New Years Anthem

To mark the occasion of the arrival of the Year of the Pig I offer up the official Vietnamese New Year Anthem by everyone's favourite Swedish foursome. I'm sure there is a entire canon of traditional Tet songs, but these were hardly in evidence last year at Tet. Instead the Vietnamese universe seems to be obsessed by one song, and one song only. In fact the song serves the purpose of both New Years, Western and lunar, the result being about almost two solid months of Abba on replay, not just two discrete flare-ups as you might think. I've never been a big Abba fan but I must admit the brilliance of this song. It has an insidious way of lodging itself in your brain, particularly if you are trapped on a bus from Haiphong with the video on a loop for over an hour.

As for the video, check out the state of Ikea circa 1979, not to mention the eye shadow, and the innovative Lazy Susan filming effect. My big question: what's he looking at out the window?

It's an appropriate video to be posting today for other reasons too, since I'm feeling that post-party effect (though I'm not lounging around on my chesterfield in a party dress). Jon, Koen and I pulled off a full-on Hanoi Tet meal complete with ga luoc (poached chicken with lime leaf and ginger dipping sauce), nem (Hanoi style deep fried spring rolls), banh chung with pickled leeks (purchased not made from scratch), dau phu sot ca chua (tofu in tomato sauce), nom kho bo (green papaya salad with spicy dried beef), cha lua (Vietnamese sausage), a pork and radish soup, authentic green tea from Thai Nguyen, followed by fruit and mut Tet (candy). Oh yeah and we polished off my only bottle of Nep Moi (Vietnamese rice vodka made of young rice, smells like hazelnut and packs a whopping 40%). I think I'm ready to take on Iron Chef Vietnam.

As it turns out, our celebration was 24 hours too late! I discovered that Tet is sometimes a day earlier than the Chinese New Year, and this was one of those rare years. It's something to do with Vietnam being in a different time zone from China, although I can't imagine how that one hour makes any difference whatsoever. When I got through to a few friends in Hanoi on their Saturday morning, I was told "Tet roi, Tet roi!". I was assured though that the Tet in the Vietnamese diaspora however has come to conform with the Chinese date. Oi gioi oi, nothing is ever simple!

Duck in Three Parts

Egg: I finally got a good shot of the infamous trung vit lon. My earlier shot was actually snapped in Laos. This one ordered curbside for brekky in Bach Khoa after a banh my trung left me still peckish. Koen and I partook. Jon sat this one out.

Fertilized duck egg has lost much of the visceral challenge it once posed for me, but it retains its fascination. I still don't look too closely nor do I linger over it - the taste though is actually quite nice. Egg on the meaty side.

If you do look closely the duck is really not that far gone - at least not as served in Hanoi. According to this very graphic article (you are forewarned!), it's another story altogether in the Philippines where they call it balut. At that late stage duck embryo really does deserve the infamy it has attracted on recent reality shows.

My Bach Khoa egg arrived minus the shell and ready for its close-up. I appreciated the photogenic potential of the naked embryo even if I missed cracking the shell and sipping off the embryonic fluid (a chicken soup-like teaser). The fresh julienned ginger and rau ram were welcome diversions.

***

Blood: If duck fetus has lost its gory thrill for me, the same is not true for tiet canh vit, a.k.a. raw duck blood soup. Only the brave should click here for the full visual effect of this lovely dish. Still I'm fascinated and I'm game as long as I don't necessarily have to commit to an entire bowl.

I've long heard about this delicacy. The first mention I recall was in a WHO case report of bird flu transmission in rural North Vietnam. I'm unsure if you can still find this dish in Hanoi given the circumstances. Several of my Hanoi friends insist it's quite delicious, but warn me to resist the temptation. Aside from the bird flu issue (which has long ceased to really worry me) it has been known to result in less lethal but still serious episodes possibly requiring extended hospital stays. In any case, I never saw any signs of this dish in Hanoi.

Imagine my shock then when I spotted a little (untranslated) sign on the wall of my favourite pho shack up the street from me here in Toronto: tiet canh vit. I could not believe my eyes. When I pointed to the sign and inquired if they really serve raw duck blood soup, at first I received a vague response to the effect that they are not sure what's in stock right now, let them go look, and was I ready to order my pho? No confirmation that I had actually read the sign correctly. Only later when I persisted in my questioning they finally brought out a nice bright red bowl for me to inspect. Yep no doubt about it: duck blood soup.

