Maybe tomorrow

Saturday, June 25, 2011

7:45 am (Vietnam Time)

I have been getting up around 7 am and going to bed around 9 pm these days. Scott says that I am turning into an adult. Truth is, I just probably haven’t recovered from the jet lag yet. 

hu tieu for breakfast

Yesterday was a slow day. Scott and I wake up and go downstairs to have breakfast at the hotel. We order hu tieu again. 5 minutes later, a man on a motorbike holding 2 bowls of hu tieu on a rack covered in plastic, rides up to our hotel and serves us the soup. It is from a restaurant around the corner. We go back upstairs and have to do some work. Scott makes some edits to his proposal, while I develop the schedule for the next 5 weeks. We blog and edit pictures. 

We don’t really know where the day has gone, but before we know it, it is 3 pm, and we are hungry again. We walk to Hai Au Restaurant that Dr. Man took us to on our first day. The menus they give us are different, and the food is way more expensive. We decide to just order drinks; one sinh to mang cau (soursop smoothie) and one rau ma (pennywort juice). The rau ma is not how I remember it in the States. It’s more bitter and a darker green. We just drink the sinh to mang cau. After drinks, we decide to go back to the restaurant we ate at the day before, Lau Mam Bac Lieu. Our stomachs are feeling weak today, so we want to stay on the safe side.

We walk all the way there, about a mile, and take pictures on the way. Once there, the waiters recognize us, and I order lau chua again, but this time with a different fish that is meatier and less bony. The fish we get is called ca bop, and we also get it simmered in a clay pot. Food is delicious as always. The servers are helpful. Eating hot soup on a hot day. I guess that’s how they do it in Vietnam.
 

rau for sale (credit: Audrey)

11:15 am (Vietnam Time)

Rach Gia is a small coastal town

My family and friends at home know that I love to dress up and ponder my outfits for the day. It’s so strange being here and even liberating. I wear mismatched outfits. I leave the house in a blue scrub top and a completely different shade of blue linen pants. I would definitely be stopped by the fashion police at home. I don't wear any make-up, and on occasion, when I want to feel a little girly, I will afford myself the miracle of mascara. But I just don’t care here because it doesn’t matter. I am here to relax and find my inner strentgth; my ability to adapt to situations.
 

I absolutely love the hotel we are staying at. It’s homey, and the owner takes care of us. We go downstairs in the morning, and he knows what we want to eat and drink. Our rooms are cleaned everyday in a timely manner, and we get to sleep comfortably in an air-conditioned room. It’s nice to have the comforts of home so far away. We hear children playing downstairs everyday, and Scott and I are trying to get the courage to go down and play with them. Scott brought a frisbee, and we really want to teach them how to play. There is a courtyard-type of park in the middle of the neighborhood—a perfect place to toss a frisbee.

Zoom zoom

The pace of life here in Rach Gia is much different from the zipping and zooming life we have back home where every hour of the day is occupied by something and where I feel like I am always in a rush. Scott and I had soup for breakfast again and sat outside to drink some tra (tea) while watching the people on their bikes pass us by. We got all artsy fartsy taking pictures. All the food we have been having for the past week have been really salty, so we were craving some dessert. The owner of the hotel asked one of his family members, a young woman named Tram (like my mom), to take me. I hopped on her motorbike and out we went. I bought some pastries. Scott and I then wandered over to a small coffee shop across the street, where people were quietly sitting and enjoying the peacefulness of the neighborhood. We walk in, and they are hesistant to say anything to us until I greet them in Vietnamese. The man said I am not too bad, and that I am lucky I know how to speak Vietnamese. This made me really happy, since I don’t have a lot of confidence in it, but Scott credits me with our survival here. We sit outside and have some iced tea with jackfruit juice. Their blender is broken, so we can’t have a smoothie. Maybe tomorrow. 

-Audrey

See the rest of Scott's full-size photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbauer810/sets/72157627011360334/with/5855972348/

cafe da

Scott sips tra outside our hotel

Local boy and his mother