When is a fish not a fish?

So the staff at breakfast were a little concerned this morning. It seems as though a grown man circling the rather large buffet numerous times is worrying. A staff member came up to me to see if she could help me with anything. All was fine I explained.  

First up, unlike all of the Australians in the restaurant I choose to slowly circle my prey. A large buffet is a problem-solving game where you have to precisely decide on what foods will be eaten and in what order. It so happens that today, congee, which I believe is a rice soup, was the first choice. I guess this took maybe 4 full circuits to decide. The next were for trying to find a bowl. Anyway, salads, fruit, yoghurt, more soup, lots of chillies were consumed.

Did I forget to mention that after night 1's failure of hot water at The Reed, and Annette's obsession with hot baths, the constant boiling of the jug to up the temperature of the bath, seemed to blow up the jug for future use. I discovered this, after attempting to turn cold water into hot in order to drink my new favourite, Helicopter Coffee.

I came out of the bathroom to see a strange Vietnamese workman attempt to fix our broken jug. Then there is a knock on the door. A much cleverer female enters the room with a brand new jug. That's one for the ladies. Although there is a lack of milk (it's hard being obsessed with tea and milk), a lesser tea was had by the addict, and it was hot, as was my helicopter coffee.

Anyway, the trip to the mountains was due to be 3 hours, but for some unknown reason, half of our group decided it was a good idea to travel here with little or no foreign currency,  so every day there is an ATM stop. Except they don't all work so today we had 3 stops. At least being late for lunch gave breakfast a bit more time to digest. 

Tam, our very knowledgeable and funny guide, advised us that in these areas, they are still getting used to hospitality and that there may be some confusion in restaurants. Step up Annette to prove the point. Grilled fish with lime butter is what she ordered. She was wondering if it may be a whole fish from head to tail. What arrived looked like 4 meatballs in a row. I watched in amusement eating my enormous curried vegetables and rice, whilst the "is it or isn't it fish" conversation was held.

Tam was called in as both interpreter and referee. Seems as though the English translation on the menu was different to the Vietnamese, but it was fish and not meatballs (small fish bones were found as proof, or were they an elaborate trick to fool Australians who insist on eating seafood)? We even got a discount, which we feel bad about. Oh, I believe the fish that was not a fish was delicious and it was filling. 

Ten minutes up the road was the Puluong Bocbandi resort.

The welcoming lemon tea with cinnamon was spectacular. 

The resort is on the side of the mountain. The weather had closed in and the mist was heavy.

We found our cabin and had the last 3 hours of daylight as our own time. 

There are 2 sides to everybody's brains, the good and the evil. Today, not that long after demolishing lunch, our bags were loaded onto the back of a motorbike and we were escorted to our cabin at the furthest part up the hill. Upon entering "the happy room", I was confronted with this sign:

Evil brain started plotting. 

Then I saw this.

Put curried vegetables, the sign and the apparatus together and evil brain was the happiest it's been in years. I won't go into too much detail but my biggest fear was having a similar look to what you would have after a good outing at paintball, only all the paint is brown. I wonder if I should have put a warning to not read this in case of squirmishness. 

Even though the mist was heavy, we checked out the pool and cafe, I got my swimmers on, Annette got hot chocolate dong, and I went for a mountain swim. In the 10 minutes it took to get the cash, the cafe had closed. 

We met the rest of the group at 6pm for dinner and the nightmare on seafood street continued. I was over local food so opted for chicken tenders and chips. Annette got the prawn stir-fry, foolishly thinking that the prawns would be large, just like all of the other prawns that had been served.  Nope. Small prawns, not shelled, which is how they eat them in these parts. 

She better not edit this.

Some hours after I finished, she was finally done. I must say that the randomness of when you receive your meal in relation to when you order is quite a mystery. 

Back to the cabin for a fun night of watching Netflix downloads. 

Welcome to our new readers. I hope I am promoting Vietnam as a good place to visit.