking up every hour. i seriously think i'm dying. Oh well, i've lived a pretty interesting life so far...i guess it wouldn't to bad if i my life ended.