Being huge fans of Vietnamese food, we decided to go out and get some. As it is only 100 km to the Viet Nam border, we decided to go to Ha Tien. We caught a minibus from Kampot at 10:30 and were in Ha Tien just after noon.
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| Ha Tien Market |
We were starving and found a nice restaurant near the market. The food was great, and the people friendly, even if they
found us odd. The waitress at the restaurant was
a bit abrupt in showing me that I was eating my noodles incorrectly (you spin
them up with a fork, rather than using chopsticks as I was doing), but I have a
tremendous capacity for forgiving attractive young women almost anything. Dagny
tells me just to do what I am told and I try, I really do.
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| Our transport to the beach (8km for $2) |
There isn't much in Hai Tien, so we looked for transport out to Mui Nai, a beach about 8 km down the road. There aren't any tuk tuks in Ha Tien, we didn't fit on a motorbike with our luggage, but we found a pedican driver willing to haul us out there. It was a pleasant ride, although a bit of a squeeze in that little seat.
Mui Nai was amazing. Although we have
travelled a lot, this is the first time in a long time that we have been in a
place where knowing English, French, Spanish, a little Cantonese and some Khmer
wouldn't give you enough words to communicate with anyone. Everyone can say
"Hello" and some sales staff manage "What you want?" but
that is it, beyond quoting prices.
Today we had lunch at Hong Phat, just across the promenade
from the beach. I had fried rice with squid and Dagny had Singapore noodles. I
drank a couple of Bia 333 (beers) and Dagny had an iced coffee. All for the
low, low price of 85,000 Dong.
Did I mention that we are millionaires? The day before, when
we learned that dollar didn't work here and there were no ATMs, I had made an
emergency run back to Ha Tien on the back of a motodop and changed US$100 into
a bit over two million dong; so lunch translates into $4--at a beach resort.
The air conditioned room is $17.50, but we got a discount from the regular $20
for staying three nights.
The tables are at the restaurants are all designed to
accommodate moderately sized Vietnamese families of say, forty people, so we
didn't sit alone. Two women were at the table already, ordering slushies from a
guy on a bicycle who shaved ice into a cup and poured on colorful syrups and
condensed milk. Seeing that we were foreigners, and clearly not up on the
importance of this delicacy, they acquired another spoon from the vendor before
he sped off and insisted we try them. Well, I'd always wanted to. It was very sweet and tasty.
When we finished our food, I ordered another beer and Dagny
went to check out a nearby store that sells a variety of strange things, some
of which she thought might make suitable art components. If we visited an
aircraft factory she would find suitable art components. Two other ladies sat
at the table, and another lady came over making an impressive pitch for her
particular dead flat things. Dead flat things (DFT) are fish (I don't know, some
kind of fish) that are dried and are, by law I think, always flat. The ladies
examined the DFT and gave their approval. The vendor went back to squatting on
the pavement where she fired up her fire in a bucket, cooked the two DFTs and
brought them, with dipping sauce, to the table. The ladies decided that my diet
was sorely deficient in DFTs, and used sign language to indicate that it went
with beer. Unwilling to suffer the consequences of violating some cultural
taboo, I tried it. It turned out to be kind of a tasty fish jerky. Definitely
something I would have again.
The other two ladies were not to be outdone, and the younger
one had brought a big bag of peanuts. She shoved a handful in my direction and
asked if I knew what peanuts were. This surprised me, because she asked in
decent English. My first thought was that he was a librarian from St. Paul on a
junket, but she was a student (English major) from Ho Chih Minh City on
vacation with her mother, who was the other lady at the table. (The peanuts, by
the way, were boiled and tasty. These too, I was assured, are vital to the diet
of the Asian beer drinker and I thought that good information.)
Dagny came back to sample these delicacies before I managed
to eat them all, partly because the ladies were involved in competitive
restocking of my plate. We chatted with the young lady, who taught us a few
Vietnamese expressions that we immediately forgot. We decided to refer to her
as the person in Mui Nai who speaks English.
There are a couple of days left on the trip, and there are
these orange things, sort of like tortillas, that have shrimp and other stuff
on them and I am wondering what they are like.
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| A quiet beach moment on Friday before the tour buses arrive |
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