Chicken Chicken

1/14/10: Hoi An, Vietnam

Though we woke up at 8:30 today, we didn’t step foot outside of our hotel until after two. This wasn’t completely our fault – when the hotel’s free breakfast policy is “Eat until you’re full. Then you’re done,” well, it makes for some long breakfasts. The other problem (besides the problem of the absurdly full stomachs) was that we got caught up in figuring out what we’re going to do with our 12 days in Australia. Since our cheap/free housing fell through in Sydney, we found ourselves trying to decide if we wanted to travel a bit within Australia and go to Fraser Island or maybe Melbourne. Correction: when I say we were trying to decide if we wanted to travel within Australia, I perhaps should have said we were trying to decide if we would have enough money to travel up to Fraser Island or down to Melbourne. Conclusion: we’ll see when we get there, and if anyone wants to let us borrow a camper for free in Sydney, we’ll love you forever.

When we finally did get around to leaving our hotel this afternoon, it was too late to think about renting a motorbike and going out to My Son, which are some ruins about an hour away from Hoi An. And to be honest, after going to Angkor, I’m not so big on seeing other temple ruins. It just seems a bit – well, purposeless. Also, I think I’m still suffering a bit from Mui and Duc withdrawal. Plus it was raining. Fine, it was sprinkling. Take any of the excuses above, and please don’t let my guilty feelings reach you across your screen. So instead of doing anything cultural or enlightening, like good travelers would do, we went shopping! Less morally satisfying maybe, but more fun.

This set of three plates cost about $9.

Closeup of the adorable chicks.

We also bought two yellow matching wine holders for about $6.

Pretend this bottle of water is a cheap bottle of wine from Trader Joe's and you'll know exactly what the holders will look like when we get home.

When we got back to our hotel room, I unwrapped all of our carefully wrapped purchases so I could look at them. [Here's where I have to confess that I am one of those people who compulsively unwraps new purchases to look at and admire them even if I just have to wrap them up again. I also always wear my new clothes as soon as I can – I've seen people's closets where they have clothes hanging in them with the tags still on them! That would NEVER happen in my closet. It blows my mind that people choose to live like that.] As I unwrapped the second wine holder and pulled it out, I realized that the lady at the store had given us the wrong thing! This one was yellow – but instead of cute little chicks, it had Chinese characters on it! Now, I don’t have anything against Chinese characters, being Chinese and all, but I do have this thing about matching. As in – things must match. So we went back to the store we bought them from and politely explained to the woman what had happened. She looked at the newspaper wrapping, which said “gang va” and explained, “Outside it says chicken. But inside no chicken chicken.” And with that profound pronouncement, she went into the back of the storeroom and brought us the correct wine holder, the one with the chicken chicken on it. I would say that the the way she said “no chicken chicken” made my day, but that would just be a complete understatement.
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: Lanterns make everything look nicer.

Read Full Post »

Memento II: The Unexciting Food Story

1/13/10: Hoi An, Vietnam

I’ve been suffering from a big ol’ chunk of writer’s block recently, and as if I’ve been playing that Rush Hour game where you have to move the other cars to get your own out of the grid, I’ve struggled mightily trying to think of methods to rid myself of the block. Last night Zhou played a word association game with me. This morning I ate breakfast while doing a handstand. This afternoon I ran naked through the streets of Hoi An looking for a KFC. Nothing.

My last ditch effort to get back in the frame of mind that made our blog world famous in the first place – write a gimmick post. So in a tribute to another movie I haven’t seen, Memento, I’ll try to do you proud.

Our stomachs bursting, we walked out of the dark alley completely disoriented. My discombobulation was so bad that my inner man compass snapped in two, and I lost a bet with Zhou that we were traveling north towards our hostel. And my man compass has never failed me before. How in the world did we end up in this state?

A few minutes earlier, an old man patted me on the stomach as I hunched over my last overstuffed rice paper roll and, although he didn’t speak English, it was clear that he finally decided I had eaten enough. The myriad of waiters and waitresses stopped piling food onto our piles of food and let us relax our jaws. I could barely see Zhou over the mounds of vegetables, and barely see my toes past my now rotund midsection. We tipped healthily (at least for our standards in Vietnam) and practiced our new Vietnamese well-wishes to the friendly staff: “Tuk se kwa han phuc.” We stood up and headed back into the darkness.

The lady politely grabbed the rice paper from my hands and let the fillings I had so carefully piled into it fall onto the plate. Despite my obvious earlier lack of attention, she looked at me with the patient eyes of my second grade teacher and slowly walked me through the correct method of stuffing the roll. However, with her lack of knowledge of my eating habits she added some pickled relish. I smiled at her and ate the roll anyway. After all, it was my sixth new food of the day. The old man then walked up to the table and gave my stomach another pat. In as direct of translation as I can fake, he shouted to the staff, “bring this skinny boy some more meat! His stomach is hollower than Kendra Wilkinson’s skull!” (Side note: Kendra, remember the old man sort of said this, I didn’t.)