Only served on Sundays. Should I or shouldn't I? So far I've enlisted two brave souls who might share a bowl with me. None of us are really keen to commit to more than a couple spoonfulls.

***

Meat: Somewhere in Linh Dam in the southern suburban fringe of Hanoi lies a field. On one side a lake, on the other a row of buildings set way back, and above hangs a great cloud of smoke. Beneath this cloud a hundred low plastic tables laid out in lines. In total this field must be home to at least a dozen purveyors of the same delicious dish: vit nuong or grilled duck. The dish and its obscure location was only revealed to me last month during my visit. Somehow it had escaped my attention last year. I expected something like the roast duck that hangs in the Cantonese BBQ joints in my Chinatown back home. It was nothing like that. Instead the chunks of duck had been beautifully grilled over charcoal. In fact there were several preparations, each quite different and new to me. I have no idea anymore where this field is. All I remember is the taste of the slightly charred duck meat, the expanse of low plastic tables spreading out, the surreal duck smoke wafting above, and the company of friends. Some day I will drive by again on another motobike. The dreamy quality of that field will then find its place on my already tattered map of Hanoi.

The NYT Hanoi Food Debate

The New York Times recently published an article on the burgeoning Hanoi restaurant scene ("Restauranteurs Push Hanoi Food into the Future" by Matt Gross, Feb. 5, 2006). I was feeling a bit cranky pants the day I read it because of its bias towards elite restaurants and the way I felt it was snubbing the rich tradition of Hanoi street food. I never really set out to write editorial comments. Usually I just get worked up and unconsciously compose something in my head, which is what happened here. My purpose was to start a debate about the tension between traditional dishes and the haute cuisine that reinterprets them. Also I wanted to try to move the discussion beyond what I feel is a kind of North/South parochialism. I guess I succeeded. The NYT author responded at length.

As a librarian I will do the responsible thing and point to the debate at its source rather than reproduce text from another blog.

Duck Interrupted

My last entry began with eggs too. Maybe it's just some kind of pent up poultry craving following the most recent bird flu chicken black-out.

Last night I went out for hotpot with a friend. We had a mixed platter of meats and veggies, but included two eggs on top. We let them cook the longest and just before we sent the pot back we dished them out and cracked them open. I was shocked at the sight. This was no ordinary egg in my bowl. This was the infamous trung vit lon, or fertilized duck egg. I had been wanting to try this delicacy, but thought I had missed my chance when poultry products all vanished across the city. Still I was not prepared for the sight. I must say it was much more difficult to sink my teeth into this than to eat dog. The sight of it just screamed Don't eat me! at the most visceral level. The egg had already started to form itself into a little duckling. Thankfully I could not make out the head or beak (actually I think my first bite took care of that as it was the most, umm, well let's say textured of the bites), but the nascent wings were in evidence, and little veins were already forming just inside the shell. Then there was a little juicy grey section. My guess is that these were to become the little duckling guts. I ate the whole thing.

Well, there is one off my list. Again, like dog, not my favourite, but one of those things any food adventurer in this region has to try. I hear it is much better when served as a dish on its own, accompanied by herbs like rau ram, and dipped in various sauces (like the picture above, taken in Laos). Incidentally, the rau ram is supposed to modify the trung vit lon's apparently potent Viagra effect. It seems I am living very dangerously!

A Philosophy of Food

When my parents told a Vietnamese-Canadian friend that they were going to Vietnam, but just to Hanoi, they were given a sympathetic look and told something like: I'm sorry to hear that; the food is so terrible in the North. Well it's not the starving 80s anymore. Time to get acquainted with the Hanoi Renaissance. The richness of the food culture here is not to be believed, and as you will know, I can't get enough.

