Weekend!

Well, yesterday's weekend too, but not much happened, spent most of the day at the Taekwon Do school helping with colour belt testing...

Today's a more proper R&R weekend. Carol and I went hiking at the Castle Rock State Park. It's a short drive, but the view is very nice at the top with its endless forest. The trees nearer to us are green, and as the forest gets farther away, it changes to differnt shades of green, and at the distance, it gradually changes to blue. On the horizon, it became white, I'm not sure it's cloud or the ocean.

Later, she took me to what she calls an authentic Vietnamese resturant, it's not big, but she says they have 2 dishes are very good, and only that 2 are worth trying. She's been going to that place to eat sicne she's in the 6th grade. It's in downtown San Jose, very close to SanJose State University, on E. Willian St(near 8th or 9th st), called something like DaLok(or DaLat or DaLot... err, something like that).

One of them is a noodle dish, dry noodles - no soup. It's came with bean sprout and lemon wedges. The noodle has slices of ham like thingie, a crab claw and big shrimp. At the bottom at the bowl, it has some soy sauce, so you need to mix them up before eating - don't forget squeeze the some lemon juice and add bean sprout. It's not bad.

The second one is rice with prawns. Carol said it she tried to make it at home, but didn't have much success - it's actually hard to make. Of course! The rice is not regualr rice, it's "broken rice", I can imagine it will take someitme and patience to break the rice ;-) Anyway, this is not the main interetsing thing about this dish. I said earlier, "rice with prawn", I didn't say shrimp. 'Cause, they're HUGE! They're not your average big prawns... think big! How big? Think smaller lobsters or crayfish... They're yummy! It's cooked in some sort of redish source, might be just soy sause with sugar. 'Cause it tastes just like how my sister cooks shrimps - stir fry shrimp, add a bit soy sause and sugar. Man, these are good, 'cause you really can taste the flavour, and the bite is mouthful :) I love it! Another thing to note is, that these prawns are fresh water prawns, Carol says they taste different from sea prawns.

For desert, get either Vietnamese coffee or one of those sweet drink. The Vietnamese coffee look and taste like Thai iced coffee, but lot stronger - very strong. This is traditional Vietnamese as well. Traditionally, you'd have to use strainer to let the coffee drip slowly into cup. The other is condensed milk(?) with ice and various jelly bits in it - not so special, I've had similar drinks at other places.