So back in Hoi An.What a beautiful city.So many tailors.All wanting to make you suits and dresses etc... I managed to control myself reasonably well and Setchy had some nice brogues made.The food here was mostly good but we did have two bad experiences.The first meal we had cost us 50p and was called Cao loa or something similar. Basically it was salad and herb leaves with slices of grilled pork ontop and crumbled crispy rice paper croutons on top.Pretty good.The second meal we had was stirfried noodles with chicken and it cost us 2 dollars with beer...not great but kind of edible.Then we thought we'd treat ourselves ....We had read about Brothers Cafe down by the river.Wow what an amazing setting ...the old colonial building was stunning and huge and had a garden built through it .It was lit up beautifully and we turned up very excited as we had seen the menu the day before . They do a 7 course taster menu for 24 dollars...well considering most of there main courses were that price we thought why not ? We ordered 2 cocktails at 6 dollars (normally in Nam 2 1/2 dollars) the first course was crab and asparagus soup...tasteless and globby.The next course was Grilled king prawns coated in shredded coconut and served with chilli jam.....the only thing on the whole menu worth eating...thats the chilli jam not the prawns !!When the next four courses came out and I was attempting to eat some pineapple rice and a bug jumped out and ran into the beef dish THAT WAS IT..Rob managed to eat the chocolate mousse (made with condensed milk YUCK!!).The bill came to 82 dollars !!! oh and included 2 bottles of fizzy water and a small glass of wine. We was robbed !!! I wish you could have seen my face when Rob picked up some of the coconut chicken curry and dribbled it off the spoon...I have never seen anything look more like snot and glue in all my life and they wanted us to eat it ?????Ok live and learn Setchies.When we moved to our new hotel the owner told us to go to a restaurant called BaleWell...bloody brilliant Apparently has just had a masive write up in the New York Times and desevedly so.We had 2 beers and then the food kept arriving...rice paper pancakes which you roll up withh salad and herbs slices of cucumber and green banana,coleslaw without the mayo,Shrimp spring roll fried and grilled marinated pork slid off a skewer...roll it tightly and dip in a soya bean and chilli sauce LUSH!!! and then they bought us shrimp and pork pancakes with bean sprouts to also roll in the aforementioned pancakes...less than 200000 Dong ( bout 10 dollars ...complete bargain !!!

Our favourite tour of our trip so far was here. We did a cookery tour with Thian...awesome ! He picked us up and drove us to the market where we went round different stores and bought the produce we would need.Then after a bit of a coffee break with our co cooks Estelle from Wales,Eden from Washington DC and Don and Judy from Tasmania, we took a boat down river to the resort where we would be cooking OUTDOORS perfect. After a passion fruit juice break , we took smaller boats to a little village where we went to an old couples house and we made batter for our coconut rice pancakes using the original stone mill .The couple who lived their were 86 and 83 .She was as tall as Weezy and her teeth were black.Apparently a fashion statement in the day !!!But they smiled and smiled and smiled.We stopped on the way back to pick our salad leaves and hers from someone elses garden.The cooking was amazing and the food was incredible...cant wait to reproduce when we get home.

And then on the full moon party...(not quite a rave but more of a behave...thank you Joe)...there we are sat in a restaurant lit by only lantern light and this couple are screaming and waving franticly at us ......Anna and Michael (app king) from Amsterdam!!!!It appears they had spotted us in Saigon but lost us in the crowds and we had not heard them shouting lmao. So off we went for a few beers and a catch up. It was fab !

Ok I am now completely exhausted....need beer....catch up more later Blog off !!

xx

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