The culinary riches of this city struck me especially after visiting China. I have always loved good Chinese food, but unfortunately most of the food I ate in China was mediocre. We had some great meals (Beijing duck and dumplings and hotpot in Shanghai), but these were the exceptions. The vast majority was nothing to write home (or blog) about. Of course we had no idea where to eat in the cities we visited, so maybe it's not entirely fair. But this leads me to my point. The food in Hanoi and most of Vietnam starts at good and only gets better. It would be very difficult to get a bad Vietnamese meal in Hanoi it seems to me. The wee hours of Saturday night were a perfect example. I squatted on a plastic stool on a deserted street near the Water Tower at 1:30am with a group of friends and vacuumed up some kind of noodle soup with pork ribs and winter greens. What should you reasonable expect at such an hour and in such setting? Of course it was fantastic. Or I wander up a unknown street north of my house in search of a new place to eat. I spot a grimy little neon lit room with people slurping up the advertised dish: My Van Than. Never had it before, have no idea what's in it (even when I'm eating it actually), but I step up, sit down and slurp along. You don't need a recommendation in this city to expect fantastic food. It seems just about any old joint will deliver.

But the hold of Hanoi's food on my imagination goes beyond taste. There is also something fascinating about it. I couldn't put my finger on what it gives it its grip until recently I read an article about Southeast Asian food blogs on a web site called Global Voices. In this article a fellow Hanoi blogger from Sticky Rice notes that Vietnamese food lends itself to "the yarn behind the food; the process of watching the food prepared or the interaction between the people, even the journey. In our sanitized western world, we miss out on all of that when we go out to eat." This is true on so many levels. The food and the ingredients here are not processed and packaged, nor does the cooking generally happen behind closed doors in a kitchen at the back. Cooking is a curbside affair. And at the other end, eating is public theatre. Food is integrated with the other activities of the street. The net effect is that eating is not just for the tastebuds; food here is also a narrative experience involving whole communities of players. If technology has robbed food of its social context in the West, this is a place that puts it back in its proper place.

I think there is something else distinctive here. I may be risking gross generalizations, but I think the repertoire plays an entirely different role in the cuisine of this country than it does in the West. Vietnamese cuisine seems to be organized around a canon of dishes. The dishes call out to you on the street from little white neon sign boards like proper names. Each is the name of a tradition, and the goal of these small businesses is the perfection of a single dish, the attainment of an ideal. (Often humble eateries will become famous for their definitive version of a dish.) In the West it seems to me that dishes are more often than not descriptions that don't function like proper names. Think of the wordy menus in the West. Also the goal in the West seems to be interpretation and variety, not the embodiment of a ideal form or the realization of a tradition. Think of the proliferations of fusion cuisines in North America. Maybe these difference reflect deeper cultural values and different understandings of tradition. After all, one might expect a Confucian society to focus on the attainment of ideals and the reproduction of tradition rather than idiosyncratic creations.

Now having gone out on a limb with this last one, I must offer a bit of a corrective, because in fact there are different culinary traditions in Vietnam. Mainly what I am talking about is street food. There is also the kind of down home cooking I eat at work every day at our communal lunches. These meals are rice-based and very simple. The point isn't to perfect some dish, but just to fry, steam, or boil up something tasty to eat with your bowl of rice. Then there are proper restaurants with their tables and kitchens hidden away from view. These places tend to present you with a big menu presenting dozens of pages of options and varieties. Then there are other sub-traditions like exotic meat adventure eating where the point doesn't seem to be eating an ideal, but to prove your manliness by eating bizarre odds and ends and strange species. These other traditions don't work quite the same way, so take it all with a grain of salt - or dash of fish sauce as the case may be. Still I think there is something to it.

The Parents Arrive

The parental units should now be sitting in their hotel room somewhere in Siem Reap, Cambodia. They flew off on Monday and will return Thursday evening after their private guided tour of Angkor. This follows nearly a week of sightseeing in Hanoi. When they return they will have another week to soak it up, see Halong Bay and whatever else strikes their fancy.

I must say my parents have been great. This is a very rewarding place to travel but not always easy, especially if you are new to Asia and the developing world. I've still been working days, but we've been getting together each evening and spending long weekends together. Of course they are getting to see the tourist highlights of Hanoi, but I've also made a point of giving them glimpses of Vietnamese life beyond what tourists usually get to experience. I've given them the inside scoop on cafes and restaurants, introduced them to half a dozen Vietnamese friends, taken them for a hotpot dinner at the house of a Vietnamese colleague, brought them out into the countryside to see some remote pagodas, and even got them sitting on plastic stools eating bun rieu and other delicacies on the street and in markets. They have been good sports, but there is a limit. No chance of getting them on the back of a moto. We'll see how successful I am in convincing my Mother of the virtues of do-it-yourself grilled goat's breast. The other challenge will be a walking tour of my neighbourhood which demands unusual nerve crossing Dai Co Viet.

