Another Sunday

I woke up at 8am, not as hung over as I should have been after the Halloween party of the night before. I have no interest in Halloween which is a pointless American invention but the party was a opportunity to meet some of the other teachers at the school. It was held at a teacher's tall thin Vietnamese house in District 1 in the heart of the backpacker ghetto. On her roof terrace we had a fantastic 360 degree view of the night time city and although it was in the very centre of the city it was surprisingly quiet. I left around 1 am with an Australian couple and one of their friends and shared a taxi home.

After doing a bit of housework, a cursory mop of the floor and a quick whizz over a couple of shirts with an iron, I spent an hour in the Garden Cafe drinking iced coffee and using their WiFi before heading to one of the local Japanese restaurants to lunch on raw fish, tiny rolls of rice and vegetables and Sapporo beer. They serve salmon roe, big fat juice beads of fishy goodness that burst in your mouth when you bite down on them. I ate them with chopsticks one at a time to prolong the pleasure, one burst at a time.

Two of the teachers I started with, and have been spending time with, have just moved in to an impressive 5 story house so after lunch it was back to theirs, via the fancy deli to pick up wine, for drinks on their rooftop terrace. The deli has the biggest selection of Belgian beer I've seen outside of Brussels and a small sample of it is now in my fridge, next the bag of limes, cooling nicely and ready to drink another day.

The house was lovely, very tall with countless bedrooms and bathrooms. Minimalist white walls and cream tiles with gaps in the walls to allow the free flow of air.

At around 4:30 I made my way home for a rest but texted another teacher who was at that moment having drinks with her boyfriend in a hotel bar not far from the apartment. Rather than have a nap and watch a video as I had vaguely planned, I joined them. More beer followed the afternoon's wine and that was followed by a walk to a Singaporean restaurant where I ate steamed tofu with mushrooms and spring rolls. The slipperiness of the mushrooms and the softness of the tofu contrasted with the crunchy crispness of the rolls and made an interesting if unnecessary dinner. The restaurant offered frog porridge, which is either a humorous mistranslation from the Chinese or they've got a copy of Heston Blumenthal's latest cookbook. I imagined tiny green frogs sticking heads out of lumpy grey gruel and blinking. I don't like porridge so I passed on it this time.

I was home by 9:30 after my day of drinking, eating and chatting to sip iced vodka and lime juice before heading for bed.