Delicious Thailand. Deja Moo 2018

Also known as "I've seen that BS before". Like I thought, the 5AM didn't arrive at 6:30 in the airport, like the concerned Thais were warning us, but 5:52AM. There was one person in front of us in the passport control, so we had been through all the procedures by the time we could have actually taken the seat in the minivan. And there was 2hrs50min until departure. We filled the time very meaningfully, i.e. with huge coffee and chocolate croissant.

10,5 hour flight was mainly uneventful, I watched three movies and gained all the lost weight back with Finnair pasta.

Delicious Thailand. Deja Moo

Having had cultural, religious, authentic and rustic experience as well as arrogant Thais, Chinese market and pouring rain, we decided to have an airconned shopping day in one of the huge shopping centers. And chose the same Siam center, where we just were on Sunday. 

But first things first. While enjoying our breakfast we saw locals disappearing behind a wall. We set the bill and decided to check it out. Few minutes later we found ourselves in a quiet and lush temple yard that was also used as drive-thru and parking lot. We checked out the temple and stopped in our room to start our way to bus stop and shopping mall after that. We had just reached the hotel lobby when within 10 seconds the blue sky turned into pouring rain. Waited for 45 minutes and the rain was over and streets started to dry. 

Next hour can by called as shoestring tourism at its best. The bus to the shopping mall did cost 19 cents. We had already on Sunday noticed the pop-up center of Samsung and we stopped in there now too. As it was, we could try on the 4D glasses incl roller-coaster and killing some monsters for free. They also offered some skiing simulation for free. And after filling out a form and providing them with your contact data we got a shopping bag, some stickers and free Stardust drink. Saving and entertainment at its best. But from there there were no more shoestrings, because we had decided to have lunch in the food court of the luxury brands' shopping center. I paid 5.50 EUR for the tiniest quesadillas ever made in the world. And I had craved Uncle Tetsu's (or any for that matter) Japanese cheesecake since my last trip to Bangkok, so I made sure to find the right stand this time and buy one for another 4.50 EUR. One lunch ending up costing about the same as my usual daily food budget.

We took the bus and went back to the hotel. On the way we also booked the shuttle for tomorrow to go to the airport. Once again we ended up in a discussion with locals, what's the appropriate time to leave. My bets were on 6am, but once again they managed to talk me into taking the shuttle an hour earlier, if I'd like to see Europe tomorrow. No need to walk on the edge. Well, we'll see tomorrow. 

For dinner we got the long waited sticky rice and mango and went to bed at 9pm to be able to get up at 4am. Thanks to the concern of Thais.

Delicious Thailand. Shoestring tourists

After getting up in the morning we went to check out the pool and to breakfast after that. I took pouched eggs that looked like just two raw egg yolks on top of some kind of egg white mess. I didn't even want to take a picture of them, that's how sad they looked. After a short trip back to our room we went out for a more sophisticated cultural and religios day. We had planned to visit few wats (temples) nearby, one of them being Golden Mountain Temple. In our 'hood they were still dealing with the remnants of last nights parties and cleaning the streets with washing powder and water. We had barely reached the first traffic light when a Thai "teacher" from the school across the street (why is he  hanging out on the streets at 10am on a weekday instead of teaching, we didn't ask) approached us and asked where we're going. His eyes got round and he told us that on Monday our target wat will be opened at 1PM and we could take a boat trip instead. We must have looked not convinced so he repeated that he's a teacher, see, from that school over there, not just some random tuktuk driver. We still wanted to walk to the temple and he even got somewhat angry that we waste our day instead of going to the boat trip. On Monday all the canals are even open and everything. But sowjet schooled ladies shoved the Thai plans aside and went to the temple that, what a surprise! was open since 7 am. We walked all the 344 steps up and then all the 344 steps down after enjoying some great views from top. Had some lunch after and returned to our hotel.