It has been interesting to see Hanoi through their eyes. It helps me remember my initial impressions and to recall what was strange and new. In particular I remember the shock of the traffic. When I emerged from the airport in Saigon three years ago I was enthralled to the unbelievable spectacle of the street. I was wide-eyed for days. Forgetting this, the very first thing I did after my parents' check-in at their hotel was to lead them out into the swarming maze of the Old Quarter in search of food. Each major street required something like a ferry crossing. Confidence comes with experience though and now they are enjoying meandering walks about the city. Never leave without a map though I tell them; the streets try their best to lead you astray.

They were also impressed by how youthful a society this is. It's true. I look around at the streets and sometimes it seems they are populated almost entirely by 20-somethings. I often feel like I am pushing the ceiling with my 36 years. I am the oldest in my circle with the possible exception of Andrew who is the same age. If I feel ancient here, I can imagine how my parents must feel. Of course the older generations are in evidence too. Now that it has turned cool in Hanoi some of the older men sport berets (a hold-over from the French days). So does my Dad and so there is a kind of sympathy between them. On more than one occasion, they nod, smile, point at their hats and laugh in recognition. I'm sure they think he's French.

I cannot imagine doing Hanoi without experiencing its food culture. We've done cha ca on Pho Cha Ca, bun cha on Hang Manh, bun rieu on Pho Hoa Ma, and gave them a tour of the Hom Market where my Mom and I sucked back fresh passion fruit juice (nuoc chanh leo) while my Dad devoured two orders of dried beef (bo kho) dipped in hot sauce. Here too there are limits: their travel doctor in Hamilton has declared ice and uncooked vegetables off limits. I've never had any problems with these, although I have one friend who suffered from a nasty parasite called shigela which he probably caught from eating uncooked greens, but this was only after a four year diet of street food. In any case, we all decide on our personal level risk. The other concern is sugar since my father is diabetic. Thankfully sugar is not used liberally in cooking as it is in the South. The issue is more the copious amounts of white rice and noodle that are served. So far so good. Still on the food agenda: grilled goat, West Lake snail, bun bo by the Hang Da Market, and maybe fresh fish hot pot. Dog is definitely not on the agenda, says my Dad.

As it turns out, eating poultry at "ground zero" is a moot point since it was recently banned. There is still no evidence of risk of bird flu from eating cooked poultry, but a Hanoi man died recently after cooking chicken. It's the preparation, not the consumption that is potentially dangerous. I miss my banh my trung and bun thang, and feel sad for their vendors. The one upside is that most of the roosters behind my house have suddenly fallen ominously silent. I don't recall 5 am being so peaceful - although a rooster's call this morning made me wonder if some had just been temporarily relocated to save their necks. Actually despite my complaining, I was sort of pleased to hear his return. I like that village feeling.

The other interesting thing has been playing tourist again. I've already written about my ambivalence with this role, but what has been fun has been the shock value of what little Vietnamese I know in the tourist context. Clearly this is unexpected. I get smiles, giggles, gawks and turned heads. This is in contrast to the reaction I get in my own neighbourhood or any other non-touristed area of the city. Whitey sightings in those areas are rare and people are curious, but if you are sitting at a cafe in the burbs of Thanh Xuan or shopping for linens out on Bach Mai, the locals expect that you will probably know some Vietnamese to have gotten that far. I think they are surprised that I don't know more than I do. The expectations are completely different.

Part two of the parental visit will begin upon their return from Cambodia on Thursday. There are many more sights to be seen, but I think the most memorable experiences are the unexpected encounters with people along the way, the little dramas of everyday life. Viet Nam is rich in these, probably because life is lived so publicly. All the little details spill out onto the street. My parents delight, as I do, in the interactions with the vendors, cafe owners, kids, and strangers. A perfect example: Yesterday I desperately need some breath-freshening after my usual pre-gym banh my pate so I approach a little makeshift sidewalk teashop and ask the price of their gum. The man answers with a smirk: 5000 VND ( about 36 cents). This seems steep and I suspect a little foreigner inflation. I complain (dat qua!), at which point an older lady (his aunt I am imagining?) sitting on the stoop intervenes. She rolls her eyes, shakes her finger and interjects with the real price: 2500 VND! The man laughs in embarrassment. He doesn't get away with much around his auntie it seems, but he tries again. After all maybe the foreigner doesn't really understand what the number hai nghin rua amounts to. I give him a 5000 bill and he returns to me 2000. "Five hundred more!" she says over his shoulder. Burned again. It's all a big game and he's been had. Auntie and I nod at each other for our teamwork. He laughs. A drama over 18 cents.

