Sep 2021 – Page 3

The loudspeaker was early and extremely loud on Friday 20th August, Captain Caveman went to work and then called me to say there was a group of porters going for their 2nd vaccine and to be on standby so I got ready – nothing came of it, so still no vaccine! I had toast with cheese spread on for breakfast and read the news, as usual. I had to read this article just because of the headline – unbelievably kind in the circumstances:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210820/ho-chi-minh-city-provides-accommodation-vaccination-for-needy-foreigners/62681.html
It was reported that an even harsher lockdown in Saigon would start, from Monday as Corona deaths there are rising rapidly:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210820/vietnam-s-biggest-city-issues-stayhome-order-as-covid19-deaths-soar/62686.html
Meanwhile in Turkey, people who are fully vaccinated with Sinovac, but had not yet had a booster, were ending up in ICU with the Delta variant, here’s more info:
https://www.duvarenglish.com/number-of-turkish-patients-fully-vaccinated-with-sinovac-increasing-in-icus-news-58533
The housekeeping staff were in doing our rooms while Veronika was out at the Farmstay and so I took the opportunity to find things that needed using up to make some brownies. We had some dried bananas, which Captain Caveman had bought ages ago and they did not look appealing at all, plus the cocoa powder I didn’t like as drinking chocolate. I found a recipe that used those 2 ingredients plus some peanut butter and mixed them altogether then put them in the oven in trays for 15 minutes. I managed to catch my finger on the glass of the oven, burned it worse than I realised and didn’t run it under cold water, I just carried on as normal. The gluten and dairy free brownies looked good but the consistency wasn’t great, hopefully they would do as a snack. I did loads of washing up, watered the mushrooms and then I had a make-do lunch of steamed rice and sweetcorn with peanut salt because I knew we were having a feast tonight. After lunch I had a swim and then fell asleep on the sun lounger. It was pizza night at the The Villas tonight so Captain Caveman just got back home from work in time to get a lift with Ben at 6pm to The Villas, Veronika had already ridden her motorbike in because she had decided to have a night at The Villas for a bit of a ‘holiday’.
We arrived and joined Veronika, who was sat peacefully by the river, but not for long as Jack, Max and Stu arrived and joined us, shortly followed by a new returning visitor to the town and Tatas. This week it was made clear that all pizzas from the whole menu were only 100,000vnd so I went for the Showstopper (prosciutto, blue cheese, fig jam and spring onion). Tatas went off piste and ordered a half and half pizza, Hawaiian and Classic which was a good idea. Jack happened to order Smoked Salmon pizza and was sat opposite me, they didn’t tell him they had no salmon but instead just brought him Smoked Duck (obviously because the name had the word smoked in both). Veronika had successfully managed to order and get the new dish of smoked duck and mushroom pasta which did look good. We had a really great night and we were sensible to not order 3 pizzas this time, in fact I brought a Tupperware box and took half of mine home, including a slice of Jack’s duck pizza, just to help him out.

Photo credit – Captain Caveman’s photo of the views

We were fast asleep when the 4 cavers arrived safely at Hanoi airport at 4am on Thursday 19th August. It was in the Vietnam news about the ‘no sharing a car to the airport unless from same home or workplace’, see below:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210819/ho-chi-minh-city-helps-intl-air-passengers-make-trips-to-airport/62672.html
Captain Caveman was awake at 6am and made himself a bacon, mushroom and egg sandwich for breakfast before taking Trigger, the motorbike, to work for his 8am training session. I came down to a kitchen sink of Captain Caveman’s pots and, by the time I’d washed and dried everything, I couldn’t be bothered with breakfast so I just had a few pieces of dragon fruit.
By 10am I was regretting turning down a bacon sandwich from Captain Caveman early this morning, so I had a 2nd breakfast of a bacon and mushroom baguette (no butter or sauce) and a piece of carrot. I’d already chopped all the veg, prepared the stock (using Captain Caveman’s special recipe) and seared a couple of the beef fillets. I love using the rice cooker as a slow cooker and off I went back to the Aircon in the bedroom. At lunchtime I made myself an iced chocolate drink, which was a waste of calories because it wasn’t good, finished off the tortilla and had a couple of pieces of dragon fruit. It took a bit of willpower not to start eating the beef stew which smelled so lovely. Duyet found me a spray bottle for me to use on my mushrooms and the laborious task of spraying them several times a day began, a bit sad that I wouldn’t get to eat them as I’d have left!
Captain Caveman got home from work about 5.30pm and had spoken to Ben on the phone. He’d been able to speak to the owners of Elements Collection to see if they would consider allowing Captain Caveman to stay here after Veronika and I leave next month. They had all agreed which meant everyone was happy and I was relieved that Captain Caveman would have somewhere nice to stay, especially during the flood season. That evening we dined like royalty, we shared the bottle of wine that Tony had given Captain Caveman for his birthday (we have had it in the house almost a month and I’ve not drank it)! The beef stew was absolutely lovely and we had half of it left to pop in the freezer for another time.