The First 3 Days; a long post!

ARRIVAL:  We arrived Monday morning at 3 am instead of midnight, due to a delay in Hong Kong.  But our gracious colleague Hui Hiang still picked us up at the airport and made sure we got to our hotel!  We are finding everyone so nice and very helpful so far.  We slept, and met Hui Hiang for breakfast and to begin looking at apartments.  We had a little blip in the apartment deal but after looking at a few more ended up where we began, in the same building as Hui Hiang!  This will be convenient since we will be working with her and she has been here since August from Singapore and has been helping us immensely with navigating our new surroundings, including crossing these streets with hundreds of motor scooters that pay scant attention to any supposed traffic laws.  We signed the apartment contract today for 10 months after meeting the owner and are promised a move-in date of Friday Oct. 7. It'll be so good to not live out of suitcases!  Apartment photos after move-in!

DAY 2/FUTURE JOB SECTION:  Tuesday Oct. 4 we were invited to a guest lecture at the University, by a Dutch ophthalmologist Dr. Rolinda Beijering.  She had a presentation to the 2nd and 3rd year students about retinal diseases.  I was amused about her analogy about the reason for swelling in the eye:  "It's like a windmill disbalance since windmills pump water.  When they are out of balance, not enough water is pumped out so fluid buildup is the result."  She also made a joke about the Dutch and how they handle their money, and my new friend Hui Hiang from Singapore later told me, "I never knew why they called it 'going Dutch'!"  After the lecture we were treated to lunch provided by the University for the 6 of us on staff, as well as Dr. Beijering and a Project Officer from Eye Care Foundation that accompanied Dr. Beijering.  Which brings me to the fun/interesting section on food!  A couple of photos may put off sensitive stomachs, so be warned!

Student parking lot

The University's Canteen (Can Tin!!) where we can get breakfast or lunch.
The words underneath in Vietnamese say:  Coffee-Breakfast-Lunch.

Brien Holden Vision Institute
Sign above the lecture room

Bob and Hui Hiang outside our office door

Me sitting at a desk like one I will have (it's on order!)

FOOD SECTION:  By day 3 we've had lots of food experiences.  The first morning's hotel breakfast (included in our $36 room rate) was a buffet with 3 soup choices (including rice "soup" which was really a porridge), a noodle stir fry, and other non-milk and cereal type choices.

Breakfast on Monday!

Yesterday's lunch provided by the University was a shrimp salad, fried chicken with a pretty rice mold, followed by a pot of broth & small meatballs put on our table over a burner to come to a boil, into which the tray of mushrooms was dumped to cook.  We'd learned that Vietnamese eat the soup course after the main course.

Hiu Hiang was nice enough to point out to me the chicken's HEAD including
the comb (which was semi-buried, but she has a sense of humor and thought we
should "pose" the photo with the head atop the rice).  The chicken feet are also in that pile; and the chicken is
cut into pieces like we experienced in Dominica--just kind of  hacked up with bones included.  No drums, breasts,
and thighs per se.

Platter of excellent mushrooms and cellophane-type noodles served
with the pot of broth and meatballs.

Mushrooms being dumped in to cook.

Dessert was a platter of longans, a Chinese fruit Hui Hiang knew.  The literal meaning of longan is "dragon eye" because it resembles an eyeball (how appropriate!) when its fruit is shelled; the black seed shows through the translucent flesh like a pupil/iris.  The seed and shell are not eaten.  They are very tasty!

Shell, fruit with shell behind it, seed.

Does it look like a dragon eye after I eat a bite of fruit?

The next big adventure came at last night's dinner.  Hui Hiang had heard of a place that has good "barbeque."  We walked to Phuong Nam Quan down the block where the menu was in complete Vietnamese and none of the servers spoke a word of English.  We tried to order a "grilled" dinner but ended up with another boiling broth pot with chicken on a platter--yep, the WHOLE chicken.  Skip the rest if you are grossed out easily.

It's pretty hot here!  Beer is served over a big chunk of ice--and the
server comes to remove a mostly-melted chunk and add a new one from
time to time.

The chicken brought out to us.  Legs, head, organs included.  Can you
guess what the red blob is on top?  THE CHICKEN'S BLOOD congealed in salt water.

The cooking brother and platter of greens and coconut and a platter of  cellophane noodles served alongside.

Boiling chicken.

For dessert, we again were served fruit.  Maybe that's the Vietnamese thing?  Chinese cherries, and I forgot the other name but I think is was a type of guava.  Both were delicious--a little strange to be served with a bowl of salt mixed with dried chilies.

Chinese cherries (each had 3 seeds to eat around), the guava type slices, and bowl of salt and chilies.

Hui Hiang, Bob, and I survived our unusual meal.

I know this is a long post but I think I found my new favorite restaurant today.  For lunch we tried Tokyo Deli, a sushi restaurant and it even has a vegetarian menu section!  No chicken skin or bones!  And best of all, the prices are:  seaweed salad:  $1.43 US (I think it's close to $5 at Meijer!), a big salad was $2.51 US, and a vegetarian roll was $2.02.  And we just finished a light dinner of a baguette and some cheese bought at the market across the street.  The baguette (it was big--2 feet long I think!) was SIXTEEN CENTS U.S.  

Sakura roll I had today:  28,000 Vietnamese dong=$2.02 US.  Salad Wakame 56,000 VND=$2.51 USD.

Well, that is enough for one reading!  I know it's long but it really is amazing the unusual foods we "safe" Americans aren't exposed to and I thought you might enjoy reading some of these experiences.  We are doing well and have not been sick so far and are trying to learn and adapt as we go.  Tomorrow we open a Vietnamese bank account so we can pay our rent, listen to a lecture given by our university's department head Mr. Long Tran (he lectures first year students in Vietnamese but we want to watch his lecture style), meet our renting agent in the evening to obtain keys, and hopefully move into our apartment on Friday.  Then Saturday we participate in a screening sponsored by the Lions Club of Singapore in Ben Tre (a 3-hour bus ride away)...and I think that will be my next blog post after the screening! Thanks for following our adventures, and I hope you enjoy learning new things as much as we do!