I have such a good sleep. In fact, I sleep until 8.15am, and I don’t know what year that last happened! I crawl out of bed to find a very impatient Joe just waiting for us girls to wake up, he bought breakfast but hasn’t eaten yet.
It’s Monday, and even though we got a late-ish start, the girls get their Social Studies out of the way pretty quickly today. We want to go to the beach today, but we also need lunch. I convince Joe we should just bring some hand held food to the beach, and promise him I’ll help if sand dares approach his lunch.
The ocean is very different today to what it was on Saturday. Saturday’s ocean was angry, today’s ocean is calm. The weekend murkiness has disappeared, and it’s back to clear and beautiful waters. The waves are just as fun to bob around in as usual, and we stay in the water for almost two hours, with short beach breaks in between.
When we finally decide we’ve had enough (for some reason, it’s always sooner for the parents than for the kids?), we pack up and head back. The street outside our building is now completely blocked off! They’re setting up for the Tet celebrations, and we can’t really make out what it will look like when done just yet. We hope they’ll finish before we leave on Saturday!
Back upstairs we shower and get the salt off our bodies. Joe is not as itchy today as usual after a swim in the ocean, and no tentacle marks today either. I look in the mirror and think I might have forgotten the sunscreen on my face before going out today?
We hide out inside for a few hours, then dig into yesterday’s takeout for dinner. It’s just as good today as it was yesterday! And if it hadn’t been for my brilliant evening idea, that would have been it for today, and this would have been the end of the shortest blog post to date. How boring would that be??
Let’s go for dessert!
We planned our early dinner just for this reason: the dessert place that had been recommended to us is a 30 minute walk away. It gets super dark quite rapidly between the hours of 5pm and 6pm, and so we need to get a move on, if we want to get there while we can still see where we are stepping. We just didn’t know how rocky this road would get!
We walk for what seems like FOREVER, and Joe is no longer the only one asking “are we there yet”. Hey, if I had to hear it all walk long, you have to read it all post long! “ARE WE THERE YET?” We walk past so many vendors, and it looks like they’re just set up for the evening. A blanket on the sidewalk, a simple cart along the road, a bored child on a cellphone leaning over the motorbike waiting for mom or dad to sell their wares. One vendor has a truck parked all the way by the fence on the wider section of sidewalk, where a husband and small child are playing while waiting for mom.
After a long and strenuous journey, over mountains in snowstorms… Well ok, after half an hour of increasingly darker sidewalks along a busy road, we are, according to Google Maps, at our destination! But there are two side by side, so I look carefully at the signage, and choose the recommended one, Chè 79.
This dessert vendor is really just a cart on the side of the road, loaded with all the ingredients of a good Vietnamese dessert. There are maybe 15 tables on the sidewalk, each with 4 tiny stools and a tray with tea and glasses. The menu is posted in large letters at the front of the stall, but also in more detail on the side. What would you have chosen here?
After a whole lot of Google Translate work, we end up ordering a mixed fruit dessert (Joe), a mixed fruit yogurt (Maylin), a cup of pretzel sticks with chocolate dipping sauce (Téa), and a Thai tea dessert (me).
When I asked my friend Lucy from Vietnam what she would eat if she was at home, she said she’d go eat every kind of chè. I’ve tried, Lucy, I’ve tried! I haven’t found it until today, which is a shame, but I totally get it now! When I ask locals about this dessert, they laugh at me and say “it’s not a dessert, it’s also sometimes a drink”. So finally, when Téa and I went to get our nails done (unsuccessfully), the nail artist recommended that we come to exactly this place for the best dessert around, and of course it’s been on my list ever since. It’s out of the way, but I get it now. I understand why I had to come here.
I pass a lump of something over to Joe. He confirms it, yup, that’s durian! He does not like durian. This is the fruit that has laws and signage and strict protocols, the fruit that has the metal detector looking things at the entrance at every Bangkok subway station. One doth not bring this stinky fruit onto a crowded subway, it is illegal! Similarly, illegal on planes. Just like in Sweden, it’s illegal to bring the cans of fermented fish on planes. In both cases, imagine the smell if there’s a leak!
I, on the other hand, don’t mind the durian! Maybe I’m one of those crazy people who actually likes durian? Stranger things have happened! There are also lots of different jellies, lots of coconut milk, sweetened roasted coconut shavings (I’m warming up to coconut in its different forms as well) and something mysterious. I fish it out with my spoon and think – is it durian connective tissue, similar to that of an orange? I have to know!
I approach the cart, take pictures of a couple of their bowls, and wait on the side for the main guy to ask him. The other staff are avoiding me because “omg I may have to speak English or use Google Translate and maybe she wants to ask me a question and omg HIDE”. I type in “Can I ask you what some of the ingredients are”, and maybe I worded that wrong because they look very afraid. Then I pull up this photo:
Once my two mysteries have been solved, I thank them profusely, tell them we all loved our desserts, and that the durian was good. They are so relieved, and quickly type into their translation apps: “Please give us a 5 star review”. I’m happy to!
A taxi arrives and swiftly whisks us home. No more walking, just happy dessert giggles, and an early night, allowing for a family movie night, and recollections of durian.