Suman recently celebrated her birthday, so I baked a pumpkin cake from Martha Stewart’s recipe (http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pumpkin-cake-with-brown-butter-icing)

After spending a whole evening in the Ancient Market of Hoi An, Suman & I were pretty sure about what we wanted to shop – lanterns and handmade silk shoes!

I will never tire of saying how pretty the lanterns are, and we splurged to buy almost 2 dozens of them in various shapes and sizes. Lucky people you, who get those as gifts from us!

For the shoes we had to shop around a little, but when we found them, we were delighted at the shop lady’s suggestion that we should get them made to measure. She also promised to deliver them to our hotel the next morning before our departure (which she fulfilled).

We also found some pretty bracelets that will probably never get worn again, after this holiday!

As for eating, we discovered very nice Vietnamese vegetarian cuisine – great flavours, my favourite herbs, delicious salads and curries. We followed our guidebook recommendations – Mango Mango, White Marble, and for divine homemade ice-cream – Casa Verde. Ummmmm……Happy!