Joe wakes up early again, and then he wakes up Maylin. She’s been begging to come for his early morning walks to pick up breakfast foods along the way. When I wake up, I text him and ask where he’s at, and he sends me this picture:
Téa and I get out of bed and set out plates and cutlery, getting hungrier by the minute. They FINALLY come back home, bringing two containers (identical) of rice rolls, fried slices of ham and meatloaf (for lack of a better word), spring rolls, herbs and pickles. I’m thinking to myself that I wish there were three containers, but the girls claim they’re full early, and it ended up being the perfect amount. (We are also looking forward to having the rice rolls we’re used to when we get to Hong Kong next month!)
It’s Friday and the first week of new Norwegian lessons online for the semester. Téa does her French first so I can hold Maylin’s hand through her lessons, and suddenly Téa is all done French and doing her Norwegian parallel with Maylin and I. Maylin has a really hard time getting back into her Norwegian studies today, and it takes her a long time. By the time she is all done her lesson, everyone is ready for lunch.
I found a cute restaurant with good reviews on the road I took yesterday on my walk, so I am eager to bring the others there. We look at the menu online, and decide it’s as good a destination as any other, and set off. Walking down the street though, all we find is coffee shops, motorbike garages and shuttered store fronts. Turns out they are not open for lunch, only for dinner. Bummer! Note to self, note opening hours next time…
We walk a little further, then take a left. There’s a restaurant with great reviews here too, different menu, but we’re ok with that. We almost pass it, because most restaurants actually look like motorbike parking lots from the street. The extreme smoke from the BBQ, aided by a strong fan to push the delicious scents out onto the street, convinces us that we have come to the right place.
After a quick, tasty and filling lunch, Joe nudges me and shows me a destination on his phone. My eyes go wide, and of course I agree. I pay the lunch bill, and he books our taxi onwards. We are dropped off here:
After we choose our beverages and pay our fee, we are led into a large, tiled, clean and bright room, with chairs all along the walls. Each family/group sits around the walls, and as soon as we sit down, a staff member with a glint in her eye drops a Guinea pig in Téa’s lap and a bunny in Maylin’s lap. Shortly thereafter I am handed a Guinea pig as well. The girls are in heaven!
The main attraction and the name of the café, the capybaras, were asleep on cushions in the middle. Every so often one of the visitors would try to engage and take photos, but mostly they were left alone. They are the world’s largest rodent, but I won’t hold that against them. They are docile and can be seen carrying other smaller animals in the wild, or riding on top of their much scarier friends, crocodiles and alligators. The girls, and Maylin in particular, is obsessed with these cute animals!
Joe declined the offer of a pet to pet, but he took over mine when I went to take pictures of the capybaras. We were there for over an hour, just calmly enjoying the presence of pets. The girls and I could stay here all day, but Joe was ready to move on with our day. At least one of the other dads in the room was openly sleeping.
We looked at the map and saw that Gold Coast was an easy walk away, so we went for a walk through the streets of Nha Trang. We passed the only Scandinavian place I’ve found so far, a restaurant/café/shared workspace called Stockholm, and I still want to try it out.
It was chilly this morning, which is why we are not at home and on the beach, but after a 20 minute walk, we realize it’s a lot warmer than we thought it would be. We need a refreshing snack break, and fast! On the 7th floor, we found just what we were looking for – a crepe café!
On our rush to get to our snack, Téa had nearly shouted “look Mom, there’s a new store”, so of course we had to check that out on our way back down. We found some Lunar New Year hair clips and some stationery items we wanted, and I had to pause to read this book twice:
Having been out most of the day, we were ready to head home. As always, I marvel at the amazing trees we pass along the route:
We wanted a low key dinner for tonight, and with nothing in the fridge, that meant buying from the fast food options downstairs.
Joe puts on the movie “Yes day”, I really don’t know why he wants to be giving the girls these ideas! But we all had a good time watching it together, and it’s good that we’re seeing it on this trip, when most requests for an afternoon sweet treat is granted anyways… And Disneyland is coming back up when we get to Hong Kong, how could anyone want more?