Entry the Fourth: Monsoon Season

I didn't take too many photos today, so here's a shot of the skyline from Friday, taken from the balcony of the Gia Long Palace City Museum.

After packing in all of that sightseeing, I had a lazy morning starting with a hotel breakfast, ‘English’ style. On Friday, I had gone for the Vietnamese classic of beef phở (noodle soup), out of a packet sadly, but included in the £14 en suite air-conditioned room and served with a fruit shake and a cup of thick, strong coffee, so who am I to judge? Today, I had eggs, sausages, bread and beans, but with a Vietnamese twist: small sausages slightly larger than a cocktail sausage, a kind of ‘three bean’ salad in tomato sauce, and one of the ubiquitous single portion baguettes.

Around noon, I met up with Tom in a nearby coffee shop. He took me down the road to a phone shop to get my new SIM, which was a relatively easy if lengthy process, during which for some reason I had to show my passport (and had to dash back to the hotel to get it). Before long, I was set up with a Vietnamese credit and data plan for a few thousand dong a month.

Tom had intended to take me over to his neck of the woods, the southern District 7, but as we were heading down the main road on his moped, the heavens opened. Soon, the roads were slick and desperate citizens were pulling over and throwing ponchos on or trying to find somewhere to wait out the downpour. We pulled into a shopping centre called Lotte Mart, a complex with a supermarket, coffee shops, food court and cinema which formed a useful sort of halfway house between the centre of the city and Tom’s apartment.

Think you know rain? Think again.

After the hubbub of the city streets, Lotte Mart was very much westernised, and formed a kind of familiar bubble. We stayed for over an hour in a modern coffee shop like those found the world over, though the coffee we drank was in the Vietnamese style, very strong and poured over a dollop of condensed milk in the bottom. Depending on preference you can have a few sips of pure coffee, and then begin to stir, incrementally increasing the sweetness and milkiness of the drink.

Monsoon season!

I’d been expecting some rain since I arrived, but this was the first I’d seen. It seems to rain at least every other day, and not for very long, although the longer the rain holds off, the longer it’ll last for when it finally breaks. It’s really a similar but more extreme example of the same muggy build up of heat followed by a storm to clear the air that you get during the summer at home, although it’s October now and that pattern shows no signs of relenting for ‘winter’. Sometimes it’s overcast, sometimes it’s a scorcher, but it’s always warm. But at least there’s none of that relentless half-rain that lasts for days in the UK.

We decided to head back into town instead of going all the way to Tom’s, and got a late lunch/early dinner at a chain restaurant I can’t remember the name of. We had another Vietnamese classic, ‘broken rice’ served with a selection of pork: a thin fried ‘chop’, crackling-like skin shavings, and a ‘pork pie’ which seemed more like a slice of quiche than the Melton Mowbray kind of thing you’d expect in England. This also came with a bowl of soup and some sweet and spicy sauces; we had this with soft drinks and spring rolls as a starter for about 70 000 ₫ each, again just over £2 and about the same as the pint of beer I had the other night.

In the evening, I met Tien again and he took me on another scooter tour, whistling through the streets of District 1, but slightly further out than the centre I had explored. We passed some lively streets, and swung by the edge of the botanical gardens, which I shall have to visit sometime.

I didn't take my camera out for the evening, so you'll have to make do with some hastily searched for stock pictures.

We ended up at Ba Cây Chổi, a themed bar and restaurant, which was decorated with a magic and fantasy motif. The building resembled a castle out of Harry Potter, nestled incongruously between sleek, modern restaurants on a street filled with market stalls selling cheap sunglasses. We had a couple of beers on the upper level balcony overlooking the street, and snacked on sticky ribs.

There, Tien told me the story of Thánh Gióng, the legendary Vietnamese folk hero who swiftly grew to become a great hero who rode an iron horse to victory against an invading army.

The interior of fantasy themed bar Ba Cây Chổi.

The night was rounded off with a detour via a canal in a slightly quieter area of town where a lit up bridge slowly cycled through the colour spectrum. Then Tien took me back to the hotel. I grabbed another bánh mì from the bakery chain ABC and spent the rest of the evening in, the last night in the hotel. It was then I realised that the snacks and drinks in mini-bar I’d been habitually eschewing all weekend averaged about 12 000 ₫ (barely 35p). Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about grabbing some beers, crisps and soft drinks to supplement my sandwich, and the large bottled water was a godsend.

Naturally, I was rolling in thousands of dong.