Viet Nam the fourth: Day 3 – HCMC to Quy Nhon

I neglected to mention that there was also dessert on last night’s food and scooter tour, wonderful milk puddings, basically pannacotta/creme caramel (something else the Vietnamese kept when they sent the French packing) in three flavours: matcha, cream cheese, and caramel. Quite delicious.

Started with a decent breakfast at the hotel, noting that their banh canh is quite different to the one last night, and is more like pho ga but with prawns, quail eggs, and banh canh noodles. Sadly, the very delicious meat on a lemongrass skewer wasn’t present, and not because we ate all of them yesterday. We took a wander down the street, noting that yesterday’s lunch was bun bo tho da (beef noodle soup with stone bowl) before stopping in for a foot massage (the massage was okay, but then they tried the scam where the staff asked for tips, claiming they wouldn’t get any part of what we’d already paid “the boss”, but as we’d already paid we just walked). As we had a bit of time to kill we went to the skydeck viewing level of the Bitexco Financial Tower, HCMC’s second tallest building but at 262 metres still pretty tall. It was a clear day so we had a decent view of the city, including Landmark 81, Vietnam’s tallest building.

Then it was off to the airport, where not knowing any better our driver dropped us at the international terminal, so it was a 10 minute walk to the domestic (thanks to the lift being offline for servicing). The airlines are saying get to the airport 2 hours before the flight, but even with a slight queue for check in we were through with plenty of time.

I’ve said it often, and will say it again, I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad meal in VN. With time to spare we grabbed a bite at one of the airport eateries, which if anywhere was going to serve something to make a liar out of me, surely it would be there. However, the broken rice with pork was surprisingly decent, not a contender for the best meal I’ve ever had in VN but certainly among the best food I’ve had in airports. The ca phe sua da was, however, below average.

Quy Nhon’s nearest airport is at Phu Cat, about 25 km north of the city, and like many in this land started as a US air base during what the locals like to call the American War (Phu Cat was a major base for the the distribution of Agent Orange, among other things). During those times there was also an air base in Quy Nhon, but after 1975 this was abandoned and later turned into the main road in town. Feel free to wikipedia it if you’re bored. What I did notice, tucked away near the Phu Cat airport terminal was a row of rather pointy jet aircraft nose cones, which wikipedia suggest to me were Vietnam Air Force, either Sukhoi Su-27 or Yakolev Yak-130 (I didn’t get a lot of time to look and like every good tourist didn’t take photos of the military things).

After the built up hustle of HCMC, the 20 or so km of VN countryside we drove through was a definite change of scenery and pace, open rice fields, less scooters (though more large trucks). Quy Nhon is a coastal city famed for being a nice place to visit and eat seafood without being too full of tourists, so that’s basically our plan for the few days we’re here. Eat everything we can, and relax, and possibly check out some historical sights and other points of interest, like the beach.

After the hotel check in we went looking at the local area, as a website indicated there was a good restaurant for seafood not too far away. In the way these things always happen, the restaurant as named no longer appears to exist, so we just kept walking (there are a bunch of seafood places on that street, so we’ve nicknamed it seafood street). This part of Quy Nhon is thankfully almost devoid of western franchise stores: in our wanderings we spied a sole KFC and that was it. I’m sorry Colonel, with all the seafood on offer your 11 herbs and spices just aren’t in the game.

We settled for a busy place on a street corner opposite the waterfront, where for less than $20AUD had a big plate of seafood rice and a large oyster omelette, which following some local instruction, worked out that that it should be eaten wrapped in the rice paper with the slices of mango, cucumber, lettuce and herbs that we otherwise weren’t sure were a side salad. Suitably instructed we then ate our fill of this wonderful omelette, dipping it into the provided sauce, similar to satay but with the addition of anchovy fillets, accompanied by a bottle of Saigon chilled beer, again served in a mug with huge chunks of ice.

Then it was back to the hotel to digest and plan our next seafood…