Wave a quick goodbye to Vietnam, guys. (Boots in the Oven)

Look, we knew going in that a week really wasn't enough time to spend in Vietnam. I think, though, that the more you travel the more you come to realize that no amount of time will ever be enough (except, perhaps, for Manfredonia! in January). We missed Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, and Da Lat, and that's only the start of a burgeoning list.

So, how were we to say goodbye to HCMC and Vietnam's South?

Let's start with another meal at Ben Thanh Market.

We began, this time, at stall 1168 . Bun Mang Vit time. It's a duck soup - no, not that kind. This one has slices of duck breast along with bamboo, in a pork broth with noodles. Of course it comes with a pile of greens you throw on top!

Kind of bland, if I'm being honest. The duck was overcooked and the broth's flavor was pretty much limited to porkiness. Eh.

So, we moved over to stand 1092 to get more My Quang. Like I said in my last Vietnam post, which I barely even remember since it was two months ago, (holy paloly have we been busy), this is my new favorite unrecreatable and unfindeable in Texas dish.

1092 beat out 1138, secondo me. The textures were more variable, with extra crunchy crunch and a better, more deeply rich broth. This is such a delicious savory dish, with so many different flavors and textures and even temperatures going on in the bowl, that it's impossible to get tired of it. Well, perhaps if you ate five servings of it, or ate it every day for a month.

We also ordered their banh beo, just because I wanted another order of those shiny rice dumplings and perhaps another slice of pork roll. 1092 did a good job, here. Lots of chewiness and a good shrimpy backbone.

And then, unfortunately, I was completely stuffed. It's sad, because this stand was one of those where you just wanted to point at various things behind the glass and say "One of those, please, with a topping of that and a big side of whatever's wrapped up in that leaf."

Husbear still had a hankering for some dessert, though, so he ordered a big glass of che thap cam from the stall next door, which seemed to be doing a bustling business in sweets.

Ordering a che thap cam gets you a big mix of lots of their various flavorants and toppings, all floating in a light coconut milk. There's tapioca balls, grass jellies, beans, perhaps a chunk or two of yam... it all comes together into a refreshingly light cross between a pudding and a beverage. Though it's sort of on the starchy side for my taste, Husbear's a big fan.

Too bad, so sad, that's the end of our last meal at Ben Thanh Market. I envy people who can go down there every day to eat from the stalls - there are so many of them, and each serves multiple dishes. I bet you could spend several weeks eating every breakfast and lunch there and not repeat yourself - and that's not even counting the carts and hawkers outside!

We did have an item of business that needed taking care of before we left Vietnam - mailing a second wave of postcards back to the States. It took us a little while, and the requisite dodging of rickshaw drivers and pedicabs and strolling vendors selling ten-foot stacks of paperback books (all fresh off the xerox machine of course), but we did eventually find our way to a post office on a street hear our hotel.

When we got there, there was some commiseration behind the counter about how many stamps we'd need for our postcards. Then, it turned out that the post office didn't have large denomination stamps, so we'd need to use multiple smaller ones! They offered to put the stamps on the postcards for us, but we insisted we'd do it ourselves.

The whole thing felt a little shifty, so we took pictures of the cards to prove to people back home that we'd tried. Really, we had.

Imagine our surprise when all of these cards arrived in the States barely behind us, a week later! Kudos to the Vietnamese post office!

After the post office, god, it was so hot outside, we needed a light colored beer with ice in it.

Aaahhh.

And, to get a little culture in, a visit to the Jade Emperor Pagoda. It was a bit of a pain in the ass directing our taxi driver, since our stupid Rough Guide didn't give the name of the temple in Vietnamese and "Jade Emperor Pagoda" obviously didn't mean anything to him. This seemed like a seriously stupid oversight on the part of our guidebook. Eventually, we all figured out which way we were pointing and made it there inside of half an hour.

Unlike those in Bangkok, where you sometimes are completely unable to get a taxi to take you anywhere for any amount of money, the ones in HCMC were all metered. Each taxi we took stuck to the meter scrupulously. It was refreshing.

Anyway, the Jade Emperor Pagoda. Also known for its collection of tortoises in a dank outdoor pond.

After the amazing temples we'd seen in Chiang Mai, this one was sort of a letdown. Dingy, poorly kept up, dark.

Plus, we're completely ig'nant, so it was hard to glean meaning from the temple beyond what we found in our guidebooks. I know that's sad. We're more into the whole food as culture thing, I guess.

On the way out of the pagoda towards the nearest big road, where we hoped to catch a taxi, we passed a guy selling banh mi by the side of the road, so we bought two.

We had no trouble catching a taxi, so back by our hotel we picked up two more banh mi from the tiny lady selling wonderful specimens at the corner of Pham Ngu Lao and De Tham.

We sat in the park with our spoils plus two bottles of bia, and ate two of our sandwiches. Napkins being a scarce commodity throughout Southeast Asia, we were unsurprised to find our sandwiches wrapped in some kid's homework.

Apparently, this is common around the world - we had similar serving utensils in Luxor last year.

We went back to our hotel, gathered our things, and hopped in the hotel's rickety van for a hair-raising ride back to the airport. There's really nothing to report about our flight, save that we got in when we were supposed to, but we had a lot more trouble with the taxi stands at BKK than we'd had arriving the first time. On our first arrival, we used an official taxi who was more than happy to turn his meter on and actually honor the numbers on the dial; the second time, though, we weren't so lucky with the official taxi.

We were given a receipt for 400 baht, all included, into the center of town (our previous ride had been 300 total), and then got into multiple arguments with the driver about paying tolls. Argh. I can't say the taxis of Bangkok are really the best introduction to Thailand, but hey, they apparently have to be dealt with.

This time, we were staying in the center of town - Siam Square. We were paying a little more for the place, but I was hopeful about its description in the Lonely Planet.

Yeah. Ha. I'm still trying to figure out how they got that bed in the room. I appreciate the lack of a closet, since I also can't figure out where they'd put it, though we just about had to sleep with our luggage.

The hotel had one very important rule it wanted to communicate as clearly as it could to all guests.

So, well, back to Thailand. We were happy to be back, but at the same time, there was so much of Vietnam we had been unable to explore, that it felt sort of like we were doing a half-assed job of visiting both of these countries. And we were. Shaddup.

Comments

Ha! I think I started reading Boots in the Oven after you had your trip to Manfredonia! That's my husband's home town so I could have given you some suggestions - though January is definitely not the optimal month to visit.

I swear it lives up to its Trademarked name! :)

Posted by: Sara, Ms. Adventures in Italy | Wednesday, 07 November 2007 at 23:06