Nov
Xin chào các bạn và quí vị,
Everyone has now arrived at the Hoa Binh Palace Hotel. Last night we went for highlander food at Highway 4, a restaurant with a bamboo-style upper room. Sitting cross-legged, the meal began with cups of corn water, followed by flavored rice wine (apricot, strawberry, cherry). Appetizers of mango salad, followed by a couple plates of honey-roasted crickets (they were quite delish; and yes, everyone ate some), some fish and rice, medallions de Vietnamese ostrich and some free-range chicken.
Roadmonkey expedition co-leader Brent Wexler samples our opening night feast
Washed it all down with bottles & bottles of beer: Larue, a Belgian ale brewed in VN; and Saigon export – the Vietnamese equivalent of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
And now, the closest thing this blog will get to a political comment:
After a year and a half of exposure to presidential campaign articles, ads, attacks, controversies, bloviations, exaggerations, contradictions, meltdowns, parodies, histrionics, hyperbole, lies, spin, spam and the what can only be described as the American cable news idiotocracy…
…it sure is nice to be half a world away, walking past Hanoi’s flooded central lake, into the old quarter, through 1,000-year-old fish, meat, fruit and vegetable markets, and over to a little stall where a rosy-faced woman ladles her rice-based batter on a steaming drum to make perhaps the world’s best bánh cuốn.
can't beat a good bánh cuốn breakfast
More of today’s pix to follow, shortly.
- Paul
