Clothes

We went to Ben Thanh Market in the morning to get some souvenirs. At lunch, we met up with Co Xuan's family at Ngoc Suong Restaurant. Some famous dishes there include "goi ca" (fish salad wrapped in thin rice paper) and chicken barbecued on split bamboo poles.

In the afternoon, Tung's aunt and uncle brought his little cousins over to our hotel room for a visit. The little girl in pink is the adopted daughter of his aunt, Co Lan, who never married because she devoted her life to help care for Tung's aging grandma.


His aunt also brought over a huge "banh duc" rice-flour cake that we ordered. It was topped with fragrant browned onions and was eaten with fish sauce. The cake was so big that it could have seriously fed a family for several days.


We also got so freshly-made "banh it tran," sticky-rice dumpling cakes with a water-chestnut-and-mushroom filling.


We spent the evening picking up the clothes that we dropped off fabric for during the first week of our stay. The tailors are especially busy around Lunar New Year, which comes early this year at the end of January, since it's become almost a tradition for even poor families to get new outfits to try and welcome a prosperous year. Our clothing, including suits and traditional "ao dai," came to us with marker thread still lined in the seams that less-busy tailors would have removed for us.

This is my first sleeveless "ao dai"!