Thursday, February 10, 2005
four tet
Okay, so now Ms Love's birthday is over, things are slowly getting back to normal, though all the shops are still closed in her honour.
The early part of the great day itself passed without incident. We tried visiting a market in the Chinese part of town - closed for Tet New Year celebrations. To my eternal regret, especially as its place on the birthday agenda was at Courtney's request, the same applied to the bobbins sounding Fine Art Museum. In fact almost everything was shut, meaning we had to spend a large portion of the afternoon tramping the streets looking for a restaurant that was simply open, notwithstanding its suitability for the evening part of the birthday celebrations. Joy and rapture followed at the news that a colonial style (and very expensive) French restaurant could just about squeeze us in.
As alluded to earlier, this was the night of Vietnamese New Year. Bless them, 37 days late but who's counting. Upon completion of distinctly unFrench (mashed potato?) but quite tasty meal we joined the thousands in the streets. Fireworks and motorbikes everywhere. And all totally free. We made friends with all the locals and established that fireworks are much the same the world over.
From here followed an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta. Bravely we decided to eschew the tourist bus and take local transport. Gone were air conditioning and 20 year old western birds. In their place were about 20 of us stuffed into one minibus. Still, I did succeed in forcing the driver to turn off the music. I also lectured him at length that if he told us an enforced lunch break was only going to be 10 minutes then he should mean that and not keep us there for near enough 30. Ms Love reckons he didn't understand a word, but take that minibus now and I'm sure you'll find a much more professional level of service.
Mekong Delta? Well, it was very hot and the floating market was closed due to Tet. But managed a lovely walk around the small rivers and canals. And no ESPN in the hotel so Courtney was excused having to wake up at 4.15am and watch AJ making his debut...
The early part of the great day itself passed without incident. We tried visiting a market in the Chinese part of town - closed for Tet New Year celebrations. To my eternal regret, especially as its place on the birthday agenda was at Courtney's request, the same applied to the bobbins sounding Fine Art Museum. In fact almost everything was shut, meaning we had to spend a large portion of the afternoon tramping the streets looking for a restaurant that was simply open, notwithstanding its suitability for the evening part of the birthday celebrations. Joy and rapture followed at the news that a colonial style (and very expensive) French restaurant could just about squeeze us in.
As alluded to earlier, this was the night of Vietnamese New Year. Bless them, 37 days late but who's counting. Upon completion of distinctly unFrench (mashed potato?) but quite tasty meal we joined the thousands in the streets. Fireworks and motorbikes everywhere. And all totally free. We made friends with all the locals and established that fireworks are much the same the world over.
From here followed an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta. Bravely we decided to eschew the tourist bus and take local transport. Gone were air conditioning and 20 year old western birds. In their place were about 20 of us stuffed into one minibus. Still, I did succeed in forcing the driver to turn off the music. I also lectured him at length that if he told us an enforced lunch break was only going to be 10 minutes then he should mean that and not keep us there for near enough 30. Ms Love reckons he didn't understand a word, but take that minibus now and I'm sure you'll find a much more professional level of service.
Mekong Delta? Well, it was very hot and the floating market was closed due to Tet. But managed a lovely walk around the small rivers and canals. And no ESPN in the hotel so Courtney was excused having to wake up at 4.15am and watch AJ making his debut...
// posted by courtney and pete @ 20:59 
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I note that you're becoming more like conventional (rich) western tourists with every report we get........
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: 7:26 pm
: 7:26 pm 
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