We don't get a lot of new stuff here in Da Nang, Vietnam. Well, let me rephrase that-we do get new stuff, but the new stuff is normally exactly the same as the old stuff. The amount of coffee shops that have gone out of business only to be replaced by another coffee shop that also fails is pretty mind-blowing. Almost all the restaurants fail to differentiate from one to the next and this gets a bit frustrating when you have hundreds of restaurants in your quadrant of the city yet none of them have anything unique going on. I don't get it because when people actually DO open something that is unique and not just a carbon copy of all the other places, they tend to be popular and profitable yet the businesses here all just open the same crap.
The items that are available for you to take home are kind of all the same too. Sure we have 30 or so beers to choose from, but for the most part they are either cheap lagers, or horribly overpriced craft beers. Non alcoholic drinks are kind of all the same and if you thought the west put a lot of sugar in their drinks you might be surprised that they actually put MORE of it in drinks over here. The idea that South East Asians are healthy is a bunch of crap. They are poor and walk around a lot and many of them work really hard. I think that is why they stay slim.
Anyway, before I get too off topic I want to introduce this drink that I took a chance on in the minimart, because I think it is pretty great.
While diet drinks are all the rage in USA (as far as I know, haven't been there in years) they are almost non existent over here. So when something like this comes along and I actually like it, I end up buying a lot of them because they tend to not sell enough of them and wont be restocked even if I am buying all of them.
I have never heard of this brand so if you have it in your country, please let me know. That language on the bottom of the can (just to the left of Nadi) is not Vietnamese. I think it might be whatever the language is called in Malaysia. What say ye @davidke20 ? I think that is Japanese perhaps under the main logo, but I am extremely non-worldly when it comes to any languages other than Thai and English so I don't really know. It tastes pretty awesome and has no calories. I'm not sure if I believe all that they say on the can though because they also say "no artificial flavors" and well, since it tastes like apple and has no calories, how the hell can that be true.
Next up as far as new things go in town we have a legendary American diner, Waffle House.
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if you've never been to a Waffle House just let me fill you in a bit. This is quite an old establishment in the USA that is known for serving breakfast all day and night and it also turns into a place that is known for having a lot of violence in it at night. Drunks go there and fight.
So we have been joking that we are going to get really drunk and then go into the new Da Nang Waffle House and keep the tradition going by starting unnecessary arguments with strangers. I'm just kidding of course, I would never do that. Also, the Waffle House we got here isn't (unfortunately) the real Waffle House.
In fact, the Waffle House we got here isn't even a building, it's just some rolling stand outside of some other building and they only sell waffles.
Before I left the US I went to Waffle House often and in the 10 years or so that I was a customer, I never once had a waffle there. I always got eggs and hash browns.
It is unlikely that I am ever going to eat at this Waffle House either even though 25k VND is extremely cheap to get anything. That is less than $1.
There is a new pizza place that just opened up called Infinity Pizza and they are a pizza by the slice sort of establishment and their entire business is built around being open 24 hours a day. Perhaps that is where all the drunken fights are taking place?
In the meantime I will just continue to hang out with my dog whenever the rain isn't falling like mad. We went out the other day and it started to rain so we ducked inside of this Irish Pub and daddy ordered a beer. Nadi took it in stride and almost immediately splooted on the floor.
She's a real cutie aint she? That's all I got for you guys today, hope you have a great day!
