Thursday 24 May 2018

After visiting several, museums, meeting houses and other heritage sites yesterday we went back to Shamrock. Hey, know what you’re thinking, but we had thrashed ourselves silly with culture all day and after that little excursion to Madam Chau’s needed a comfort brew - there’s also WiFi. Turns out they were out of stout so we settled for Irish Red - pretty good too. Dinner was at a place Jan found in a back alley called something like NU Eatery that served the best Vietnamese food we’ve ever eaten. She could force me to go back.

Encouraged by Beautiful Moon Hotel to secure their bikes left unattended with supplied locks even though we saw no others so protected, we, not knowing any better, left them locked to a tree by the river. Upon return late afternoon discovered this was prime territory for nearby restaurants and bars to place tables. Bikes gone. Found them out of the way across the street with locks around spokes. Think we can draw a couple of conclusions here: Nobody wants to steal a beat-up, old one-speed and even if they did they could.

Biked out to pick up formerly grotty clothes from laundry this morning when Jan left for Vietnamese cooking school. This created opportunity to squander some of the morning with Vietnamese coffee and WiFi to tap out some more twisted submissions. Due torpidity so far, main observation has been three indulgently young women - one from Scandinavia, one from Canada and a California valley girl it seems - at the cafe acting their ages. Jan’s Thai cooking class in Phuket a couple of years ago added wonderfully to our gustatory repertoire and this should provide another Great Leap Forward. Confident this one won’t kill anywhere near the 45 million people last one did. She went alone because we divide our efforts so that each plays to his strengths. She operates primarily at the front end of the cooking - eating continuum forcing me to pick up slack at the other.

Notwithstanding genetic tendency toward favorite deadly sin, after three coffees guilt is beginning to set in so will sally forth to explore more of Hoi An before meeting partner at haberdasher by 1400 to check fit of new duds - another fortuitous(?) reason to have third bag. Looks like Darwin Vinnies will get a windfall of good, lightly worn, used clothing to make room for new stuff. To recap: went in to buy one (1) shirt.

Jack