By then I've grown tired of all the hustle and bustle of city life, and my heart was still in Ban Ho Village. I didn't want to sleep, because I was leaving the place I fell in love with, the moment when I jumped into the hot spring just days ago. In the end, I fell asleep for the next 3 hours before someone kicked up a big morning ruckus for us to pack up and go immediately.
I felt like a zombie right after taking all the luggage and without coffee - damn, the coffee they served on board was nice! - so I was quite unreceptive to what was happening around me. Next thing I knew I was on board the coach already, and getting out to the marketplace to have a look at what the Vietnamese have for sale each day.
They had fish, meat, lots of vegetables - that's their produce anyways - and oh! They have durian too. I didn't expect them to have durians around this part of the world! It's a shame I didn't manage to take any pictures of what went on from here onwards, so, just make do with my text, I guess...
Well, anyways. Later on we went to a Phở restaurant for breakfast. Quite nice for a morning meal, but certainly not really doing anything to my stomach except fill it just that tiny bit. But anyways, that day I didn't really want to eat, so one bowl was enough.
Later on, we were dispatched to the city commercial centre, so we could get whatever we wanted home. As I was told not to get anything back home, I just hung around with Ms Ng and Mr Lim with Jiaxian around, us 4 in a group. Nothing else better to do anyway.
And so, we shopped around, trying to find the Adidas shop. After some walking and hunting around for sights, it seemed like there wasn't anything different from the rest of the cities around the world, somewhat not even different from Singapore. It got boring until at last, we found some shops that truly had Vietnamese flavour.
Yep, I'm talking about the dried fruit and spice shop. The only thing that made me want to get out of that shop quickly was the heat inside the shop as compared to the cold air outside. In fact, it was different in Singapore - we would rush into shops because of the heat of the outside.
Although I didn't get anything at Hanoi, I did get a taste of local Phở with orange chilli sauce. Guys, don't even try the chicken one - the beef one tastes better when eaten in a roadside stall. And oh, they serve honey-coated doughballs that sometimes can take a toll on teeth... I got a tired jaw after biting off several pieces off the pack Ms Ng shared with us.
After that nice meal of Phở, we needed something to wash it down with, so again, Ms Ng was so nice to treat me to what I had originally intended to pay with my own pocket money - carrot juice. No, I should call it carrot milkshake - their local carrot drink consisted of 2 fresh big carrots ground into pulp, and they add in sweetened condensed milk, fresh milk and coconut milk. It's creamy, and wow, it's only US$1 for both her coffee and my drink. Marvellous.
Someday I might just reproduce this recipe in Singapore, but probably it might cost a bit, due to things like milk all coming in cans and paper cartons, and the like. Still, they way they made it in quite good quality taste as well, considering it's just a roadside stall...
It's almost as if the Vietnamese food's telling us straight in the face: "Eat this!" to tell us of their perseverance and optimism to live day by day, being a united and forward-looking people.
We were done for the day. Time to finish the presentation once and for all.
After being done and over with it, we settled for the last dinner we'd ever have in Vietnam, and a helluva good place it is, too. It's some grand restaurant, but wait - where's the other customers? Seems like nobody actually went there that night, except for us. So, as usual, we ate our fill, but this time there was a much bigger spread than all our previous dinners. Wow.
Even then, we weren't spared from post-midnight torture after dinner either. A tough and long debrief soon ensued and I assure you, I was damned tired after all that. Some people from the previous batch actually drank and smoked inside the hotel on the last night after a quick debrief that ended much earlier got us sabotaged. In the end, it got so late that Jeremy and I thought it was pretty silly to go back to sleep, since it was already almost 2am and we were to get ready at 6am the next day.
And it was then that home-brought hazelnut coffee powder came into good use. I was just about to finish my first cup when out of the blue, the door flew open and a few others flew in as well. Turned out that there was a ghost sighting in Yao Yang's room, or something close to that. In the end the frightened folks turned the room into a refugee camp - though I didn't mind either. I was alone in that room drinking coffee anyway.
So, it turned out that that nice bed wasn't there for me after all. I stayed vigil for the night before being knocked out by pure fatigue for 2 and a half hours into the next day.
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