Election week, security at UPNT, and food (of course!)

 Greetings!  We are in week 11 of the school year here and finishing our 4th week of teaching.  We didn't have any lectures or labs Wednesday morning so were able to attend the live presidential watch party sponsored by the US Consulate General here in Ho Chi Minh City.  It started at 8 am our time (8 pm Tuesday night to Michiganders).  It was a festive atmosphere and we met some interesting consulate workers as well as other Americans and Vietnamese interested in the process.  We chuckled at the first table of food we saw and which was announced as a "taste of America:"  McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, and a Starbucks coffee table.  The other side of the room had nice pastries and fruit and juices and oatmeal and yogurt, however!  We couldn't stay until the end since we had afternoon work back at the university; we read reports later that many of the young people wept at the surprise results.

2 running screens for election updates:  CNN and FOX news.

"A taste of America."

Dunkin' Donuts!  The ones in the front
were topped with Fruity Pebbles!  Eww.
But children here do like sugar, as children do everywhere.  The cereals available include high-sugar varieties, but most not recognizible names.  There may be a couple of brands
that I know from home but they're very expensive.

Photo op with Mary Tarnowka, the US Consul General of Vietnam.

When we started working here we were taught security procedures and I thought you might find it interesting.  We have at least 9 keys in our personal possession because for the 3 rooms we most often use (our office, a lecture room and a lab room) there is a door handle lock, a padlock, and a sliding internal door that locks.  After we lock up for the night, we are to write our name and the date
on a small piece of paper and glue it over the lock.  The next morning we pull off the paper to insert our key into the locks! A lot of our cabinets and desk drawers of equipment also lock.  Thieves not welcome!

Paper with name and date written on it, glued over the padlock.

Another lock to unlock.

A third lock with the paper "seal" over it, before
unlocking and sliding the gate over to enter the room.

Last week Saturday we pursued getting a passport sized photo for Bob's international driving permit, and for the visas we'll need when we visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  We found a small shop on a street that our Vietnamese colleague recommended and the shopkeeper took photos and had them ready in 10 minutes.  His studio was in the back of his shop, which advertised wedding photos and apparently wedding supplies (based on the pictures below) like dresses and props.

Bob posing for his photo.

The setting: the back of the shop.

Lastly, we of course have more food experiences to

share!  We had two weekend dinners out last weekend.

On Friday, Mr. Long (our optometry department head) 

took us and our colleague from Singapore to his favor-

ite crab restaurant, Quan Ut Ca Mau.  He ordered  

several dishes for us all to share.

  

Delicious fried rice, crab, and mussels.

Dresses for ?sale ?props?

Our next experience was a 

dinner out to a restaurant that

our rental agent Phuong and 

her newlywed (2 weeks) husband Cu wanted to take us to.  Phuong also offered that Bob could use her motorbike and I could ride on the back, and she would ride on Cu's.  !!!  Bob instructed Cu "don't go very fast," because the hardest part was tailing them and not letting too many other motorbikes get between us.  They took us to a place they said was famous--I don't know how any tourist would find it.  Indeed, we were the only foreigners there.  It was down several back alleys.  Their specialty is snails (the name is Oc Dau--"oc"=snail) and we had 3 different types ordered by our hosts.  Maybe 3 different types was the key but my stomach doesn't like snails so much, I found.

Our spread.  The prawns/shrimp were good!  The top middle dish was
snail meat with lots of garlic, super good on the fresh bread that was
brought.  The dish on the right is a side dish popular here called tai heo.  I found out
how it's made:  it's pig ear fermented in vinegar then cut finely and spiced.  Hmmm,
maybe that's what my tummy didn't like.

Bob enjoying DRIVING for the first time in over a month.
Restaurant entrance behind us.  We did wear helmets!

Our very nice hosts Cu and Phuong.  They insisted on coffee
after dinner as well and wouldn't let us pay.  Phuong told us the
tradition is we pay next time, so I said that is good it makes sure
there will be a next time to socialize!

This past Tuesday we female optometry staff-persons declared a girls' lunch out.  I think they were kidding at first and did invite Bob, but he waved us off.  The girls from Vietnam wanted to have us try topoki, a specialty in Korea.  We went to a Topoki restaurant in a mall downtown.  Topoki is made from soft rice cake, fish cake, and a sweet red chili sauce.  It's made like a "hot pot" like we've had in Vietnam other places, put on a burner on our table.  The sauce reminded me of red enchilada sauce that comes on wet burritos back home.

Restaurant entrance

The girls!  Ngan, Hui Hiang, myself, and Phuong.

Topoki in the pot.  Seafood (mussels,
prawns, squid) as well as the rice cake
parts that look like white sausages, & the
fish cakes are flat like a tortilla.  Sides
served with were kimchi on left and a 
sugar-glazed sweet potato.

We're getting more adventurous with street food and trying vendors near our apartment.  Street food is so inexpensive!  We tried a vendor with "chao ech" on his sign and found it meant "frog porridge."  The porridge was a rice porridge, and the frog was served in a boiling tasty broth (boiling is good! (for germs)).  Frog was in pieces but had bones.  We realized after we were done that patrons near us seemed to toss their bones on the sidewalk (we had used the table).

The cook, streetside.

Rice porridge and frog in broth with herbs.

Last food experience to report:  we bought some fruit from a street market near our house last night and after buying the small watermelon Bob wanted, the vendor "pushed" some carambola (starfruit) at us.  We took two, for 10,000 dong as Bob recalls (which is about 25 cents apiece).  It was the best, sweetest starfruit we've ever had.  Probably because in the US it doesn't ripen naturally on the tree and is shipped from the tropics!

Best starfruit ever.

Thanks again for following our adventures in Vietnam.  Next weekend we get a long weekend since Friday is some sort of teacher's holiday (not sure if it's just our school or wider than that) so we plan to get out of the city for the first time (besides our initial vision screening weekend in a rural village 2 hours from HCMC).  The plan is Phu Quoc island in the Gulf of Thailand off the coast of Cambodia (still in Vietnam).  That'll be the next blog!