Tag: vietnam

The Shopping basket – 8th February

The Shopping basket – 8th February

Are you the type of person who wonders what is in other people’s shopping trolleys or fridge? If you have a partner who goes shopping without you, do you like to know what they bought and how much things were? I am that person, so on Monday 8th February when Captain Caveman got back from his shopping trip to Dong Hoi, I had a good check at all the stuff he had got and how much it was. If you’re interested in what we bought for the week, read on! Today’s exchange rate makes 50,000vnd equal to £1.55, US$ 2.17, AU$ 2.80 or 1.8 Euro, so you can work out costs of items.
Here’s a list in order of most expensive first in Vietnamese Dong (vnd):
• 1 box of dates 238,500
• 24 cans of Huda beer 238,000
• 1 bag of walnuts 149,000
• 1 jar of cashew nuts 129,000
• 1 jar of tomato based pasta sauce 126,000
• 4 apples 120,000
• 1 tub of hummus 100,000
• 5 chocolate and nut protein balls 100,000
• 1 packet of bacon 98,000
• 1 whole-wheat/sourdough loaf 80,000
• 1 packet of dried dragon fruit 78,000
• 1 packet of unsalted butter 73,000
• 1 jar of pickled garlic 71,000
• 1 big tupperwear box (for rice) 70,500
• 1 big bag of Naturals crisps 70,000
• 1 packet of contraceptive pill 67,000
• 4 red peppers 60,000
• 10 ibuprofen 400mg 60,000
• 24 sanitary towels and 20 liners 60,000
• 1 tube of Sensodyne toothpaste 55,000
• 1 jar of popcorn kernels 52,000
• 4 Snickers bars 48,000
• 1 box of biscuits 47,000
• 2 chicken breasts 45,000
• 1 packet of Haribo cola bottles 45,000
• 1 packet of mushrooms 42,000
• 3 washing up sponges 38,000
• 3 toothbrushes 36,000
• 1 box of raisins 36,500
• 2 dragon fruit 36,000
• 1 bag of cherry tomatoes 33,150
• 1 tube of Pringles 32,000
• 1 big bag of Lays crisps 31,500
• 10 eggs 28,500
• 3 rice crackers 22,000
• 1 packet of radishes 19,500
• 1 packet of watercress 19,600
• 1 baguette stick 9,000
Some of it surprised me as, although I know nuts and dates are expensive here, I wasn’t expecting some of the items to be so highly priced. Also, I only eat apples for convenience of getting fruit in to my diet but I think they are too expensive here. Chicken is cheap and very good quality so we bought a few packets. What surprised you the most? Do any of you analyse your shopping and make changes to help keep in budget?

Phong Nha – 8th February

Phong Nha – 8th February

By Monday 8th February Vietnam was facing it’s 4th wave of the Corona virus and with a lot of concern as the holiday was only 4 days away. Many people had already finished work and had chosen to travel back home early and so it was a difficult job for the authorities to ensure prevention of the virus here. Shocking news came first thing in the morning that 4 of the people who tested positive yesterday are baggage handlers at Saigon (HCMC) airport, today they closed down an alley where they live in District 12;
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210208/ho-chi-minh-city-blocks-neighborhood-alley-as-local-residents-infected-with-covid19/59203.html
The total number of reported cases in Vietnam had now reached over 2,000 and people were definitely getting worried.
Despite the increase in cases recently there still hadn’t been any more Corona deaths reported and Vietnam was still on just 35 in over a year. An interesting article stating how low the death rate is over here compared to USA and UK can be found here:
https://vietnaminsider.vn/why-covid-19-death-toll-ratio-per-million-remains-extremely-low-in-vietnam/
Later that day we realised just how lucky we were coming back from Saigon when we did as more airport postive cases in HCMC were reported:
https://vietnamnews.vn/society/871679/airports-nationwide-on-highest-alert-following-30-new-local-covid-cases-at-hcm-city-airport.html
By 5pm more cases linked to Saigon airport were reported and we suspected Tet could get cancelled:
https://vietnamnews.vn/society/871724/govt-orders-hcm-city-to-strengthen-covid-preventive-measures-as-25-more-test-positive.html
One of the good things here in Vietnam is that swift, decisive action is taken to prevent as much spreading as possible and by the end of the day more lockdowns in specific areas were implemented:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210208/ho-chi-minh-city-seals-off-dozen-of-locations-amid-covid19-concerns/59210.html
Meanwhile, in our Phong Nha world, we were carrying on as normal…….

With Tet holiday coming up the loud speakers around the village had been fixed and were very much in use from 5.30am each morning now. On Monday 8th February extremely loud and distasteful music echoed around our building from 5.30am. Captain Caveman left for Phong Nha at 7am and had decided to go to Dong Hoi at 9am for a pre-Tet shopping trip. I wasn’t invited because it was raining and I would slow him down moving from one place to the next so I stayed at home. I had an apple and a gluten free cookie and then was ill with a bad stomach for most of the day. I did a lot of French on Duolingo, a few crossword type puzzles and some blogging, once the noise had calmed down a bit. For my lunch I heated up my leftover Sunday dinner and then the afternoon was even noisier so I tried to chill out by using Captain Caveman’s noise cancelling headphones which still didn’t completely block everything out. I watched The Dig, a film on Netflix and it was pretty good but a JCB had started ripping the banana tree garden up outside our living room window and I could still hear it. I’d got out some frozen meat for Captain Caveman to make pasta with for dinner but he forgot and made an incredibly salty French onion soup which I hardly ate any of. He had bought loads of stuff in Dong Hoi and had managed to meet up with our friend, Trang, at Tree Hugger for white russians and sandwiches.
That evening we settled down to watch some Netflix in the living room only to find the account was no longer accessible and the account had suffered an attempt at being logged in from Nghe An, a lot further north than we are.

Phong Nha – 7th February

Phong Nha – 7th February

I was woken up by Captain Caveman’s loud sneeze at 6.45am on Sunday 7th February. I didn’t get back to sleep and only an hour after he had left to go to Phong Nha, the housekeeping knock came for cleaning our room. I ate bread and butter and an apple for breakfast then sipped jasmine tea in the living room.
Captain Caveman picked up our order from Vananh, and he also brought back gluten free biscotti made by LyLy which was amazing! Our hummus order looked great and also contained some mung bean chips a couple of gluten free cookies to try and some chocolate protein balls for when I get peckish.
I had a bad stomach (again!) In the afternoon and so ended up having crisps and diet coke before my evening meal.

When we went up to the Farmstay for Sunday dinner our new motorbike helmets from Saigon had arrived and they were really snazzy. Captain Caveman went in the sauna while I chatted to Veronika and some guests who were staying at The Villas. It was a warm evening, everyone was sitting outside and Phong Nha Farmstay was quite busy – it was nice to see the pool with guests in too. The Sunday dinner of roast pork, lamb, pasta bake, roast potatoes, vegetables and thick gravy was extremely tasty and of course we couldn’t miss the included beverage and cake. We had the house red wine, which is a substantial portion and while the others had chocolate fondant cake I went for the carrot cake this time and it was fantastic – the whole deal cost just 300,000vnd and, as always, definitely worth it!

If you want to buy a safe and snazzy motorbike helmet I can highly recommend Saigon Motorcycles, they are very helpful and were able to deliver to Phong Nha within a week! Here is their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SaigonMotorcyclehireandsales/