Continuing from my previous post...
Some restaurants will charge you for a napkin! They bring you a wrapped, damp napkin... and sometimes it will show as 2,000 dong on your receipt (that's only about 10 cents... but still... never would have expected that!).
Then, eating at Pho 24 last night (basically their McDonalds for pho), my receipt showed that I was charged the 2,000 for the napkin and then also 10,000 (50 cents) for, basically, fried bread... which I never asked for. When they brought these bread fries to me, I thought that it was like a basket of bread that is complimentary at places. So... I ended up paying for everything but figured I'd have to watch out next time and maybe if you don't eat the extras that they bring you, you won't be charged.
Well, tonight at dinner there was some kind of drink on the table. I asked what it was and they said an iced tea - and that it was free. Then they brought a napkin (charge? no charge? ...you don't know until the bill comes)... and also two things on a small plate wrapped in banana leaves. I wondered what was inside (never even thinking of the bread fries the night before)... unwrapped them and decided I was NOT eating whatever it was inside. The one looked like a huge hunk of packaged baloney... the other was something jelly-ish. I asked the waiter what they were and he couldn't explain it to me in English but did say, "You can eat them!" ...My chopstick wouldn't even go through the baloney stuff and the jelly stuff was so jiggly... I took the tiniest bite of each just to do it... and that was good enough.
I don't write these things to be mean or disrespectful at all... I'm trying so many new things... some are just too much.
The soup that I had (a type of pho... with some kind of seafood in it) was delicious! The broth was more red than usual pho and it was awesome.
When I asked for the bill and the girl took my plates, she looked at the unwrapped items from the banana leaves and I felt like she disapproved that I hadn't eaten them. She then proceeded to show every other worker in the restaurant... well... I felt a bit bad but I still wasn't going to eat them!
The main guy came over to me with the check and then tried to explain to me that since they were open, they could not use them again and I had to be charged. HA... that was totally fine! I didn't want them to give those to someone else... nor do I want to go out to eat and get someone else's leftovers!
I paid for everything (of course) but now I know that restaurants will bring things to my table other than what I order... and it is NOT like bread or chips/salsa in the U.S... if I don't really want it or don't want to pay the 50 cents, then I need to just leave it and I guess it'll go to the next person. Wait... yeah... I don't want to be the "next person"... even if I kind of want it, I'll just stick to what I've ordered.
Then, naturally, I got a bit lost on the way back. I had crossed the bridge from my district into District 1 on my way to dinner... and then took too many turns within District 1. I thought I knew just where I was going... and then it ended up getting dark and I still couldn't find the bridge to cross the canal and get home. I asked a few security guards along the way and ended up getting there - whew! (Every store has its own security guard... they are all over and just sit outside... most don't speak English but are willing to help if they can.)
I need to get a map that is of my area... there are lots of small side streets and my map is of the entire city and does not show the smaller streets.
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