After two months of fast paced moving going from place to place every couple of days I think we’ve finally found our perfect speed and yesterday signed a lease on a flat in Hoi An which will be our new house for the next 20 days. Hurrah!

I’m not really sure what made us decide to take root here. It was all quite random. We were just looking for a new hotel for a couple more nights and happened to notice a a small sign for a house to rent. More out of curiosity we went to have a look around one. Well I say curiosity I mean I was feeling nosey and wanted to look round a Vietnamese house (is that bad?). Although we’d just gone in for fun we realised actually it wasn’t such a bad idea. Within a couple of hours we’d decided to stay longer and found a place to live.

During the time between finding the place and deciding to stay we had an encounter with an interesting chap who runs a vegetarian restaurant called Karma Waters. We’d gone to talk to him about snorkling courses he runs, and if the weather would be good for it or if we should wait. Somehow the conversation morphed into a sort of philosophical discussion about why we were there and what we wanted from travelling. I think he said “If you are looking for an experience, you will find one”. Whatever it was something he said had me convinced we should stay and we went to sign the contract. I think he hypnotised us. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing quite a bit of this guy while we’re here. Have a look at his website, they have a really interesting philosophy on life and business (or busi-ness: that activity that keep you busy) that really fits with a lot of things I’ve been thinking recently.

Anyway, so having decided to slow things down a little I’m looking forward to experiencing things in a new way. Given the time to explore and take things in more I think we’ll get a lot more out of this trip. I always find it’s best when you have some time to just sit, relax, do nothing and let ideas and thoughts come to you. I’m planning on making more regular blog updates with 2 new exciting series of posts: “The Story of my Experiments with Fruit” where Andy and I get adventurous with Vietnamese fruit and “Meal or No Meal” a photo quiz where you decide if a given dish is animal or vegetable. Woo!

For now I’ll leave you with a few photos and a little restaurant review from a Vegetarian restaurant in Hue called Lien Hoa, which is at 3 Le Quy Don (map).

This place doesn’t really look much from the outside. It is on a busy road slightly out of the main streets, but well worth a visit. In fact we got addicted to it and went 3 times! Very chilled, frequented by lots of monks and nuns. Occasionally you’ll see a monk run in to collect take-away too, which for some reason looks really strange. We saw one dash in collect about 12 cartons of food then run through the restaurant and dive in a taxi and speed off. Very amusing.

As we went a few times we got to try a good few things off the menu, here are my recommendations of things to try if you go. The first is a salad called “Affection and Missing”, the Vietnamese is Van Vuong Thuong Nho. I wonder if this really does translate to Affection and Missing? It’s a great name either way. I think I’ll start naming any new dishes I invent in this way. Pumpkin Soup can be Golden Dreaming. Yes, very nice.

Affection and Missing

This salad has twelve ingredients laid out very prettily on a plate. There are sections of finely sliced cucumber, red cabbage, carrot, three unknown veg, scarily realistic strips of ham, mint, parsley, some peanuts, a pile of crispy noodles and topped with an enormous fancy red chili. It comes with a sweet chili sauce which the waitress then mixed into the salad using some very nifty chopstick skills until it looked like this.

It’s a pretty mega salad! Apart from the strangeness of tasting ham for the first time in nearly three years (which I have to admit was very nice) all the different tastes and textures all work really well together. Mmm mmm mmm. Until going to this restaurant Andy had said that pizza was his favourite Vietnamese food, but since Affection and Missing he’s converted. Gonna have to get myself one of those shredding devices or this one would take about 2 days to make with all the slicing!

Jack fruit mixed with sesame

We’ve been trying to learn and sample a few new fruit and veg. Sometimes this means we pick random things off menus that maybe aren’t so great, or really don’t go with the other things we’ve ordered, but this one was a definite winner. It looks and tastes like chicken. Not just lumps of tasteless breast meat though, these are those bits you get left after a Sunday dinner. You know the tasty, juicy darker bits you can pick off the bones and put in sarnies. Mmmm… oops do I sound like I am on the turn? I’m not… really.. promise. I’m used to people describing meat they’ve never tried before as tasting a bit like chicken, “Frog… It’s a bit like chicken”, but this has to be a new one. Fruit that tastes like chicken? Crazy. I thought also it was a bit like artichoke.

I’m not sure if the jack fruit is served cooked or raw. We’ll have to go out and buy a raw one chop it up and see. Anyway this particular jack fruit dish came a bit spicy and sprinkled with sesame seeds. You also get a big cracker which you snap bits off to pick up pieces of the tasty, juicy chicken, I mean jackfruit and then dip it all in a spicy sauce. Yum!

Bitter Melon Soup

In another daring new vegetable move we opted for the “Bitter Melon Soup”. It’s name does not quite portray what the soup is actually like. It is not bitter, nor does it appear to contain any melon. From what I could see it was made of erm… wriggly cucumber, button and white oyster mushrooms, thin slices of pineapple, tofu, tomato, spring onion and chives. Quite a jumble. Especially when I was expecting maybe some cold watery bitter soup.(Yeah, I’m not sure what made us order it either, who wants to eat cold bitter soup?). It turns out wriggly cucumber is actually called Bitter Melon how odd. Wriggly Cucumber is better. Wriggly Cucumber Soup gets 6.5 out of 10, so maybe not a big hit, but I think it’s good to try local specialities and I’ve had this soup since in other places and it wasn’t as nice and in fact has been, as described, quite bitter, so if you want to try it, it’s worth a go here.

Random Photos for Nosey Bonks

**Click photos for more waffle**

Petrol Station

We ran out of petrol on a day trip out to see some tombs. For some reason we caused quiet a stir at the “petrol station”, practically the whole village came to see us.

Rush Hour

Believe it or not this was the main road!

Ho Woz Ere

Uncle Ho’s House in Hue

River

This river runs through the citadel in Hue which means the part shown here is actually running straight through the middle of a biggish town, but I think this part looked really remote and tropical. I loved the mistiness in the air.

Front Gardens

This row of houses was at the north end of the walled town in Hue. We’ve seen lots of places like this. People grow food on every available bit of land, it’s a real inspiration. Food not Lawns!

Also this is one of the only pieces of farming machinery we’ve seen in this whole country. I’m guessing this one isn’t really used much either!