When we first arrived in Saigon not so very long ago, there was a shop around the corner from the guesthouse that was completely gutted and being renovated inside and out. The progress they made was incredible – just yesterday when I walked by in the morning the store was still completely empty and by the afternoon it was a fully operational bookstore and cafe, decorated with simple flower arrangements and modern furniture. This morning, Molly, Kendra, and I went there just after their grand opening kickoff ceremony for breakfast smoothies. The drinks were really good, though Molly’s “Love Story” (a strawberry, citrus, and grenadine smoothie) was the best. The bookstore was really upscale – everyone inside was dressed to the nines (clearly upper class people, a curious sight given the exploding middle class in this area) and the smoothies cost a lot in terms of Vietnamese prices (though it’s still nothing by American terms).
At lunch, we went out for a traditional Chinese meal. Without telling any of us, Ming had called ahead and ordered an entire Peking duck, so there was plenty of food to go around. Dishes made with different parts of the duck steadily made their way out and were placed on the rotating platform (like a Lazy Susan) in front of us and we spun it around, grabbing at whatever looked good. My favorite out of the dishes was the crispy duck skin, which we wrapped in a pancake and dipped in a thick dark brown sauce that often comes with duck but which I still can’t identify.
The rest of the day was spent packing and shopping for teaching materials we’ll be using in Ben Tre. People ended up doing their own thing for dinner but Molly and I decided that we wanted pho for our last meal in Saigon for the next four weeks. We went with some of the roommates around the corner to my favorite place down 18 Alley. It was excellent as always, though I think by the end of the day they’ve run out of the good cuts of meat because the beef in our pho wasn’t nearly as lean as what they give us at breakfast. It was a good meal, except for the ten minutes I spent hacking because a beansprout went down the wrong pipe (the incident actually hurt my ego a little because all the roommates attributed my coughing to all the spice I put in the soup which definitely wasn’t too much for me – if there’s one thing I get really cocky about,it’s how much spice I can handle).
After we’d finished packing, we decided it was our last night in Saigon and we might as well live it up, so we went back to the same bookstore from this morning. It was really amusing to go there twice in one day because the manager (a smartly-dressed and very efficient woman) recognized us from this morning and said hello. Molly and I had chocolate cravings so we each got a small brownie, which ended up being very disappointing – it was pretty dry and had raisins in it for whatever reason. Things only got better from there. The manager was so pleased that we’d com back (and probably trying to curry favor so we’d continue coming) that she gave us a whole half of a chocolate mousse cake (that would have gone bad anyway since it was almost closing time) entirely for free. This satisfied my chocolate craving like no other. It was positively heavenly but it was definitely too much food for just the five of us so we started calling other people to come help us finish it. Everyone else who came ordered drinks so we were happy that at least the manager got some extra business out of the free cake she gifted us. What a great way to conclude our time Saigon.
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