Lunch at the Jade Hotel

We’re about two thirds of the way up Vietnam now, in Hue. The clouds are are deeper than Saigon. I really should do better research before we travel! It’s a much smaller city than Saigon, still lots of traffic but we are getting the hang of crossing the road.Basically no one really wants to run you over and they are masters of avoidance so you just take a deep breath and launch yourself into the traffic and hope no ones driving the wrong way as you can’t look in two directions at once. The traffic is 90% scooters and bikes.

We are staying in a little guest-house run by the sweetest people who offered to show us how to make a ‘family dinner’ so we headed off this morning on scooters to the market.

Off we zoomed and it began to rain. The market was busy.  Lots of wet people and mountains of food. All sorts of fruit and vegetables, live fish hopping in the baskets, fresh prawns and squid and dodgy looking meat.

We gathered up lots of vegetables, fresh noodles and prawns and headed back to cook. We unpacked and cleaned up all the veg and set cooking in the mini kitchen. The kitchen was very small in every dimension and Con and I were like giants, nearly decapitating ourselves on the cooker hood on several occasions.

The girls were great, masters of the large sharp knife and in no time at all we had made a feast of nem – Vietnamese spring rolls,

noodle soup,

prawns with tamarind sauce

and morning glory with chilli and garlic.

We sat down together and ate the lot!