Breakfast. School. Back to the tailor for the first fitting of our clothes (see Sarah's blog post). Lunch...stop there.
Be Na Cafe
Hungry, we headed to an indoor food market with ~30 stalls that all served Vietnamese food local to the Hoi An area. There was very little to distinguish one from another, so we picked one that looked clean, had customers and generally had a good vibe about it.
We dove into dish after dish of delicious food. At 30,000-50,000 Vietnamese Dong (~$1-2 USD) per dish, we ate like the King and Queens that we are. We are going to miss these prices when it's time to leave SE Asia. The food was quite different from what we’d eaten so far in Vietnam, lots of different flavors.
We liked it so much, we ate lunch at this same stall three days in a row! We learned that the chef and waitresses are all part of the same family. My understanding, through a bit of broken English, is that they were the 2nd generation of their family to run the stall. They had a wonderful energy to them, making it a treat beyond the tasty food.
If you're in Hoi An, go to Be Na Cafe!
Family Separation
And I don’t mean on the border (I’ll keep the politics out of this). As part of the girls' Christmas presents, which they received on the overnight train, I found a private 2-hour art class at the Phap Gallery. It was run by Phap himself.
Girls doing their art thing, Sarah and I set out for a run on the waterfront, followed by a beer. We found a spot with our favorite type of beer, a Gose.
Picking up the girls, we found a proud and excited Sadie and a frustrated Paige. Sadie who has more of natural knack for art had created a painting that we were frankly shocked by. Both she and Phap confirmed she had done it all by herself!
Paige on the other hand shot out of the gate and finished her painting really fast, finding herself with almost an hour just watching Sadie. We signed them up for a second class the next day and Paige insisted she would not go (find out in the next post if she made it ;)!
Independent time away from each other, as adults/kids/individuals is something we have to make space for, but often don’t have the luxury of doing.
The Bamboo Circus
We had tickets later in the evening to the AO show at the Lune Theatre. The best way to describe it was a Vietnamese Cirque Du Soleil.
The performance was a mix of acrobatics, comedy and a show of Vietnamese culture changes as the migration of youth from rural to urban environments. Paige, Sadie and Sarah were in absolute stitches, hardly able to breath through their deep belly laughter. When we left the show Sarah remarked that we should have audio recorded their laughter, it was so wonderful. Where's a bottle when you need it?!
Origami
We rarely repeat restaurants because we’re so excited to try new places, but we couldn’t help ourselves once again. We were back at Samuri Kitchen for a repeat of Japanese. As we were leaving, the owner who opened the restaurant 9 years ago, invited us to a table for an origami swan making lesson.
I paged through a photo album of Japan the owner shared with me, collecting ideas for our April 2020 visit while Sarah and the girls meticulously followed instructions for 20+ minutes, creating their swans.
The all star was Sarah, who in her first ever effort created a beauty. Not surprising...give Sarah some direction, a task to complete, and consider it done to a high standard. Sarah actually explained to the girls on the way home that’s the environment in which she thrives vs an unstructured and creative situation.
Today was a great RTW day, start to finish.
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