Another easy morning, just the usual weasel coffee and some food from the street rather than my free breakfast. It is Vietnamese Woman's Day today and so I buy the girls in the hostel some breakfast as a treat. It is a big deal this day, everywhere you go there are flowers available to buy. Apparently today women pay for nothing and would be admirers shower them with gifts, some that are often hard to get in Vietnam. If you ask me it looks like some of the woman take advantage of the situation. I see plenty of girls walking past with large bouquets of flowers and boxes all wrapped up nice.
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I decide that tonight I am going to go to the west lake to see a pagoda and then on to the night market because it is a saturday and it is supposed to be even more impressive at the weekends. Alex decides that she would like to come as well and so we head off about 5. It takes us a good hour to walk to the lake, and the streets are manic as usual. When we get there I can not see the pagoda, leading me to one of two conclusions; it is either not lit up at night, or very small, neither of which I am particularly excited about. After walking round the lake it is no where to be seen, Alex gets a coconut and I try something out of one of the bikes on the road. At night time they all drive around with little boxes on the back of their bikes, selling god knows what. I buy something anyway, some sweet coconut thing in a sweet wrap. We sit down by the lake which is lovely and cool, and there are various couples smooching all around. Then across the road I see the pagoda and so we walk over. To my horror it is closed, and I can not even get a good photo of it from where I am standing. All this walking for nothing. Brilliant.
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Thùy gives me a txt and says about meeting us, so we start to head back towards the market, another significant trek, in the heat. We arrive at the market and get a drink at this end. I txt Thùy to get her to come and meet us, but trying to communicate with people who do not speak english as a first language is very difficult. You can not joke and trying to get your point across I have found to be very difficult. So we have to walk through the market to meet her at the other side. The market is rammed, both with stalls and people. The stalls are arranged in a straight line either side with a straight line up the middle, where you can walk through to the other side. I am surprised to see that one side is for going up the street and the other side is for down the street. An unusually organised system. The market itself sells all manner of things, from trinkets to clothes, I think the food is on a parallel street, which we do not explore as Thùy tells us she will take us somewhere to eat. When we eventually emerge from the market we meet Thùy at a water fountain. We go for some food at a local place and get some rice/pork/egg combo in banana leaves. Delicious. After this we walk back to near the hostel for some iced tea. There is this place up the main bar street that I have always noticed was full. They pretty much exclusively serve iced lemon tea. After leaving my camera back in the hostel I join Thùy and Alex, who have been joined by one of Thùy's friends. He has brought he gifts a plenty, flowers, exotic coffee beans and some other stuff that I don't pretend to understand. I try my tea, surprisingly refreshing. I almost order a second glass. Then we head up the street for some coffee. I actually am starting to feel sorry for this guy, Thùy is pretty much talking exclusively in English and it is clear that this guy has no idea what is going on. The place that we go for coffee is great, we walked up these old stairs through an old vietnamese building, I was not sure what to expect, but when we got to the 3rd floor we walked though a door and it opened up in to this lovely modern cafe. We sit on the terrace with a view out over the street. I just go for my usual strong black coffee, but Alex and Thùy go for a coffee with egg in it. I think that it sounds disgusting, though when it arrives I do try some. It was so sweet, just like if you were beating eggs too bake, clearly a lot of sugar has been added. The presentation was nice as well, it got presented in what looked like an oil burner, except there was room for your cup in top, being heated by a candle. This ensured that the coffee stayed warm right to the end, which was nice. Alex left hers for so long that when she came to drink it, the egg had started to cook in her cup, leaving her with a lumpy mess. It was pretty funny as she took her first drink of boiled egg surprise. She did not have any more after that. It is pretty warm up here and so Alex and I decide to head home, where we have some AC.