Day 1 - Jom Makan Halal! @ Taj Mahal Restaurant, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Wednesday, 30th December 2009)

Salam,

For our first night's dinner (in fact for the rest of our trip) , Nana browsed at http://www.zabihah.com/, Your Guide to Halal Eating. The nearest to our hotel, was the food court at Parkson which is about 5 mins drive from our hotel.

We chose to dine Indian food at Taj Mahal serving Indo Pak Halal Food. Pak means Pakistani people :)

Ummi was chatting with the owner/staff there, Sunny all the way from Pakistan has been working in Vietnam for 7 years already.

Check out the menu, Chicken Curry, Fish Curry, Vegetable Samosa, Briyani, Paratha, Chicken Tandoori etc.

Yummy Lassi Yoghurt-based Shakes. I chose Pineapple Lassi of course though many people could not understand my fascination with Pineapple-based drinks =)

Yes that is Muzaffar Hussain aka Sunny. It was nice of him to provide us with Solat/Prayer time when we asked for it.

If you like to try Taj Majal you may use this as your guide.. :)

Oh yes remember I informed you that my first time in Vietnam was sponsored by Red Communications for the 3R programme so I had the wrong comprehension of the currency conversion. Foolish me I even taught my roomates that their currency was more or less like Indonesian Rupiah where about 3-4 time weaker than RM. As a defence to my stand was that I was confused with the many zeros in their currency.

However this time, we came by ourselves and when I thought we came as considerably rich folks due to stronger currency as an advantage, NOT! I WAS ABSOLUTELY WRONG! As many others were educated by me (correctly this time, fortunately) when I returned home, that YES VIETNAMESE DONG IS STRONGER THAN OURS. THEIR 10,000 VND (That is equivalent to their 1 buck not 10 buck as what you may confused to Indonesian Rupiah or Thai Baht) and their 1 Buck here is equivalent to RM 1.90. YES THEIR CURRENCY ALMOST DOUBLE US AND ALMOST AS STRONG AS SINGAPORE DOLLARS (*_*)

Surprisingly that is the truth, so if you come here without the intention of preparing much money to shop, so actually your spending power is weak. I was informed later that though they suffered long years of war however the current years, there are many investors especially from South Korea investing in Vietnam, which strengthens their economy and provide lots of employments to the locals.

Food similarly, you know may be considered quite cheap for them but mostly their food is quite expensive even in the VND, just calculate double to translate it into RM.

Anyways..though this new revelation disappointed us (we just realized it when we were purchasing our first dinner here), we still had to eat didn't we? So now, check out what we had!

Cold Pineapple Lassi, super thick and so so thirst quenching!

Teh Tarik is available here too of course.. :)

Super hot Chicken Briyani Gam for me! Masha Allah it was steaming hot it was unbelievably delicious especially I was extremely hungry that time.

Huge chunks of chicken in the rice.

Curry as its gravy.

Ummi and Nana chose Paratha or Prata as called in Malaysia. 12,000 VND (Vietnamese Dong) or basically like their RM 1.20. However if you really convert it into Malaysian Ringgit (RM) it is equivalent to RM 1.20 x .1.90 = RM 2.28.

Chicken Tikka, also incredibly delicious.

I cannot recall all their prices, but it was quite expensive for us, I mean especially it was only at the food court. Let's say the Chicken Curry was sold at 55,000 VND (See that as their 5.50) so 5.50 x 1.90 = RM 10.45. Ashyiioooohhhh...

Anyways alhamdulillah, the first dinner was fine now let us browse around Parkson for awhile..

Royal Selangor you all! Hehe would like to snap the photo nearer but the staff looked fierce so I was quite scared.

Little Twin Stars bed set! Oh I love Little Twin Stars, when I was a kid Ummi used to buy me their collectible items.

Anya Hindmarc has her own 'I'm Not A Plastic Bag' hit handbag, here was 'I'm Not A Paper Cup' tumbler to protest the tree chopping activities.

Doc Martens boots, funky and eccentric.

Here Nana bought a lovely dress from Korea. It's so cute and was about RM 100 plus only.

Haha! Check this out!

Triumph Award Winning bra and panties. Naughty naughty!

Love the SWEET image on this top.