The boat trip chat had raised some interest in us tho, so I googled river cruise options. First I found some comments from fellow tourists, where they mentioned a Thai teacher, who had recommended them to go to a boat trip and then sold them an expensive one hour boat trip. While the usual price for three people is appr. 20 EUR, mentioned teacher cashed in 80 EUR for one. We patted ourselves on shoulder for not falling for that scam. Secondly I found some hop-on-hop-off tourist boats. You get a dayticket for 5 EUR and hop on or off whereever you want. Or whereever there is a pier. Third I found a local boat that operates as public transportation and where one ride costs appr. 40 cents. So we went to the pier with the plan to take the local boat to Wat Arun (the temple that Finally, on my 5th trip to Bangkok is not under renovation anymore!). On the pier we were heavily approached by a Thai lady, who wanted to sell us tourist boat. Hearing that we plan on taking the local boat, she said that the next one is coming at 4pm (it was 2pm at the moment). Since I had read that the local boats come every 20 minutes, I told the lady that no worries, we have time. She must have thought that we didn't understand when she told us that the local boat is basically not coming anymore and offered us the expensive tourist trap again. And what a surprise, in 10 minutes the local boat arrived and the people were shoved in. Few more pats on the shoulder.

The ride to Wat Arun took around ten minutes and during that time the lovely summer day turned into a summer day where water poured from up and down. We arrived to the temple soaking wet and won all the wet t-shirt competitions there. Since the rain soon finished, we continued our sightseeing trip and took the local boat to the flower market. Imagining rows and rows of beautiful smelling roses, orchids and other flowers... Turned out, 80% of the market was full of yellow chrysantemum blossoms in plastic bags, being turned into gifts for Buddha.

We continued our trip and started walking towards Chinatown. There was also a nice temple on the way, we checked out and found a crocodile pond in the yard. Little pond with small fence right in the center of the yard, under some trees. Hosting at least four crocodiles. Chinatown itself was surrounded by blocks and blocks of market full of all kind of cheap chinese origin crap. It took us at least half an hour and lot of patience to get just through it. Since I had no illusion about chinese having learned some table manners of improved their cooking skills, we decided not to risk it and took the tuktuk back to our hotel.

Helena went to the massage, I walked up to our rooftop pool. For the dinner we had fixed plan to eat sticky rice and mango, but since it felt that we should eat something fresh before that too, we went to a restaurant and ordered fruit plate. That fruit plate had at least one kilo of pineapple, banana and watermelon on it and after finishing those we didn't really feel like sticky rice anymore. Tomorrow...

Good Morning, Vietnam! About efficiency

The lady of the house said goodbye to us yesterday, because today at 9am when the taxi she called us, was supposed to pick us up, she was in school for the parents meeting. Obviously she has more unreasonable belief in vietnamese accurateness than we did, because when she returned at 9:15, we were still there. Anyway, at some point before 9:30 the car pulled in and appr. at 10am we were in the airport. As it turned out, 2 hours prior departure was fairly last minute considering the non-efficiency of the Vietnamese. There were three counters opened for Bangkok flight: check-in (we had checked in online), luggage drop off (we had none) and document check. That's what we needed. There was exactly one couple in front of me, with huge amount of luggage. Dealing with their check in took 10 minutes and already it was my turn. By that time there were three long lines waiting and it didn't seem that any of them was concerned about standing in correct line. Also to the passport check people were let in in small groups.

Still remembering the cheap prices in Hanoi airport, we had planned to have lunch before boarding, but the airport restaurants had other plans. Croissant with two slices of tomato and mozzarella was 6.50 USD. We had french fries in Burger King. We actually also had a gourmet trip planned last night, but it didn't really worked like planned. I had read on an more or less official Hoi An web page that if you haven't eaten grilled rice papers and mango cakes, you haven't been to Hoi An. So we went to the island, where there was supposed to be lots of the mentioned rice paper. What wasn't there, was the rice paper. We had some french fries. Back on the better known streets I got that highly praised mango cake, which turned out to be tasteless gluey thing. So much of the authentic gourmet.

In Bangkok we asked in the information, where does the bus go to town. According to the information by Exit 6. There we were, standing in the bus stop by Exit 6 until one moment our bus No A4 was just driving past us. A4, apparently doesn't stop in the bus stop by Exit 6, but randomly by Exit 4. Next A4 departed half an hour later. At least it wasn't cold to wait there.

