September, 9

Awoke and did our connection videos with our family: first my mom, then my sister, and lastly Jeff's sister… all while we had our Javas. In between the calls, we went just out to a local bakery for breakfast- two eggs (quail?) in a roll/pastry; a slightly sweet paste (maybe mung bean paste) in a pastry; and yogurt. Also had a “tang” type juice. This apartment/hotel large studio room we are in does not have a kitchenette. We were provided a kettle for hot water (but no mugs, really?), and a small bar-size frig. It is more than three times less than our HCMC apartment per night, though. Our HCMC apartment was $40 per night (due to shorter stay and that it is in HCMC). This place is $11 per night. We will be here 9 nights.

Anyway, contacts completed we set to explore, DaLat, Vietnam. The city is around a population of 250,000 people – way smaller than the 13,000,000 people in HCMC. You get the smaller feel right off. No real skyscraper buildings. We meandered downhill, mostly, from our hotel, and came to the large lake, Ho Xuan Huong, in the middle of town. It is coolish mid 70's with the high today to be low 80's. This morning was cloudy and looked like rain, but it has blown off.

We set off to walk around it. It is larger than we thought, but we prevailed because we need the exercise. It reminded us of Kandy in Sri Lanka a bit. But this lake is larger and not as shaded. We saw fish and men fishing, but no monitor lizards, bats or birds (no birds surprised us). There is a main road that goes around the lake like in Kandy, but it does not seem as busy, at least right now. Also there were not any little carts selling various street foods, only saw two stands – one for ice cream, one beverages. We passed through a little full bloom rose bed🌹🌹. Also passed by horse drawn carts, and horses “out to pasture” – so to speak. I figure they are replacements. Then as we went around on the far side – we found a botanical gardens (maybe?). We will have to check it out. This area is known as the flower area of Vietnam, as well as tea plantations. We did most of this side's length, until we decided to veer off coarse to get lunch!

On a side road we found a cafe-Quan Trang. We were wanting to split a Pho and Banh Mi. There was a communcation issue so we settled for both of us getting a Pho. We did get one chicken and one beef. We were given a plate of greens. There was two plates of things on the table already – a banana leaf wrapped something and long skinny soft bread. We split one of each. The bread was great in the soup, but the banana leaf something (a kind of sausage). I later saw a sign and translated that sausage – maybe it was of chicken gizzards and soft eggs. It doesn't matter Jeff and I did not like it. Oh, yeah, Jeff had to go next door to get us drinks (the guy only had warm Pepsi). Anyway, it was okay, not great. But we won't be back here – too many other options. We paid 140,000 Dong ($5.67).

We left and meandered back to our place. We passed many coffee shops – it still surprises me how many there are… they're EVERYWHERE!🤯 One had a cute saying on their window.. “Vietnamese people make coffee kindly and responsibly.” HA-HA!! Then we saw a chocolate shop😋, The Choco. Well, we had to stop! They had samples, even better!!! We bought some dark chocolate fudge-type bites and some coffee chocolate cookies. It was 145,000 Dong ($5.87) – more than lunch, but will be better & not one meal. (How's that for justification!?!)

We finally made it back and got in over 13,000 steps!! But we were tuckered. We did take a little nap and just had a siesta-kind-of afternoon. Around 1700, we went out for supper. We found a couple of little street shops. First was Banh Ca Ne, which translates as Cracked Fish Cake. But it was a type of sweet corn bread mix, poured into a fish shaped griddle/waffle maker. A choose item – from sweet to savory – was placed in the batter and then the two “fish” halves were pressed together. We chose a “beef cheese”  (it was laughing cow cheese🤣) one and a cheese (mozzarella?) one. It was fun to watch. While I waited for them, Jeff went to scout out something else. He found a place making little cakes with a quail egg in each cooked over charcoal. He thought he had ordered two, but one order was five little cakes. So we ended up with ten! They gave us a rice vinegar and green onion accompaniment. Now this was plenty! The “Fish” cakes came to 24,000 Dong (97 cents), and the Quail egg cakes were 30,000 Dong ($1.21).

We took them back and ate supper in our room. It started raining just as we got back to our hotel and did not stop for around two hours. The wind was not blowing so we were able to keep the windows open and just listen to the showers of the rain – sometimes more pounding of rain.

Nice evening and good first day in DaLat!!!