As you may have gathered I like squid and I have just about overdosed on it lately. It must be a good fishing season as the seafood has all been fantastic. We went to Ha My beach and ...had squid, but the highlight was finding a hilarious typo on the menu. Obviously used Google translate but who knows. Translating from Vietnamese to English brings problems but when I looked at My Le's advertising board which she has on a pedestal outside her shop I found some beauties. The worst part of it was whoever did the sign got her phone number wrong. 
This morning at Mia coffee I was sitting looking out at the rain pelting down andchecked the weather and found it was 30 degrees with a humidity of 95%, I said to the waitress, It's going to rain all day and she said "Yes it's very romantic" . My favourite waitress Ha is still there but the lovely Vui who I saw as a very young girl is now married and has a baby.
At Ha My resto four people were sitting playing cards, three women and one man. I asked what the game was and they told me Tien Len which I knew from my Dien Bien Phu research means "Charge" or "Forward". They were playing for big money and all kept their stash tucked away under the tablecloth. There was building work going on next door and the builders all came in and stood around watching the game before they dispersed and went back to preparing formwork. At least some of them did, others just stood watching and smoking. Builders must be making a mint in Hoi An as there is work everywhere.
Driving in the rain brings its challenges, the best part is that it's not cold, the worst is that the plastic raincoats get wet inside and whatever is in your pockets gets wet, like my camera which stopped working. When I came home I asked Tham for a small bag of rice to put it in to draw out the moisture, she didnt understand so her husband came in and grabbed the camera and dropped it in the family's rice supply . I left it overnight and in the morning it worked, partially. The zoom still won't work.The Vietnamese are always positive even though they don't understand, as this morning showed. They have a percolator in the kitchen and I asked Tham if I could make coffee. She said I will maake it and she busied herself with the percolator and the water and coffee and put it on the gas. After about 10 minutes I thought I would check it and found she had put the water in the top section and the bottom was empty and was just about melting.I took it off the gas and put it under cold water and then showed her how to do it. She took it all well, she just laughed.
Included in the photos is a gem of a cafe nearly under a bridge on the way to An Bang beach. We peeled off the main road right on the bridge abutment and down a narrow path was a cafe full of bonsai and tropical hanging plants. The lady there brought her baby out to say hello and I could say, Rat Dep...very beautiful.
The food this trip has been stunning. We went with Hai to Con Chai (again) and one of the hotpots was Yunnan Pork, big hunks of pork in a sauce. Unfortunately it was the third course, Hai always overorders its the Vietnamese way it seems, always too much whether it's beer or food. After three courses and15 beers we made for home (I drank two).
Cousin Na came back from An Khe today, six hours on the bus.