Girls' Week Out

A series of planes, trains and automobiles have brought us safe and sound to the confines of Hoi An, that ancient trading city that has shifted from merchant goods to tourists. It's a very feminine town, full of beautiful old houses to wander through, quaint little shops with trinkets to browse, and enough culture oozing from the woodwork to start your own batch of yogurt. Did I mention tailors? We figure by this point "Hoi An" actually means "tailor" in Vietnamese, just like "yum" means "horny" (so be careful what you say to that cute old man at the delicious restaurant). You can't swing a monkey in this town without knocking down a manequin dressed in some piece of custom fashion, guarded by iron-willed women ready to wrest your measurements at the slightest hint of eye contact. Even my mother and I were not immune to the allure of exotic fabrics, and we'll pick up the final results tomorrow so they can be transported home to sit in our closets.

There's no better way to while away a rainy day than to hole up in the kitchen and produce delicious food, or so my mother taught me. As the monsoons are still alive and kicking in central Vietnam we decided to stick with tradition and enroll in a cooking class. The rain poured down all night, and by this morning the river that had been lapping at the esplanade had now fully engulfed its embankments and was creeping up the road, swallowing the waterfront whole. Our cheerful Vietnamese guide braved the deluge to take us through the market, pointing out obscure vegetables, familiar fruits, and kitchen implements essential for carving carrots into flowers.

Since the river was too high to take a boat to the cooking school we were loaded into a minivan, although the experience of skimming along at water-level was pretty much the same. It's amazing how much water those country roads can hold. Our dripping entourage transferred to the classroom, a pristine space with rows of chairs facing a demonstration table, complete with an overhead mirror. When the chef had finished his mechanical demonstration we moved to our individual cooking stations, where silent, efficient women delivered the prepared ingredients and whisked away dirty dishes. Eggplant hot pot, fresh rice paper for spring rolls, shrimp pancakes in rice paper, artfully arranged cucumber and tomato, we produced them all, with varying degrees of success. My tomato rose turned out more like salsa, but luckily there's time to practice before entertaining the family at Thanksgiving.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Heads, the weather's good and we wander the countryside on bicycles. Tails, the rain continues and we drink thick Vietnamese drip coffee while writing postcards until our hands are shaking from the caffeine and literary effort. Either way we end up on a night bus to Nha Trang, and from there to Dalat. Come heat or high water we're heading for the hills.