Dinner with Will and Khánh

Oh no! Khánh's going away for at least a month... he has an internship with a Korean construction company in Quảng Ninh province on the other side of Hạ Long city and he leaves on Thursday. And Will is leaving too! He's going home to Ireland earlier than expected to attend his mate's wedding in September, and he won't be coming back to complete his contract.... which means Khánh will still be away when he goes. So tonight we went out to dinner one last time... my goodness, that was a hard sentence to type. How very sad it can be when life moves on.

Anyway, enough with the maudlin stuff. Khánh took us to this delightful little teahouse style restaurant in the city centre called Nam Giao. It's all dark stained carved timber and the atmosphere is so oriental old world it's fabulous.

We went upstairs past this nook...

and into the main dining room... the one with tables and chairs. There's another on on the other side where you sit on the floor if you prefer. There were people in there, but we had this room to ourselves.

Behind Khánh in this next photo you can see the balcony overlooking the street.

It was still raining (has been for days now) and you can see the raindrops caught in the flash!

For dinner we had claypot pork, rice, morning glory with garlic, and clam soup... typical Vietnamese fare and absolutely delicious.  How gorgeous is the chinaware!

When he gets back Khánh will teach me how to cook this... especially the pork. It is scrumptious!

So we had a lovely time reminiscing and laughing over our adventures in Hải Phòng and wondering what the future will bring. Maybe one day we meet in Ireland and Will can show us around... or Australia... Three people from totally different backgrounds from different corners of the world and different generations even, but such lovely friends. Isn't life full of treasures!

 Will and Khánh - two of my treasures.