Assembly Halls and Spring Rolls

We had breakfast at half 9 today and then headed out to the old town. We bought a combo ticket for less than a fiver that allowed us to visit 5 out of a list of around 20 historic building. The first building we went to was the Phuc Kien Assembly house. It was a bit like a temple in my opinion. There wasn't much information about it so I can't tell you much about it. It had a pretty cool dragon sculpture and was nicely decorated.

The second stop was Tan Ky house. It is an occupied house that has belonged to one family for seven generations. A woman have us a very quick tour. You could only go round the ground floor as the family were living on the upstairs floors. It has elements of Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese architecture. The house opens out onto the river front and consequently it floods every year. There were markings on the wall to show the height each year. In 2009 it flooded to almost twice my height. There wasn't much to see in the house and every opportunity was taken to attempt to flog something. For example the little tour went over to a table and asked you what year you were born, told you the animal and what it signified, and then tried to sell you a pendant with the animal on. Lauren was born in the year of the horse, which apparently symbols prosperity. I was born in the year of the rooster. I was having trouble understanding what she was saying it symbolises. It sounded sympathy. Please feel free to correct me if you know. There wasn't actually much to see in the house which was a bit of a shame.

Next we went back to the Japanese Bridge we saw yesterday and actually went on to it. It had a little side room that had a shrine type thing in, but the bridge was more interesting to look at from the outside.

Our fourth visit was the Quang Trieu Assembly Hall. Again it looked like a temple but it was a pretty nice building. There were some interesting dragon and goat statues in the back garden. We sat on a bench in courtyard for a while, slowly dying from the heat. There were only a couple of other people there so it was quite peaceful.

Our final stop was at the Quang Cong temple. All the building and assembly halls were fairly similar. Or maybe that's just because I wasn't paying close enough attention. The colours and patterns were all very similar and the shrines were also quite similar. They were nice places to visit though.

We returned to the hostel around 2pm to have a break from the heat.  Then at 4pm we went to cooking class at Cafe 43. Well, it was called a cooking class.  I was a little disappointed in the amount of participant we had. We chopped a few things up ad did some stirring but that was about it. We were making 3 dishes: chicken with chilli and lemongrass, sweet and sour pork, and pork spring rolls. After we had finished we got to eat them. It was just us and the teacher. She showed us how to cut up the veg, measured out the spices/sugar/salt and added them in to the pre-cut and weighed meat. We then mixed the meat round with the spices and chopped the rest of the veg. Then we stirred the pan while it cooked. For the spring rolls the same happened, but Lauren had to use her hands to mix all the ingredients together, then we spooned the mixture onto rice paper, rolled them up and fried them in a huge amount of oil.  The most disappointing thing was when we were making the sweet and sour pork; the sauce was already pre-made. We essentially just added veg and meat like you would do with a jar from the supermarket at home. Even worse, within about 2 minutes of turning up I saw a huge rat running across the cafe floor behind us, and it spent the whole time scurrying back and forwards.

After the cooking class we headed back to the hostel for a bit. The lady at reception found some glue for me to use to fix my shoes which had started coming apart, and being the genius I am I managed to get glue everywhere and almost stuck my hand to the shoe with hot glue. I managed to pull my finger away just on time, with some resistance and I spent the rest of the evening with dried glue on my finger. But my shoes are now firmly fixed.

Around half 6 we wandered down to the night mkaret. It was so pretty. There were hundreds of different coloured lanterns along the river front. The pictures just aren't the same. We had a very quick wander round the market before returning back to the hostel, showering and packing.