We had planned visiting Unicorn Cafe and later some shopping for tonight. We started with the cafe. Since 25 cake layers speak more than 1000 words, look at the pictures. We visited Thann and Uniqlo in Siam and went to the bus stop to get back to the hotel. After half an hour there was the bus and another half an hour later we were in the hotel.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Experts have spoken

Racist has spoken (see Helena's comment in yesterday's post), the customer service critic will have a word now (Gaili, the expert). Even the most critical tourist (to be precise tho, it's constructive critics!) can understand that each country has it's own rules and habits. And if Vietnamese sales persons would have sales in their blood, that's how it should be taken. However, I've yet to see that they treat locals like long lost relatives. Tourists don't even have to slow down when they already get called to taste some gourmet or buy some souvenirs. And should you actually stop to check a menu, you can be sure that there will be one waitress turning the pages for you and reading the menu out loud for you and another one behind you ready to tackle you down the second you try to run. If you ask for a price of something, they first want to know, how many items you want to buy. Well, how many skirts can one tourist buy? If you go to grocery store and want to know the price of a water, they don't tell you the price, but jump up, go to the fridge, bring it to you and tell the price then. Instead of just telling the price. Despite having a whole crew of a restaurant just for you while you study the menu, turning the pages for you, reading it to you and promising you heaven on eat, everything changes the second you have a seat. Nobody cares. Today we waited an hour for our french fries.

I do have to add something to a recent, somewhat critical post. We happened to chat with the lady of the house today and it turned out, she's not the owner, but managing director also known as jack of all trades here. She's responsible for all the check-in-check-out (besides us, there is only one room occupied at the moment), cleaning (she's bringing us fresh towels and brings out the trash daily) and well, EVERYTHING! Anyway, she lives onsite and is slaving her bodypart off for 7 days a week. Doing all the things I just mentioned. Her son, the one, lying on the couch all day, is Henry. 12 years old, going to 6th grade and is the second best in his class. Wakes up 5:30 every morning and goes to school that is in the town (I do hope, not walking). I hope, I've brought justice to the topic and it's clear that there are hardworking people here, not some lazy bodyparts.

Today, btw, we started with going to the beach. We went especially early, but turned out there were more sleepless people trying to beat the crowds. The sky was cloudy and looked like rain coming in. Half an hour later the sun was shining bright and kept shining until it was time to set. We decided to skip lunch and go to town. Helena had ordered one more bag and that one needed to be picked up. We ate some rolled ice cream on the night market and took the taxi back to the hotel.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Why are the whitening products so popular here

The day started with beach time. I decided to have a litlle walk along the beach after swimming today and walked about 3,5 km. Turned out that our part of the beach has the cleanest and whitest sand.

For lunch we had fruit plates with slightly fermented water melon (as said there are less and less suitable places left to eat in) in Joy's Restaurant with "Last Christmas" as background and ordered a cab to go to town. I see in the app that the cab is pulling in and when we arrived on the street it turned out to be true. It can very well be that he wasn't happy with his clients, because he continued driving. I made some faster steps to reach the car and waived first with one then with both hand, but the car continued driving. Once it even turned on another street, I walked back to wifi and let him know that I will not keep on running after cars and he should kindly drive his vehicle back to where we are waiting. Helena's only comment was that since lot of people we have met recently are not the brightest light bulbs, the whitening products must be so popular.

We went in one silk store and came out another souvenir store until it was time to go to the night market. We had watermelon and banana pancake and grilled rice paper. We also visited a leather store, where the owners kid had gotten too tired and slept on the floor.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Hoi An people clean up day

Since we still have the fridge in our room and can use the kitchen downstairs, our usual breakfast is joghurt, coffee and mango. Nice :) We made it to the beach today so early that even the chair selling lady could not believe her eyes. Apart from us there were only two fishermen around. Sun was covered with light clouds, so we could stay on the beach longer without having our hair dripping from sweat.

We decided to continue our diet "Look like Victoria's Secret Model!" and went out to have fruit plate in our usual place. She has it at least well in balance - water melon, pineapple, mango and banana. We ordered our food and ten minutes later I could only look at my yellow plate and ask the lady where did she hide the watermelon. Turned out, she just forgot it! She then grabbed the watermelon from her buddha altar and ran to the kitchen. I do hope, that the buddha was at least left with a can of beer or something. Other half of the watermelon maybe.

Another beach round in the afternoon. The wind had risen and sea was stormy.  The waves were at least half a meter high. But the water was nice and warm. Then again, lying on the sand, we had the sand hitting us constantly. I returned to the room and took a well deserved nap.

