Hero Day

Today has been a national holiday here in Vietnam. Lisa told me that this is in remembrance of the nation's heroes, although I haven't found anything on the internet to confirm this. I spent my morning at my friend Huyen's apartment. She has been something of a heroine herself in spending all of last night preparing three saucepan-fulls of grated vegetables to fill eight hundred spring rolls, to be given to the poor next full moon. As everybody had the day off work a group of us assembled at her apartment to help out- namely by doing the rolling. Huyen taught us how to do so, with her 'twenty years' rolling experience'. As well as being a charitable thing to spend my morning on, I now know how to make spring rolls and am pretty pleased with that. For lunch Huyen prepared some of the fruits of our labour deep fried and served with noodles, salad and peanuts in a big bowl. A great example of lovely fresh, simple, tasty and (mostly) healthy Vietnamese home cooking. The rest of the spring rolls were bagged up uncooked to be delivered to Huyen's friend, who will fry them and then distribute them in poor areas with her family.

I had taken the things I needed for the rest of the day with me to Huyen's so I decided to stay in Phu My Hung until my Zumba class in the evening rather than cycle the fifteen minutes' home in the unforgiving heat. I went to my favourite cafe/lounge and enjoyed a fresh coconut while reading my book. What I love about this place is that I can order one drink and nurse it for three or four hours and none of the waiting staff will even slightly pressure me to buy a second. In fact they refill my complimentary glass of iced tea any time it is less than two-thirds full, and change it if the ice has melted too much.

After idling my day away as thus I hopped over the road to the Tavern for Zumba. Our teacher, Kate, is going home to Hungary for her wedding at the start of next week and won't return until I have already left the country. So today was my last class with her. I will see her again, however, tomorrow, for her hen party, which I am really looking forward to but which I am sworn not to divulge any information about until after the event. I will report back.