Hoi An Day 2

I want to ride my bicycle…

Today dawned horribly hot and sticky — even hotter than yesterday! Usually I cope okay with temperatures in the high 30s, but not when it’s 60% humidity as well… not great. More fun – we had a bicycle tour scheduled today, which in itself was fine (flat countryside meant easy pedalling, and pedalling meant breeze!) but standing around in 40C humidity while we had talks about various different aspects of farm life wasn’t conducive to happy feelings! Plus the bicycles hadn’t seen any maintenance for a long time and so the gears wouldn’t change, and if you tried, the chain fell off the bike.

Herb gardens

Even though this bit wasn’t great, the countryside was actually pretty amazing, and we saw how to grow mung bean sprouts, how to make rice noodles, how they grow all the fabulous herbs to use in the fresh and tasty dishes we’d been eating. It just would have been good to have some shade.

Harvesting mung bean sprouts

The next section of the day was much less gruelling – a cooking class at the Morning Glory restaurant. Ms Vy started with fresh spring rolls, went on to demonstrate Cau Lau (pork and noodles with vegies), crispy rice pancake and rice dumplings. We then finished up with delicious icecreams (I chose lemongrass and coconut – yum!) and candied coconut and ginger pieces.

Making spring rolls

Ms Vy was interesting and articulate, and we all appreciated the airconditioning and copious amounts of cold water provided (and being able to sit down while cooking!) I’d highly recommend doing a class at Morning Glory; it’s interesting, well-organised, and airconditioned! 😉

Eating rice dumplings

Speaking of “yum”, that word in Vietnamese apparently means something dodgy (according to Professor Google, either blowjob, feeling lustful, or farting. Nice.) so we all tried really hard to not say it. Of course, as soon as it’s taboo…

Cao Lau

After our delicious lunch, we scooted down to Yaly again for fittings. Mine needed quite a bit of work still, but they’re looking good (or as good as a sticky, sweaty woman sporting some enviable sunburn can look) so I’m really looking forward to tomorrow when I can pick them up!

We also had a shoe fitting, and they’re pretty good too! I picked up my tourist pants – fabulous – and ordered some shorts for R, and also managed to squeeze the CC a bit more at the jewellery shop, buying a couple of charms for my charm bracelet, and replacing a silver chain that had snapped a couple of months ago. One of the guys, T, had had some glasses made up really cheaply, and I had a bit of shopper’s envy, so we wandered downtown at dinner time, but the “recommended” shop was shut. There was another one further down the street which was open, and so after astounding the optometrist with how short-sighted I am, we picked out a pair of frames to be made up in the next 24 hours before we leave. Cross fingers!

Local Pho

Then dinner – we couldn’t track down the rest of the group who we’d vaguely posited to meet at the beer hall, so we decided to have a bowl of Pho at the place next door. Can’t really go past a $1.50 dinner, especially when it’s so tasty! (or is that so YUM? 😉 )