All Night Dim Sum

So I heard about a dim sum place next to the Caravelle hotel downtown
and decided to check it out one evening.

They serve dim sum from 9am till 230pm and again from 10pm till
closing, which is pretty late - 2am.

Guess when I showed up? Yup, in that slice of time when half the menu
was off limits.

Did have this large serving of chow fun though.

Traditional Vietnamese at Hoang Yen

Here is some Canh Chua Ca (fish sour soup, though it is more like
sweet and sour soup) at a local family style chain restaurant called
Hoang Yen.

The food is really good, but the most interesting thing about this
place is how high the prices are and how popular it is. Here they just
serve regular, everyday Vietnamese food yet one would be hard pressed
to leave this place paying less than ten USD per head for lunch,
exclusive of drinks outside of iced green tea.

Yet it is always full - a crowd of local business type and older
overseas Vietnamese here on business and/or vacation. Considering that
three course set lunchs at mid and upper-market western joints are
eight bucks or so, the pricing here is a bit out of line. But I guess
they cater to different markets... so well done to these local
operators.

Snails in District 4

Went and had some roadside seafood again, which basically means
steamed shellfish. This joint was just inside the cartographic
boundary that separates D1 from D4. Costs were about thirty five
percent less than the backpacker area of Pham Ngu Lau - so about a
buck a dish. Most of the local customers here just dropped by for a
light snack after dinner and therefore grabbed only a dish or two - I
was the exception using this as my main meal.

Underground Stout

The Underground is an expat/tourist bar right in the middle of the
Dong Khoi area of District 1.

It serves a local stout called Amber. Not bad, but not hearty enough.
It is tough to get Guiness locally though, so this will have to do.

Saigon Post Office

So I had to mail some things off locally the other day. Dropped by the
main post office in town, which is next to the main cathedral in town
too.

While this place is crowded, service is relatively quick as the crowds
are mostly tourists taking pictures.

This picture shows my shipped items after they were deftly packed by
the postal workers. It was an extra service that cost 4k VND per item.
I think it would have cost me more than that just to pay for the
scotch tape if I were to have bounded the packages myself.

Obama Clinches

Just got to the office after hanging out late in my pad watching Clinton's speech this morning - pretty decent speech, even if it didn't contain the concession that folks wanted.  But facts are facts and Obama now has the required number of delegates.  Good for him and hope he takes down McCain.  

What has struck me in this primary battle - or at least in the web 2.0 content in this battle - is how much people hate Clinton, while on the flip side non-Obama supporters are merely indifferent to the guy.  They're all politicians, they're all roughly the same, yet people hate her with passion.  I don't get that.  

Cleavered Results

Duck A La Carte

Was going somewhere else for dinner and passed this, so I gave it a
chance and asked if they would sell me half a duck. To my surprise
they said yes (for 85k). This is the first place that did not require
one to purchase the entire fowl - an understandable limitation at
those other places.

So this guy grabbed a whole duck and hacked half of it for me. The
next person to enter a half order will not get that luxury, but to
make up for it they will get the duck's head.