Last night we walked to the old town from our hotel about 3 km walk. We were greeted with the streets having colourful lantern across it and hanging off the trees all lit up. The area was busy with locals tourists and scooters. It can be a paradise for a lady if she enjoys shops and markets. Lot of restaurants and street food. We had a big lunch so we had some spring rolls followed by BBQ squid which was very tasty. We walked down to the river again very colourful and busy.
I was up early and went and had breakfast around 07:30 and then a guy approached me to say the cooking class we are ready to take you there. I said we are booked for 13:00 and that my lady was in bed a sleep. So told him to pick us up at 13:00. They cooked me poached eggs on toast the best eggs I have had for a long time. Penny went down for breakfast and I spoke to the receptionist about flights, train to Ho Chi Minh City. She said don’t take train too noisy, which we already knew. Penny likes them, but they are too uncomfortable for me and having to share a compartment, not my choice. So we are flying on Wednesday late morning and arrive 90 minutes later, the train takes 19 hours, a no brainer. And both are the same price.
Penny relaxed by the pool and I went to find an ATM machine need 5 million dong to pay the hotel bill, flight and taxi to airport. At 12:45 we were picked up for the Sabirama Cooking Tour and we introduced ourselves to the 3 German and 1 US young ladies and off we went to the old town. We walked through the food market and our tutor/guide showed us different foods and spices and we bought a few edible things. Then we made our way to the dockside and hoped on to a river boat, very noisy but very scenic sights to be seen. 45 minutes later we transferred on to basket boats us two and the coxswain. The girls got into the other 2 boats. We put on Vietnamese hats and we made our way to the jetty, our coxswain must have not taken his medication as he was yahooing and spinning our boat around.. From there we walked and were greeted by a water buffalo who had a wagon connected to him and he took us 200m to where the cooking class was to be held. We were welcomed and took our shoes off and sat down and put our feet into warm water with limes and lemon grass, one lady massaged my shoulders and we got our lower legs massaged and got scrubbed with salts. Hell this is some cooking class and we have not started.
We put on aprons and cooks hat which was too small for my head. We prepped sauces, designer vegetables and prepped and cooked Mango salad with seafood. Rolled fresh rice paper with prawns veg and spices. Made pan cake with shrimp and pork and rolled it in rice wrapper. Sauteed chicken with lemongrass and chilli. We ate our dishes after each course was prepped or cooked, when finished everyone was full no dinner tonight was the verdict. We were then driven back to our hotels, what a brilliant 5 hours an amazing time and we packed alot of things in for the so called cooking class and it cost £35 each. We highly recommend it. We were speaking with the young ladies about Cambodia and Laos which they have visited and they are going to send me alot of info which is appreciated. No going out tonight we have to decide what we are going to do tomorrow but it is suppose to be sunny.
Maurice's Travel 