We began to get anxious. We had walked through many a dark alley to find this place, and now no one was paying attention to us. A sign reading “Ponly Planet” hung above our heads, as in a misguided attempt to increase business the owners had misspelled the travelers’ Bible. It had now been three minutes and we had yet to receive even a menu. Then the food came, and came in bunches. Lacking any ability to communicate with anyone, we couldn’t politely tell them they had the wrong table. We hadn’t even ordered. It soon became apparent that they didn’t have the wrong table – there was no need to order. This place served one thing and one thing only: delicious goodness. When the food had been piled so high and wide that the plates were dangerously teetering like late-game Jenga blocks, a lady came to our table and showed us how to roll our food and dip it into the sauce. We began to eat.

We finally found the Bale Well restaurant at the end of the third dark alley we had explored. This place better be good.

It had already been a memorable day of food, so we decided to press our luck. “The Bale Well restaurant is located near a creepy, perhaps haunted old well in a dark, unnamed alley in Hoi An.” We read the words over and over, and immediately knew that this place was for us. (Somewhat pertinent side note: after a delicious meal of Nem Nuong, a popular dish in the Central Highlands, we had been actively seeking Nem Nuong restaurants and Bale Well happened to be one.) There was one problem: we had no address to work with, just a nearby intersection. We mustered all our courage tonight and began walking up and down the deepest and darkest alleys near this intersection.

Several hours earlier, I quickly chugged the remains of my cold chocolate drink, ridding my mouth of the lingering taste.

We thought our brunch was over, but then our waiter delivered a gigantic plate of awful-looking fruit: pomelo, papaya, grapes, clementines, dragonfruit and banana. Something about this plate, this day, this setting gave off a slightly odd vibe. I wasn’t repulsed by the food. In fact, I was intrigued. Perhaps it was all the blog contest doubters laughing at me in my head, perhaps it was my new-found inability to say no to an offering from a friendly person – whatever it was, I knew that I was going to try this food. Before I knew it, some pomelo, papaya, clementine and dragonfruit was sitting in my stomach, and their remains were doing battle on my tongue.

Once upon a time, we woke up and made our way to our hostel’s complimentary brunch.
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: Sometimes I’m in the mood for pictures of kitties and puppies.

Read Full Post »

Arrival in Hoi An and a Travel Epiphany

1/12/10: Hoi An, Vietnam

Last night we took the overnight bus from Nha Trang to Hoi An. Ugh. Just typing the words “overnight bus” makes me shudder a little. I’m still feeling some trauma left over from our last “overnight” bus that dropped us off at two in the morning. But this time I shouldn’t have worried. We booked with the very reputable Sinh Tourist (formerly Sinh Cafe), and our bus ride was really as smooth and comfortable as one could reasonably expect. Bonus over Thai buses: no awkwardly confusing midnight dinner stop.

Those are our seats up at the front.

Kevin is fake sleeping in this picture. (You can tell it's fake because usually he sleeps a bit drool-y.)

We arrived at the Sinh Tourist office in Hoi An, got our bags and sat down inside to wait for someone to come pick us up from our hotel. Because we are old and decrepit and lack a sense of adventure, we always book ahead. It was at this point that I noticed every other couple/group/family had pulled out a guidebook, and they all were looking through it for places to stay.

Huh.

I know that the point of a guidebook is to – well – guide, but I had never really thought about using one to find a place to stay. I’m not sure why this never occurred to me, maybe because we don’t have any paper guidebooks, maybe because LP has consistently failed us a few times in the past and given us incorrect information, or maybe because we’re not young and hip but old and decrepit and lack a sense of adventure. Whatever the reason, looking at all of those people with their guidebooks out made me feel a bit – well, unadventurous. I know that there’s no right way to travel, although there are plenty of people who believe otherwise and will adamantly (and loudly) tell you so. I think that Kevin and I do a good job of seeing what we want to see, not pushing ourselves to do things when we’re feeling sightseeing-ed out and making sure that above all, we enjoy ourselves. But sometimes I wonder if we should sometimes do things a bit differently – if that would make things more fun, or if not more fun, at least more spontaneous.

But then I remembered that I am a much nicer and happier person when I’m not constantly worrying about what’s going to happen next, which is a practically uncontrollable reflex when I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Example: the other day Kevin was watching Disturbia on TV, and I can’t watch scary movies, because of the whole worrying about what’s going to happen next thing. It really puts me on edge. Also because I am very susceptible to that clever tiptoe-the-murderer’s-around-the-corner-scary-movie music. So instead of hiding under the covers for the next hour while Kevin finished watching the movie, I looked up the synopsis for Disturbia on wikipedia and calmly watched the movie with him. Yes I know it’s crazy, but it’s just how I am. That was a very long tangent, but the point is, I like knowing what’s going to happen.

Anyway, not to be too smug (ok, maybe I was feeling a teeny bit smug), but while the rest of our fellow travelers were sitting in the office paging through their guidebooks searching for a place to stay, a car had pulled up in front of the office and the driver had jumped out, holding up a sign that said, “WELCOME MISS ZHOU!” And that made me very, very happy.
_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: The (sort of famous) Japanese covered bridge in Hoi An. We didn’t go inside, but look, here’s a picture of it!

Read Full Post »