So this is my default lunch everyday, costs around 80c and delivered to my desk! it’s always rice in the main compartment and then in the two larger sections, there will be a portion of meat (generally pork, fish or prawns) and some form of rau (vegetable) and in the smaller 2 compartments are usually tofu or egg in one and a pickled rau in the other. i tend to leave the pickled rau, mainly because my colleagues like to load me up with extra helpings as they need to maintain their tiny frames and i don’t like it. And there is always a bowl of soup too which also varies by the day. Apparently if you eat the soup first, it aids in weight loss, but eating soup second aids in weight gain, yes, we often have these scientific conversations over lunch.

Last weekend involved a weekend trip, south to Hà Tĩnh Province, home to many historical and cultural sites, all of which i may have missed, but it is also the home province of my Vietnamese tutor, who invited us down. On the 6 hour journey south we did stop at Vinh in Nghệ An Province for a 4 hour nap before breakfast, which was eel soup and bread of course! This was fittingly followed by a half day tour of Uncle Ho’s place, which involved a lot of pomello eating surprisingly. And the point of this blog entry, well eel soup i guess. It was a lot wormier looking than expected given their short thin flopsy nature. The soupy environment only added to the sense that they were wriggling, but once you get over that fact, they tasted decent, very flavoursome really, perfect for soaking bread in and the eel was less what i would imagine worm to be and more fishy. A good alternative to Sultana Bran, with the same yet amplified health effects.

So I have done a bit of work whilst over here too. Last week involved several trips to Dong Anh district, it’s a bit over an hour to get there. It’s a rural area quickly urbanising, and is where our microcredit operations take place. Work involved following a credit officer around as she visited various communes to collect and distribute money. Top left is a collection meeting held in a borrower’s house, and top right is one of our branch offices. Right is the general landscape around the district, rice paddies littered with communes. Most of the borrowers are women who sell produce in the market, the one male borrower we met is a street barber.

The credit officer has to lug around a backpack with 5 thick books for a good part of the day, through all kinds of weather, often resulting in bruised shoulders! I guess my task is to rid the burden of heavy books, so I think a giant bonfire may be in order. Here are some pics of where I had my bowl of pho for lunch on one of the days. It just wouldn’t be a post if my stomach wasn’t involved.

mangosteens are a good looking fruit.