Saturday, March 10, 2007

Vietnam

Sandy and I followed Mum and Dad to Ho Chi Minh City for a long weekend. We stayed at Hotel Majestic, a beautiful French colonial hotel overlooking Saigon River.











Drinks on the roof of the hotel overlooking the river.





And breakfast overlooking the river!



Crossing the road in Ho Chi Minh City involves dodging 1 million motorbikes.





Apart from Phil falling sick for 24 hours with food poisoning, the food was great!















Sandy emerging from a real Viet Cong tunnel!



Dad emerging from a tunnel widened for oversize American tourists. The tunnel may have been widened but it was still a horrible eperience crawling through 30 metres of it.



Phil and a real American tank that hit a landmine 33 years ago.



Phil standing in a crater caused by a B52 bomb! It's huge!

Jonathan's 50th birthday

Happy 50th Birthday Jonathan!

Shah organised a great spread of food at Cable Car bar. Later on we headed to Brix at the Hyatt.





Friday, March 02, 2007

Mum & Dad's visit

Mum and Dad flew over for a quick visit to Singapore before heading to Vietnam on holiday. On the evening of their arrival we celebrated Chinese New Year in Holland Village with yu sheng,



noodles and dim sum ...



The following evening we ate at La Cuisine, a tiny French restaurant in Cluny Court. We'd been meaning to try this place for ages as we enjoyed the chef's cooking at her previous restaurant, Chez La Mamy, in Ann Siang Road. A young Singaporean girl, the chef trained in France and in Singapore. The food was just as good as at the last place: phil started with prawn and fois gras ravioli, followed by veal and pasta; Sandy started with goat's cheese salad with duck confit as a main; Mum had a large slab of melt-in-your-mouth fois gras to start with and a tuna steak for her main course; Dad started with grilled scallops and joined Sandy with duck confit as a main. For dessert we shared chocolate flourless cake and creme brulee. Delicious!

Another evening we took Mum and Dad and George and Kiki to one of our favourite Southern Indian banana leaf restaurants: Iniavan, in Little India. We feasted on Mysore mutton and masala mutton, fried fillet of fish and fried whole smaller fish, vegetable cutlet, paper thosai and biryani rice.

Most fun was a meal at Bejing Steamboat in Geylang; we sat at one of the tables outside on the street.



Sandy chose the dishes -- to be dunked into the two boats -- from the trolley and selected slices of raw pork, beef and lamb, tofu, meat and chive dumplings, meatballs, beancurd skin, sweetcorn, Chinese cabbage and spinach.









Geylang is also home to Singapore's largest redlight district and watched a succession of China girls disappear into doorways with customers.