We gave another chance to the Joy Restaurant for the dinner and that turned out to be one of the best service experiences so far. French fries were good too. As were the fried bananas. Victoria's Secret can hire some Peppa the Pigs now as models.

It's bath day in our 'hood today. There are water barrels out in front of the houses, one even has jacuzzi (to be honest tho, the jacuzzi is there every day on the street, filled with water), kids are stripped naked, grown-ups clean themselves through clothes and pour water over the heads. It seems that all the friends and relatives are invited, because the cleaning process was on high tours when we were going to the dinner and still rolling when we were returning from restaurant an hour later. The ones done, jumped on motor bikes and drove to beach or town. Depending, which party seemed better.

Our homestay is maintained by a lady, assumably the owner and her 8-10 years old son. Few times we have seen a guy sleeping next to the entrance too. The lady wakes up at 4am, does her exercise until 6am, goes to the market and lies on the bed or floor for the rest of the day. When we go to the kitchen in the morning to make coffee, she jumps up and joins us for some small talk. When we go to the beach, she climbs up to our room and changes the towels. Her son wakes up around 8am, goes to the living room, throws himself on the couch and remains there in front of his laptop until it's time to go to bed. This kind of exciting life is going on in our homestay.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Nobody knows

For today we had the daytrip booked (again!) to the My Son temples. Helena told me in the morning that she's not coming anywhere, she had bonded with our hotel room toilet and has every plan to spend the day there. And said some f-words about Miss Queen from yesterday, who served us food with questionable quality. Anyway, at 8:10 the Mercedes pulled in and I jumped on board. After he picked the van full, we were brought to a bigger bus and notified that "Bus change!" There were already appr. 15 people waiting in the bus. We went in, sat down and there we were. Until in about half an hour third van full of people were brought. The first ones had been waiting for an hour by that time. The tour guides seem to be some kind of activists here - today’s, Nguyen, told us that he speaks very good English, excellent English, better English than Americans. And to prove that told us No Money, No Honey. Anyway, he continued with this kind of simple jokes and at first most of the bus was laughing loud, later there was less laughing. Turned out, btw that My Son is pronounced as Mason, not  "My Son" like little boy in English. In general, the guide thought it would be necessary to repeat everything three times, how else would those tourists understand... After I had heard by the first temple for the 8th time, how inconsiderate that US Army was, by bombing all those beautiful and very well preserved temples, I left the group and continued checking out the ruins alone. There was not always the possibility to exclude myself somewhere else, so by the last temple I had to listen to him talking about the statue of a linga that used to be in the temple (at the moment the linga was standing next to the temple ruins) and the lady part that was placed above or on the linga and laughing at his amazing jokes.

Next on the schedule was a boat trip to the town with refreshing vegetarian meal. The meal turned out to be rice with some steamed cabbage and grean beans. We passed a cow island and stranded at the end of the night market. I had a glass of passion fruit juice and told the guy in English and Vietnamese "No Sugar" and the dude had repeated it and then a glass full of syrup arrived to the table, some of the sugar not even dissolved yet.

Walked around in the city and took the taxi to the hotel. We walked to the bridge to see the sun disappearing behind the cloud and then we had the plan to go and have a fuit plate in our usual place. I could already see myself digging into those delicious slices of watermelon. But looked like the lady had had a successful day and by 6pm the lights were out. Also in the SPA across the street there seemed to be nobody to come and take our order and cut the fruits. We walked to the next restaurant and in no time there were fruit plates in front of us. But what wasn't in front of us, was watermelon. There were mangoes, pineapples, banana and orange. One sweeter than the other. I asked about the watermelon and the waitress kindly suggested me to go to the market. I had most of the sugar boost to be packed for take away and we returned to the hotel. Slept by 7:30pm.

Good Morning, Vietnam! How we did laundry

"Massage? Now? You kidding me? Those two farangs? Maybe they wanna come back later? I'm eating now. That you don't value family traditsionaalne, doesn't mean, nobody would!"
"They might not come back later. Better a farang on a massage table than two farangs in their hotel. You know, eat fast, I'm gonna entertain them."
Something like this must have been going on there, we figured, after we had been sitting there, feet in lemongrass water for over 15 minutes and no masseuse in sight, while all the family was having their everyday rice. We just hoped that the girl, who came into the room after lunch and started to work on her acne wasn't one of the two masseuses. Luckily the masseuses arrived soon too and the party started. I can confirm that the feet, massaged with tiger balm catch street dirt way better than the feet that haven't been massaged with tiger balm. And actually we didn't plan to have massage at all, we just went there to drop off dirty laundry...

