The Current Family Fad

I've noticed that recently, my cousins and cousins-in-law have developed an interest for baking. And I don't mean the simple square or round butter cakes, but fanciful ones.

Check out the last 2 birthday cakes that were home made...

Beautiful ya? They are delicious too! Unlike most nice-to-look-at-but-taste-not-so-nice cakes.

Crocs

The very shoes I used to condemn.

"Damn ugly lor. Why would anyone buy such shoes? So expensive some more."

"I wouldn't be caught dead with a pair of them!"

"Eeeeyur. Look like Ronald MacDonald!"

"Walau. How to match anything? So chunky. Makes the feet look damn big."

So much for all that. Just a couple of hours ago, I became the owner of a pair of Crocs. The Mary Jane ones.

Couldn't resist buying the add-on accessories. In pink and purple, butterfly and flower some more....how not to buy?

RT, who used to condemn them shoes too, decided to get a pair as well. The very ones (in terms of design) which he condemned so much! At least I got the Mary Janes... not so chunky, not so ugly. Sweet and pretty :p

Functionality

It's good to have a normal functioning body again after 2 days of walking around with a stuffed nose, stuffed head, inflammed gums and a phlegm-filled throat.

But functioning normally again also means going back to the grind, which sadly, does NOT function quite so properly. The place is simply dysfunctional.

Stay any longer and I probably would be too. But for now, that's where I'm stuck... so...

A question totally unrelated to this post:

The fox and the ____ protected their cubs.

a) bitch
b) vixen
c) she-fox
d) sow

I got stumped for a while between option b and option c.

Oh! Maybe the question wasn't unrelated afterall. It's an example of how the time spent at this dysfunctional place has caused my brain to become a tad dysfunctional!!! oohhh....

The Ao Dai

At the request of ene and Digital Curls (cos I'm too lazy to bring it to the office), here's the Ao Dai I tailored in Vietnam. Not quite the traditional Ao Dai hor? The bulk of it is transluscent and it has 4 slits. Not complaining about the slits though, cos they actually make it easier to walk.

Organised Chaos

It's been a week since I last had to brave traffic like that. 4 whole days of weaving in and out of motorcycles, running across roundabouts filled with moving vehicles, using white plastic bags at night to warn these vehicles that I'm crossing the road.

Then again, after you get the hang of it, it isn't that life-endangering or treacherous crossing the roads of HCMC. The vehicles, mainly made up of motorcycles, travel at 50km/hr, slow down when they are nearing a pedestrian and weave around him. Everybody's safe, happy and in one piece.

Now that I'm back, I wonder if that system's actually better than a super organised one. Like Kayestercan mentioned, Amsterdam, being a drug haven, has one of the lowest drug addiction rates.

Perhaps the theory is as such: the more you try to stifle and control something, the more people try to do it on the sly or illegally. We read of accidents happening ever so often, more often than not involving motorcyclists. Perhaps if we had fewer traffic rules and regulations, the accident and fatality rate might drop, no?

Sunday in Saigon

It's a Sunday, I'm out of the country, and I'm in church. Rare. Usually, when I'm out of town, I tend to miss Sunday mass. However, because Notre Dame in HCMC is a tourist attraction, plus it was near our hotel, we made it a point to attend mass. Part of it was in Vietnamese, and the other parts in English.

After mass, RT and I met Kayestercan and Dr RMM to head to Chinatown for lunch and some shopping. We had so much to eat, we could hardly move! But the $80 worth of steamboat we had was yummy. Here are just some of the dishes we ordered.

Shopping was quite a disappointment. The main shopping building was smelly, stuffy and didn't offer anything interesting. Plus hardly any bargaining could be done. A total waste of time, I felt.

Anyway, we headed back to Ben Thanh Market (yes, again!) and then back to the Dong Khoi area for some last minute shopping. Then RT and I headed to the backpacker's area to collect the Ao Dai I took measurements for just yesterday. Very pretty. Probably one of the very few highlights of this trip.

Mekong River Cruise

I've been on similar cruises in Thailand and Cambodia, but this must be one of the best in terms of the experience. We tried various modes of transportaion. First stop was via the motor boat to a rice paper and coconut factory, where we also had lunch, which was included in the tour. The included lunch was a quite miserable, comprising rice with pork (of bak gua texture), some long beans and a soup, so we topped it up with additional orders.





The highlight of the lunch was this fish.....elephant ear fish (actually it's a tilapia, I think). But it was smelly.

After lunch, we got on the motor boat, which dropped us off at an orchard where we had some tropical fruits for dessert, and were entertained by some Vietnamese music and singing.

Our next mode of transport was a horse driven carriage which took us to a honey farm and a coconut candy making factory. From now on, my honey shall be made with a dash of lime and hot green tea. Refreshing beyond words.

The final mode of transportation along the mekong delta which would take us back to the motor boat, was a wooden row boat, which very nicely seated 4. Yay, cos we didn't have to share the boat. Heh.

We walked around the backpacker's street where I tailored an Ao Dai, and then headed back to the Dong Khoi area for more shopping and dinner at Paloma Cafe. Club Sandwiches, Fillet Mignon and Spaghetti Carbonara.

Oh, I've always eaten sea coconut in desserts, but never really knew what it actually looks like. Well, if you're wondering too, here's what a sea coconut looks like. Loads of them on the Mekong delta.