May 25th

Everyone woke up pretty early this morning – maybe 4:30 or so. We stayed at our place until about 7am and then went out for breakfast. Just down the street we found a steamed bun shop. We tried a taro bun, a meat filled one, and a brown sugar one. Then across the street we found a place that sold breakfast hamburgers. These hamburgers have a ground pork patty pounded pretty flat. They also have an egg and then some type of vegetables. Usually the vegetables included shredded cucumber, but these ones had lettuce on them. Then there is the special sauce which is a translucent type mayonnaise. Sometimes they also put ketchup on them. We allowed the children to pick if they wanted a hamburger or another steamed bun. Christian and Julia picked steamed buns, but the rest of us had hamburgers. 

We then walked about 2 miles to the beach. That walk almost killed us! It was so hot and humid. We brought five or so water bottles, but we used them all up on the way to the beach. We were able to stop by a morning market and pick up some different fruits (dragon fruit, lychee, and pineapple). After resting a little in the shade, the children and I went down to the shore and played in the waves. We had a lot of fun, but I was dreading the rest of the day with the children being all wet and sandy. 

Our original plan was just to stay out until the evening and go to a night market, but we decided it was just too hot for that. So instead, we decided that we would walk back to the place we are staying and then come back out in the evening. On the 2 mile walk back we did get lost again briefly, but the missionaries happened to show up and they helped us get back on track. We did stop at a supermarket right next to the place where we were staying and bought a carton of ice cream that we ate first thing when we got back. We rested for a while and waited out the afternoon heat. 

Then at about 5 we went back out and walked all the way back to the beach for the huge night market. The night market was pretty fun, but also kind of touristy. Rebecca commented that it kind of reminded her of a fair, which isn’t the way the traditional night markets are. We did get some soup filled dumplings (like 40 of them), a giant corn dog, a hard folded crepe thing filled with cheese and brown sugar, and a large flat fried chicken piece. We ended up staying out until about 9 pm that night.

At the morning market.




At the beach.








At the night market sharing the crepe thing. You can tell that Julia is kind of tired and grumpy by this point.






We got one of those big flat fried chicken things that you can see at the top of the food cart on the sign. I really need to do a better job at taking pictures of the food. But it is all just so yummy that it is half-way gone before I think about it.