Since we found a cool fruit store yesterday when coming back from town, we had stocked up on mangoes and had a delicious mango with joghurt this morning.

We also had plans for the evening: we go to the beach, have a sunset swim, watch the sunset and then go to that one restaurant we saw the other day to eat some scallops. Well, I eat the scallops and Helena something else. But someone must have laughed out loud while we were planning. Our, in the morning empty beach had turned into a meeting point for all the tourists, locals and all of their relatives in Hoi An. DJ played the newest songs from techno scene, sand was covered with table, chairs and peeing little Vietnamese boys and the party was in full swing. Obviously no swimming in the sea, painted in gold by the setting sun. Sea was just as full of people as Mekong is full of pangasius and the sun didn't set behind the horisont, but the first cloud possible. We gathered our stuff, took it to the room and made our way to the restaurant.

We happened to be served by the Queen herself (who was wearing little black dress, with QUEEN on the front and a crown on the back), who found the task clearly below her dignity. We ordered and already 5 minutes later the Mrs Queen sneaked in from behind, poked my arm and told that "No scallops today" (what a surprise! Since I hadn't noticed any in the lot of bowls earlier, I already had a Plan B too) and recommended oysters. I asked for shrimp curry. Helena had long finished her spring rolls (in all hoonest, she probably speeded the eating process up a bit to not loose her foor to the rat looking from under the table very hungry) and the dishes had been taken away when my soup, also known as curry in this country arrived. Finished eating and we walked to a French resturant we noticed earlier. We could already see ourselves sitting there in the morning, eating the croissants that melt in the mouth when the French owner just crushed all those dreams, telling us that it's a dinner restaurant, opened only form 6pm to 10pm. Excuse me???

For tomorrow we have the daytrip to My Son temples booked. I hope, the Vietnamese have figured out their calendars and we have a car ready at 8am tomorrow. Because today we woke up at 8am when our hotel owner was banging on the door to ask, if we had booked a daytrip for today. The car was ready...

Good Morning, Vietnam! Beach. Finally beach.

We just made us some coffee in the kitchen this morning when the owner joined us for some small talk and told that she's up since 4am, has done excercise for 2 hours and gone to the market, well, to put it short, by 9am she already has half a day behind her. Not like some good-for-nothings. Any how, we thought that she should put her energy into cleaning, because the kitchen to start with, hasn't seen any cleaning since years. Or deal with her son, who, clearly overweight, has been sleeping on the couch or watched movies from laptop non-stop all days.

Anyway, we went to the beach and sat down in a nearby restaurant after that. We had browsed through the menu several times and Helena had searched all the possible rooms to find the owner/cook/waitress and we were about to leave when the lady from the SPA across the street took matters in her hand, called the lady of the house, crossed the street and took our order.  Once the orders were placed, the owner appeared too and in no time we got our food.

Despite the simple rule in Vietnam traffic:
green light - I can go
yellow light - I can go
red light - it's definitely time to go
we still decided to rent bicycles and pedal to the town. 5,5 km later we parked the bikes and went to meet the ancient city of Hoi An. Was a pleasant meeting, I see potential for long lasting friendship. We also asked tour prices in a booking agency and the My Son temple tour was 10 dollar. Since we have plenty of time in this town, we didn't plan to book anything yet and told that we will be back some other day. The price dropped to 9 USD. We were still not convinced that we are going to book the tour right this second and wanted to come back later same day. By that time the price was 8 USD. We paid and will go see the temples on Wednesday.

We walked on the night market, had lots of great food like coconut cakes, grilled squid, fried sushi and started our way back to the hotel. Since the sun had set meanwhile and our bikes didn't have any lights or bells, the ride was anything but chill cruz singel, hair waving in the wind, some wine and baguettes in the front basket. It was more like a survival course, because nobody except us knew anything about the traffic rules. As usually.

The survival course continues in the hotel - there's Day and Night with Cruz and Diaz in the TV. I don't recall seeing something so bad in a long time.