Monday, food tour day 9, started off with an early wakeup as our bus to the airport departed at 6:10 AM. Check in for Vietnam Airlines went smooth and we were soon on our way to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon). There was no resting this day as we were picked up at the airport and whisked away a number of miles north east of the city to the
Spice Garden in Cu Chi cooking school. This is an absolutely beatiful place with their own gardens and fish ponds to provide just about everything they need. First up was a lovely refreshing drink...
The owner/chef gave us a tour of the gardens. He explained that being on the Mekong delta, a couple of times a year the river would rise enough to put the garden under about an inch or two of water. They recently put the bricks along the edges of the individual garden beds to keep the soil somewhat contained. He said it is working quite well.
He showed us how they make rice paper for spring rolls, crackers, etc.
After a fun few hours at the cooking class it was time to head back into Ho Chi Minh City. The original plan was to do a tour of the city and visit the War Memorial Museum but the late afternoon hour along with the heavy traffic sort of botched those plans.
After checking into our hotel, The Sonnet Saigon, for dinner that night we all went to the Ngon Restaurant at 160 Pasteur St, a short GRAB ride from our hotel.
Tuesday, food tour day 10, was the start of an excursion and homestay on the Mekong Delta. A short bus trip out of the city and we were aboard the boat that would be our transport on the delta. Our trip up river on a major arm of the river gave us an idea of just how vast the entire delta is as we could barely see across this one arm. The other thing that popped out right away was the extent to which water hyacynths were spreading.
Our first stop was a remote island restaurant where we were shown how to make a Vietnamese crepe.
Second stop was an island fruit farm where we had a nice tour of their "orchard" followed by a rest with a plate of different fruit samples to munch on while we took in a stage show consisting of several skits (short video in our
album).
Our third stop was an island with a candy making factory. It was quite neat to see the sheets of candy being made, a template used to cut the sheet into the right size pieces which were then fed into a machine that spit out fully wrapped and ready to go candies (short video in our
album).
Our last stop for the day was our homestay. The tour itinerary had described it as a basic dormitory style place with cots and only cold water so our expectations were not high. However, somewhere along the line they went a bit more upscale. We each had our own rooms (single or double) with hot shower. Nice. This was quite a beautiful setting with nice garden areas and a large covered veranda for dining. AND NO MOSQUITOES :-)
After a short rest a group dinner was served with each dish being adorned with a carved cute cucumber figure.
Wednesday, food tour day 11, after a nice light breakfast, we said our goodbyes to the homestay owner.
On our way back to the pier, where our bus awaited, we stopped at one narrow canal where they offered a "small boat" excursion into more backwaters. We elected to stay on the larger boat while the rest of our group did the small boat tour. We had our own personal tour around the island to the point where they would emerge. Soon we were all back on board and on our way back to Ho Chi Minh City.
We made a stop on the way to Ho Chi Minh City as our guide had pre-ordered a round of
banh mi sandwiches for us. Since we were on a bus they promptly got wolfed down before any pics could get taken YUMMY! Next stop was a tour of the large
Ben Thanh market. Later Kris and Liz checked out a nearby grocery store while Brian and Manu paid a visit to the
War Remnants Museum with it's unabridged photographic displays of war time atrocities and results of chemical warfare used against the people of Vietnam. The Vietnam war, as we in North America came to know it, is referred to as the American War here.
For dinner this night we all went out together for our farewell meal as Dan and Sam had an early morning flight home to Austraila and Liz had an early morning flight home to Canada.
Thursday morning we met Lara and Manu at breakfast and had a nice last chat with them. They are heading to Thailand while we will stick around Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of days then head to Cambodia.
After breakfast we finished packing, checked out and took a GRAB a few blocks away to the Celine Living Central Suites & Spa our new hotel for the next 3 nights. After getting checked in we took a GRAB to the relatively new very large and upscale
Saigon Center shopping mall.
After wandering the mall and looking in a variety of stores we tried the
Runam Cafe for what was a very good lunch about which Brian later proclaimed that he may have just had the best grilled ham and cheese sandwich EVER!!!
Later in the day we returned to the Ngon Restaurant for what would be our 50th anniversay dinner. The food was good but the service was abysmal. Got a table quite quickly but wait 15 minutes for order to be taken, wait 20 minutes to get Kris' drink, wait 10 minutes, get one meal, wait 15 minutes, get Brian's drink, wait 10 minutes ask about the other meal, "oh, it is just coming now", wait 10 minutes finally eating and drinking together.
Friday morning we checked out the local streets around the hotel. We had a banh mi sandwich at a little hole in the wall shop across the street from our hotel.
Kris had a spa afternoon with a facial and massage at the hotel, while Brian tested out the great pool on the roof. For dinner we took a GRAB to Kau Ba Quan, by well known Vietnamese chef Nikki Tran, a sidewalk dining place near the river. The meal started off great with a plate of baked oysters but quickly went downhill when an entree of ribs had virtually no meat on them and a second entree was a greasy, fat laden bowl of bones and grisel. When the waiter came with our bill we said we didn't care for the second entree to which he replied "yeah, no one likes that dish". Well, duh! We paid our bill and left.
Saturday we had signed up for another cooking class. This one included a more detailed tour of the Ben Tranh market.
For dinner we took a GRAB to
Nha Hang Di Mai, a restaurant suggested by one of the fellows on the reception desk of our hotel. The food and drinks were good but the service was, once again, a bit lacking. One of our main dishes managed to get waylaid. After one dish arrived and a seemingly long wait we asked about the other dish. This resulted in a lot of staff discussion about who was to blame but eventually our order got put back in the kitchen queue and sometime later arrived.
Sunday morning we had time to walk over to Starbucks for a couple of lattes before our ride to the airport arrived. Then it was off to Siem Reap and our first ever landing in Cambodia. Clearing immigration and customs then picking up our luggage our pre-arranged driver was waiting for us outside the arrivals and we were soon at the Koulen Hotel, our home for the next 6 nights.
After getting checked in and orienting our location relative to a city map, we made our way a few blocks to a SIM card seller. For $5 US we each got unlimited internet and unlimited local (within Cambodia) calls and texts. Easy peasy. Now why is this so cheap and easy compared to what we have to do and pay at home??? Anyway, a few blocks walk later we came across the Indochine Restaurant where we shared a combination platter of Northern Cambodian dishes. A bit pricey at $42 US but arguably one of the best meals we have ever had. YUM YUM!!!
A perfect start to our stay in Cambodia and that's it for this week.
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