So basically Christmas was like potentially every other day in my life except I decided to splash out a bit and order food with reckless abandon at a rather fancy seafront restaurant. Normally, these places would be considered tourist traps but since there are no tourists and haven't been for a long time the few places that remain open have dropped their prices to sane levels and stepped it up on the quality side of things. Or at least that is what I have been told. I am not a fancy dining type person really.
We got our own private room on the 2nd floor and had space for 20 more people if we wanted it. It's quite popular in Asia to have your own room to dine in and for me at least, this was pretty damn fancy as we had our own room attendant as well. In the past you had to pay extra for this and there is a gigantic general seating area on the ground floor that would be for the commoners. Up here, we got the VIP treatment at the normal rate because most of the rooms were empty anyway.
Just getting to the room and being lead there by people in fancy dress costumes seemed like something that was out of my financial league and while I wouldn't do this on a regular basis or anything, it was a fun little Christmas treat.
We ordered basically everything without even paying attention to the price. Lobster is something that I would never order because I think it is one of the most over-priced and overrated food items on the planet. Plus it is kind of gross to me when I see them alive in the tanks before ordering. I didn't choose my own because I don't really like to be involved in the whole murder process.
The big one touched my leg while I was taking photos...
Our room servant (just kidding, not trying to be mean) came over and made all the prawns ready to eat for us as well, which is handy because I make a real mess of things when I try to do that myself.
The sad thing to me about this seafood restaurant was the fact that the best tasting stuff that we ordered wasn't seafood at all. To me and my friends all of the seafood tasted over-cooked and dry. They also don't have drawn butter and didn't even know what it is. In my "home country" crab or lobster always comes with drawn butter and that totally makes it much better. Maybe I just really like butter and seafood doesn't even matter to me.
The lamb shanks were by far the best thing that we ordered and should we ever return here I think that I will order this exclusively.
We sat at this joint until they ran out of cold beer for us which in my mind is something that should never happen. In total this place had probably 400 seats in it and while myself and my friends are heavy beer drinkers we certainly didn't drink a business of this magnitude dry so I think that was just poor planning on their part. They tried to bring us ice and glasses for the room-temperature beers but we sent that shit back. I'm not drinking beer that way.
The total bill for 5 of us was just under 4 million VND which if you care to do that math was about $30 per person. In my mind this is about what it would cost to eat at Outback Steakhouse or Applebees so I think it was a pretty awesome deal. I don't like that they charged for wasabi in a box that we didn't even open and for towels that we didn't use but whatever.
Later on we did what we always do and went to a bar and got horrendously drunk. I paid for it the next day, that's for sure.
I even brought Nadi out for a little while and she is asking for service in a rather demanding way because the bartenders here like her a lot and kept giving her bits of ham and turkey.
All in all it was a great day. I neither gave nor received any gifts and I am just fine with that. I'm not a toddler and I hate trying to figure out what to get for other people. I'd rather just buy them a beer.
Hope your Christmas was at least as good as mine was. Now we just have to lay low for a week until we go out and get trashed on New Year's Eve.