Breakfast was finally different with a street-side banh cuon. It’s like chee cheong fun, only with less filling and a lot more folds of thin rice flour layers. The filling is minced pork and it is dipped in a pork broth. The broth came with a pork tube as opposed to a pork ball, and you can add chilli, lemon, coriander leaf, chilli and so on to the broth.
I also had an egg banh cuon. This is just an egg broken on the cooked rice flour skin and steamed together. The white is cooked and the yolk still soft. If I’ve not said anything about the Vietnamese egg, then let me say something about it. the yolk is an orangey yellow. And the egg tastes so good.
We then proceeded down to Ba Be Lake. It’s only about 140km, but it wasn’t till noon that we got to the nearest town, Cho Ra for lunch. In half an hour we were done, but had to wait for the driver to get money from the ATM (seems to be quite a long process here).
By 1310, I was on the boat waiting to start my trip down the Nam River, the outlet of Ba Be Lake. It was polluted and I saw a dead pig’s body floating there. Apparently, there have been more dead pigs. They’re too stupid not to attempt to cross the river or something.
Also, the people have been pumping sand from the river bed for farming making the water level lower than it should, but at the same time revealing more available farming land, which is why the village I’m staying at now has got a collection of padi fields as opposed to just the lake unlike originally.
The boat ride along Nam River brought me to the Puong Cave (Bat Cave in Tay language), then we went to the Fairy Pond, a spring water pond with no outlet and finally to An Ma island.
Did not visit the waterfall as said in the itinerary. The guide says it’s very small. Who knows with these Vietnamese?
So the story goes that a fairy made herself ugly and asked the villagers for help. They turned her away because she was so ugly. But for an old woman and her son who took her in, offered her to take her bath (apparently she had BO) gave her food and so on. Then for some reason she turns into a snake, and the old woman is afraid, but the fairy tells her, this place will flood soon, so go to higher land. They listen to her and go to this island that eventually becomes An Ma island with a temple on it, while the other selfish families die in the water.
Tonight, I have a very hard bed. The mattress is possibly harder than the one in the Meo Vac hotel. It is a guest house – meaning a family runs these rooms with shared bathrooms.
Actually, all the homes in the area are all guest houses.
Unlike the French couple, I ate dinner with the family in the kitchen on the floor. The French couple ate in the living area on a table with a red table cloth. Why am I not accorded such luxury?
I am fast getting used to everyone sticking their chopsticks into the same food. And tonight the grandpa of the family kept choosing the parts that he wanted, so flipped around food instead of just picking it up and moving on.
The family meal, like the first I had, also with a Tay family must include rice wine for the men and the guests. There were a lot of dishes: pigs intestines, snails, fresh cucumber, a plain steamed gourd (very nice), fried small fish from the river, pork with bamboo shoot, home made smoked pork sausage, fried spring rolls (kem).
I am not a big fan of pigs intestines, but I have to say, for both times that I’ve had it, I have to say, the Vietnamese know how to clean the intestines. It has no smell at all.
Since I do not partake in Vietnamese conversation except to say cheers and sip on ghastly rice wine, I ate too much tonight.
Tomorrow, a 14km walk. And another night in this guest house before heading back to Hanoi.
amazing tales of your holiday! Thanks for blogging! 😀
You assume that sitting on a table with a tablecloth is luxury. Perhaps that is not the assumption. Perhaps you are more welcome as a member of the family by sitting on the superior and more comfortable floor with better food and company.