Vespa Street

A trip to Vespa street to ooh and ahh at the pretty things.

Reconditioned Vespas are available all over town but Ly Thai To street in District 3 seems to be particularly well populated with refurbishing shops. Here's some pretty pictures:

Beer optional. Most of the pictures here were taken at Hoa Vespa .

Fruit day part 2

In the second fruit related post of the day Stephen makes orange juice.

Hand processed is apparently best, it takes four green oranges to make two glasses of juice.

Oranges - Fivimart

Glasses - free with Lipton Tea

Squeezer - model's own.

Coconuts

I like coconuts. I particularly like the way they're trimmed here into a handy container shape and how sweet the southern ones are. I usually buy them ready opened but today invested in a coconut opener.

I was too scared of the machetes so went for the wimp option. I wasn't particularly confident but managed to get the coconut opened without loss of digits or dignity. In fact it sliced through the top as easily as taking the top off a soft boiled egg. Now I can stock up and indulge my coconut whims whenever I feel like it.

Coconut costs: 4,000 VND to 5,000 on the street, 7,000 to 8,000 in the supermarket, 10, 000 to 20,000 in a cafe and 30,000 and upwards in a posh restaurant. This one cost me 28 pence or 42 US cents.

Tea for two

Last night I was having a cup of tea when I was joined by a visitor. This frog hangs around a lot is completely unfazed by humans, at least I think it's the same frog, there might be a whole family of them who like people.



Note the very classy HCMC mug which is a much treasured gift.

Tet decorations

As we enter the year of the Ox or Bull I notice that unlike the pig and the mouse it's not the easiest animal to cute up.

I've also spotted that a lot of the blossoms are not all they seem to be.

It's a great time of year for taking pictures and rest assured, there will be lots more of them soon.

On the up

Avid readers will know that our house has four floors.



You can count them. Last night we went to the roof with a bottle of wine and plans for a chilled evening in and found this...





Obviously I waited for daylight to photograph it because flash, chrome and me are an untried combination and the camera was on the ground floor.

It leads to the flat space where the water pump and air conditioner units live. I don't know why it's there, I don't know when it got there and I don't know what's coming next.

I'm off on holiday for a few days and slightly fear returning.

The mother ship has landed

Our quiet neck of the woods has been attracting little businesses for a while now. Corner stores, noodle shops and recently a couple of nice little cafes have arrived but nothing prepared me for the completion of Mori Cafe. It's a neon wonderland complete with DJ and multiple floors dedicating to getting the local populace all sugared up and doing a pretty successful job of it based on my one visit so far.



I stayed on the ground floor watching the football and didn't stray up further but I'll be there soon.

Lotte mart and a big shiny cafe opening in the same week! How much excitement can I take?