The second day we really got going with stuff. We started
out the day with breakfast as usual which had a slightly different selection
from the first day but was still very similar and just as delicious. From there
we went to UEF and listened to a representative from the Department of Urban
Planning (could have had a different title…I can’t exactly remember) talk to us
about the development of Ho Chi Minh City which was very interesting because I
had no idea how much the city has grown both economically, and in size in the
past 20 years.
After the lecture we had a 30 minute break during which we
went on a search for the ever famous cà phê sữa
đá or in English, Iced coffee with milk. We walked down the street that
UEF is on and eventually found a little whole in the wall coffee shop (almost
everything here is a whole in the wall shop) and had some very serious
difficulty ordering what we wanted. We thought we knew how to say t right but
ended up getting the tones wrong and the woman working there had no idea what
we were asking for. We got around this by pointing at the menu. I mentioned
before that the coffee is very thick and rich. This rich coffee with sweetened
condensed milk served over ice is an excellent and delicious drink and I drank
mine so quickly that I instantly ordered another and considered a third but we
had to get back to class.
In the language class we
learned how to say hello and goodbye to people based on their relative age and
their relationship with the speaker which was cool because the same thing can
be said tons of different ways depending on who you are talking to. We also
learned how to say “it’s nice to meet you” and “see you again later” practicing
these basic conversations with the Vietnamese students became very comical for
them.
After class we had about an
hour at the hotel to relax before we drove out to visit the Phu My Hung Corporation
which is an urban development firm that is working to expand Ho Chi Minh City
and create new communities and city centers in suburban regions of the city.
This visit was very cool because we got to see the plans for all the
development they have done and plan on doing in the city. The one thing that
stuck out to me the most was when someone asked them what their estimated
completion date is and they said they don’t have one because their goal is to
just keep developing the city with no set boundaries (at least not yet).
When that was over we arrived
back at the hotel where our Vietnamese counterparts were waiting for us to take
us out to their favorite phở (pronounced FUH) restaurant. I have had phở several
times in the US and many were very good but this was unbelievable. To start,
they have all these greens that you put in the soup, some I recognized from my
experiences with phở in the US and some I had never seen before in my life. The
first difference I noticed was that all these greens were much more fresh and
crisp compared to the ones served in the US. One of the greens was a long
stalky leaf that I initially put into my soup whole and was promptly laughed at
by the Vietnamese students because I was supposed to tear it into little
pieces. The soup was infinitely better than anything I had tried in the US and
now—for better or for worse—phở will never be the same again.
After the phở (which made me very full) we went to the center of downtown
to try some street food (pictures to follow). The street food culture here is
CRAZY. I mentioned before that the restaurant we went to exhibited street food
from all over Vietnam, so we had sort of had a taste of what was coming. Now
for the crazy part. In the US street food is served from a stall on a small
paper plate that is meant to be taken away. In Vietnam, the street food vendors
set up little tables and chairs around their stalls to create tiny outdoor
restaurants and usually use real plates and bowls. The stalls also usually only
consist of a basket of raw ingredients, a small metal bucket with hot coals
inside and a grill on top, and a stack of plates. Where we went there was not
room to setup tables so they laid newspaper on the ground for us to sit on and
in front of us more newspaper to put the food on. The food was delicious but
unfortunately I was so full that I only got
taste of each of the things. I will post pictures of each item with a
description of what it is after this post.
After the street food we explored more of the central part of downtown
which had a lot more tourists and up-scale shopping areas and hotels than the
area around our hotel and the area round UEF. I much prefer the other areas to
the central touristy part of downtown.
No comments:
Post a Comment