Thursday 7th April

A late start today as Owen didn't have any classes. After a leisurely breakfast we walked up towards the university, d*** had a haircut & then into coffee at a tiny empty cafe run by an elderly couple. From there we took a taxi to the Golden Barbecue for lunch. This was a Korean restaurant where the food was cooked on a brazier in the centre of the table & we had a fine meal.

On we went to the 15th storey of the Palace Hotel, the tallest building in the city, to have another coffee so we could see that the town sits in a bowl in the hills with the river running through it. We moved on to the markets but many of the stalls were closed & so after wandering through it we returned home by taxi.

We all had an early night as it was pretty hot & we were all tired.

Friday 8th April

Another fairly slow day today. Avenel wasn’t feeling well but took Jane for a walk along the road away from the town past the rice fields & ponds with their ducks & fish & returned via the little market at the end of the street. Here the stall holders sell live fish, shell fish, fruit & vegetables & meat which is cut to size on a wooden bench to meet the customers’ needs. Most of the produce is on mats on the ground & people buy their food every day often on their return from work.

After lunch Avenel & d*** had a sleep, Jane downloaded her photos & Owen went off to the university & returned with the news that the Police would not allow us to stay at their place after all.

At 4.30 we were picked up by one of Owens students as we were all to go to My Lam, a spa town set up by the French, further out in the hills. On the way we stopped in the tea fields to look more closely at the well tended lines of tea bushes just like trimmed hedges. At the spa we had tea & sticky rice before all being allocated bathrooms all with double baths in which we lounged for about 20 minutes. The mineral water hot springs was fairly pleasant & luckily for us wasn’t too smelly but it did rather make us feel sleepy & lethargic. In the yard outside we saw some fireflies which one of the children caught & it was interesting to see one close to. Apparently poor students caught them & put them in eggshells to help them read at night before electricity.

From there we were taken for dinner to a restaurant on the first floor of a wooden building. Here the first course was a bit of a shock. Tiny birds roasted whole which one just eats by chewing all of the bird except for the beak. The flavour was OK as they were quite crunchy but it was all rather confronting for us. Following the birds we had a range of foods served to us including rice in various colours. We returned home via Mrs Lim, our driver’s house which again was quite an unusual design. Like many Vietnamese houses it was quite narrow but was 4 storeys high with the garage on the ground, kitchen & lounge on the first floor, bedrooms on the next level together with an open area for hanging clothes above that was a garden area of raised beds with vegetables of many varieties & on the top level there was a flower garden of baskets mainly of orchids.

Owen was worried that the Police would come to the house when we returned but phone calls from one of the ladies appeared to fix it. We were warned that if they did arrive we should resort to some modest bribery. Luckily no Police arrived & we had a quiet night