Eating Out

A first for me today. And a probably 7th or so. But I haven't blogged about either of them, so the stories will probably both be firsts for you.

Song and I had lunch today at a vegetarian restaurant. I'm guessing they're quite busy on the 1st, 2nd, 14th and 15th of each lunar month. That's when the Buddhist's "fast", meaning, they don't eat meat.

Today was none of those days.

But it was incredibly hot today. I think it hit 99, which means the 'feel like' temperature is much hotter. We've all but quit running.

Well, Eric has an injured tailbone. He's not doing much walking or evening sitting for that matter. He lays down and he stands up.

Back to the hot, vegetarian restaurant. This was Song's 5th time there so she knew a little about the place, including that there are three floors of tables. So, she asked in English if we could eat up there. We could. She wanted that floor because it's enclosed and has a/c.

The room didn't look like it's used much, but it did have tables and chairs. Our host closed the balcony doors and turned on the a/c with her remote and turned on a fan. Easy does it.

Song ordered for us. She always does as she knows what's good and she's paying (we swap lunch for piano lessons). We had seaweed soup, fried tofu, a mushroom and Chinese kale thing and deep friend (sweet) spring rolls. With rice, of course.

When we got our bill, there was an extra item on the receipt. Song recounted our dishes and looked over the receipt again. Now, if the receipt had been in English, this would have been easy.

Because we would have noticed: Air conditioning: 15,000VND

That's right. We paid for the comfort of air conditioning.

We went on our merry way. Me, merry because I didn't have to pay for something which I thought was incredibly ridiculous. Are they even thinking about repeat guests? And Song, because she had heard about a/c charges before and she's just so laid back.

Tonight, after Eric's class ended at 8:45pm, we were looking for some comfort food. Eric's tailbone isn't feeling any better yet and American food is, well, comforting. So we went to the only American chain restaurant in our city of a million people: KFC.

I ordered my usual. Two Caesar Go-Go's and a salad. Eric ordered a Zinger-a spicy chicken burger.

Sorry, no chicken, shrimp burger?
Ha, no thanks.
No chicken?
Yes. (this means no)
We'll wait the seven minutes.
No chicken.
Okay. Uhm. I'll have 5 chicken strips.
Yes. (this means yes)

We get our food and since we got it 'take away' I double checked the bag (I've worked fast food enough and eaten enough fast food to just check).

Three chicken strips.

Excuse me. We ordered five chicken strips, but there's only three.
We only have three.
So you changed my order without telling me? Can I see my receipt?
...
...
...

We left with three chicken strips and without a 'comforting' experience at our local KFC.

It still boggles my mind that you can go to KFC and they won't have chicken. We've had this... oh, probably 5 out of the 10 times we've gone to a KFC this year.

We left KFC and went to what we call 'the factory'. It's a foodstall that cranks out sandwiches on baguettes in about a minute and there are about 5 or 6 people in an assembly line. We love them. Sandwiches are 13,000 each and are really tasty.

Oh Vietnam.