Journey to Hoàng Su Phì (To Vietnam's Rice Terraces) 8 — The Village's Only Restaurant?!

It's only natural to get hungry after finishing an intense stretch of work. There's a restaurant right nearby, so we instantly decided—lunch, there it is! Since the bungalow doesn't serve lunch (though they'll make something if you ask), and the town is just close by, we decided to head down. My Vietnamese friend kept saying it's right next door, so super close, super close!—so I figured it'd be a 2- or 3-minute walk, but then...

Yes, that sense of being right next to the Vietnamese people... You see, they don't walk — they ride motorbikes. So of course we go down, zooming along, zoom zoom, zoom zoom.

We keep going around one curve after another, haha! Kicking up clouds of dust, gazing out at the terraced rice fields. Yeah, it feels really good, though. But we just keep on going and going. At last, an asphalt road has finally come into view.

We're still going strong, pushing on and on. After crossing the bridge, at last a densely built-up residential area came into view, and I thought, "So this is the town, lol." Some kids on their way home from school waved to me with carefree, innocent smiles.

It even comes up and talks to you, and unlike in Ho Chi Minh City, it seems used to being around adults. It's incredibly friendly and adorable. By now I suppose I'd been riding for about 10 minutes from the bungalow (by motorbike, of course). So this is what Vietnamese people mean when they say "next door," huh? lol Pretty funny, isn't it. Alright, time for lunch at the only restaurant in town? They said they had draft beer (bia hơi), so I gulped it right down!

It comes with rice crackers to nibble on. Boy, are they huge

We have this type of rice cracker in Ho Chi Minh too, but the red type isn't very common. It's not that it's spicy. Hahaha, it's bigger than my face~

And the crispiness never stops. For the food, just have them bring the recommendations

Deep-fried fish like pond smelt (left) and deep-fried carp (right) At first they told me it was carp?????, and I wasn't sure about it... I even thought, maybe it has a bit of a fishy smell? In Vietnam, it seems that during (and toward the end of) the rice harvest, you can catch carp in the paddy fields, and apparently this is that. Rather than carp, I later found myself thinking, isn't this actually a crucian carp? Come to think of it, I feel like it was served at the bungalow too. It's apparently in season, so let's have some. The belly part had no off-smell, and it was delicious! Rather than something to eat with rice, this is more of a drinking-mode snack, lol. Because we were all eating so merrily

The adults keep talking to me and the kids too — "Where did you come from?" and all sorts of things. It seems Japanese people rarely, or almost never, come to this town, so they find it unusual. Well, the rural areas of Vietnam still have plenty of undeveloped places. On the way back to the bungalow, I wandered around the shopping street thinking, "Is there any souvenir I could get~?

Yes, yes, we have them — scarves with a Red Dao ethnic-group motif. You can wrap them around your hair or around your neck. They're red-based with a checkered pattern, and I bought one. It was 35,000 VND, I think? Just a little over 200 yen. And there's more, too,

The classic Vietnamese floral pattern — there were rose designs too. A Vietnamese person might say it's old-fashioned and tacky, but it has a nice retro feel. This one, I just admired it and left it at that. Well then, time to head back to the bungalow, and after I get some work done, it's another herbal medicinal bath today! Relocation Life Ranking