Buying Coffee Beans in Ho Chi Minh City
My wife will tell anyone that I’ve got this unholy infatuation with coffee beans. And I do. I like coffee beans like Jay Leno likes cars.
When coffee beans are fresh they’ve got this nice oily sheen and an amazing fragrance. You’d swear you could inhale the caffeine right out.
Glorious fresh roasted coffee beans in Ho Chi Minh City…
Fresh roasted coffee beans can be found and bought all over Vietnam. Especially in all the major tourists areas. Just take a stroll through Ben Thanh Market and in the dry market area lined up next to the dried shrimps and you’ll find containers with a dozen varieties of beans.
You’ll also find powdered forms of coffee too. But I highly recommend getting a french press style coffee maker and a grinder. There’s no comparison to commercially prepared powdered coffee to freshly ground coffee.
I’m a simple guy and love my coffee either black or with some milk. But ever so often I’ll go with a bit of calorie overload by making myself a traditional Vietnamese iced coffee!
The vendors will package it as best as they can to keep the beans fresh. Which makes a great souvenir for your friends and family.
Has Aeon started Charging ATM Fees?
Aeon branch at Market Village in Hua Hin
Last year on this exact month I wrote a post about Aeon’s fee free ATMs in Thailand. Among all the ATMs in Bangkok, Aeon was the only one where you can withdraw cash without being hit with fees. It’s been that way since they’ve first opened a branch in Thailand years ago.
Today while at the Market Village in Hua Hin I spotted an Aeon branch on the top floor. After entering my PIN number a message came up saying there is a 150THB fee for the transaction.
It was a big surprise to me. And really inconvenient too as I needed to withdraw a lot of Baht soon. But I was wondering, does this fee only apply to Aeon’s ATMs out of Bangkok?
Probably not but it’s wishful thinking. But I’d still rather go back to Bangkok and try one of the ATMs there.
There’s a big probability that Aeon has started charging fees for withdrawing cash from their machines. As of writing I know all the other banks are charging 180THB fees. 150THB is still expensive though and I figure that one of the eggheads at Aeon’s accounting department figured it’s about time to start charging fees since everyone else is doing it.
My attempts to create some artsy night photos…
These sets of pics were taken at A La Natu Bed And Bakery at night. It’s a clear beautiful February night and the moon is full, out and bright. At the time I was on a beach chair just lounging around after a fantastic seafood dinner. The beach was just a short stroll away so the sounds of soothing waves going back and forth was so gentle. It truly felt like a magical night.
I like the photo below more because you can see movement of the palm leaves. It wasn’t windy at all. I rotated my camera clockwise slowly to make that effect. Looks kinda cool to me.
La A Natu Bed and Bakery is one of our favorite places to stay, located in an area called Pranburi which is about a 45 minute drive north to Hua Hin. And the magnificent mountains of Sam Roi Yad which is about 30 minutes away south of La A Natu.
This area is largely undeveloped. For now that is. We saw a lot of signs advertising resorts and other sorts of development in the near future. Which would be sad since there’s so much natural beauty in the region.
Trying out a new app for my blog…
These are the tallest coconut trees I’ve ever seen
Catching Up…
Her name is Kao – meaning white in Thai. She just had 8 pups.
I know I have a tendency to drop off right off the blogosphere and come right back re-appearing out from thin air. But I’ve been busy. Real busy. Married busy. Just bought a condo busy. Running a new cafe business busy. As well as a host of business problems because my bank didn’t bother to mention they changed their wire transfer code.
Oh, also our one and only employee at our cafe quit without notice. Right on the same week of our wedding.
So it has been a stressful end of year but so far this new year is looking up. And luckily I have a really good friend who made it all possible. Without him I would’ve been screwed big time.
Did I mention I got married? Yup. I know earlier on this blog I always mention my wife. But we did the whole ceremony thing with monks along with family and friends. It was a traditional Thai wedding.
Funny thing is marriage in Thailand is just as easy as starting a business in this country. You don’t really need paperwork. No marriage certificate. Though you can get one at local municipal office.
So what’s the proof of marriage Thailand? Wedding pictures and everyone that came to the wedding are your witness. While eating dinner one night with my close family friends’ from Hong Kong that was the way it was done in China also. But that was in the olden days and won’t fly anymore today in China.
What else is new? Kao a female soi dog that hangs around my mother in law’s restaurant gave birth to 8 new pups. As you can see above she snug and tug inside the cage where her 8 little ones are nursing.
Originally, Kao gave birth under a small overpass bridge not far from the restaurant. Which was the same place she had her last batch of pups which all died. Not sure how but some say some small Caymans might’ve found Kao’s nest and snagged her pups while she was away.
And so, me, my wife and her kid sister named Nooda devised a plan to snatch the pups and take them back to their mother’s restaurant. Nooda climbed through a hole under the overpass, grabbed all the pups and we took them back to the cage.
My wife’s father then pushed Kao inside so she can see her babies. We were worried that Kao would take them back to the overpass. So we had to lock the cage and keep Kao in where she can safely nurse the puppies.
Kao was probably happier too as she received more share of food so she could provide more milk for her babies.
It was a little adventure grabbing the pups because it was dark where they were hiding out. And we couldn’t do it while Kao was inside protecting her babies. So we had to wait until Kao left before we (okay it was Nooda alone) went in and snagged the puppies out.
Kudos to Nooda. If not for her the puppies might’ve perished.