My friends have gone out of their way to make my parents feel welcome. I have befriended people of such quality in my three months here. My good friend Dat is a trained guide and has volunteered three free tours already (the Temple of Literature, the Ethnology Museum and a Temple tour). A colleague invited them over for dinner. Andrew has enlisted the help of his company's drivers. Hung has coordinated their Angkor trip. If ever any of these friends come to Toronto, I will spare nothing to welcome them. Incredible generosity has been shown to me and to my parents. I hope one day I can return the favour.

Exotica

Some blog readers out there have been curious why I haven't been including gorgeous food porn shots of my meals in my blog entries given how much of my blog is dedicated to my culinary obsessions. Well, you'll be happy to know that I took my first pho bo aerial yesterday just before tucking in to my lunch. I was sitting at a little rickety table across the street on Vo Thi Sau at my favourite local pho joint. I tried to fluff the scene a bit, arranging the pot of chili sauce and the platter of limes next to it. I got my camera ready under the table, glanced around to see if anyway was watching, snapped the shot and quickly hid my camera. (For superior food porn, feel free to indulge in the Sticky Rice Hanoi food blog. I follow it religiously.)

I am finding it difficult to take pictures in Hanoi. There is no lack of things to capture; it's just that the act of taking pictures pulls me out of my life here and makes me just another wandering Tay ba lo. As soon as I am behind the lens, I am cast in the role of the outsider, the tourist, the voyeur. With a camera in hand, I am no longer living in Hanoi, I am outside looking in.

Last weekend I went to Saigon with Andrew for a three day excursion. It was my second time there, and so I felt freed of having to see the sights, and instead spent my time visiting friends, frequenting cafes, going to nightclubs and of course eating food!

Gastronomic aside: There is a book called "1000 Things To Do Before you Die". If I were to create my own list it would include eating bun mam (stinky fermented fish soup, #11 on the Mimi menu) in its place of origin. Actually I think it is a Khmer inspired dish from deep in the Mekong Delta, but eating it in Saigon's Ben Thanh Market was close enough. There there was a lunch of bun bo Hue (not as spicy as expected), and one of my personal favourites, banh xeo. This was the largest, crispiest, prawn, pork and beansprout pancake creation I've ever seen. It was served with a massive basket of herbs. They were still dripping wet from washing and I thought momentarily about varieties of water-borne parasites before digging in and getting my hands very dirty. Also, several samplings of rare beef salad, che ba mau (three layered bean drink), and fresh nuoc chanh leo (passion fruit juice). My one disappointment was Saigonese pho bo. It seems I've been Northernized. It was too sweet and somehow lacked the deep beefiness of the original.

It wasn't all cafes and eateries though. Andrew and I also spent half a day in Cho Lon (the Chinese district) wandering around back streets and pagodas. It was here and especially in the streets behind the Binh Tay Market that I took some of the best photos I've taken yet in Vietnam: pictures of fish vendors, piles of tropical fruit, mounds of herbs, lines of xe om drivers, cyclos in action, funny market kids horsing around on trolleys and men playing Chinese chess while airing their torsos (a typical scene). Andrew and I both felt a kind of freedom. There was something about being in a new city that allowed us to just be observers.

Back at a cafe in Hanoi several days later I got only puzzled looks from Viet and Hung as they were checking out the pics on my cam. They observed that I seem to have this obsession with fresh produce and people doing unremarkable things like riding motorbikes, selling food, and gathering on sidewalks. Viet commented that a picture of a woman with a conical hat crouching in the middle of traffic with a pile of rambutan, was "very normal". They cannot imagine why I would want to take such photos. These are merely images of daily life. I am wondering what they will say when they discover a picture I took of pomelo skin drying on utility pole down the street. (The dried skin is used to make homemade shampoo. Check out the recent Party Wig posting on Sticky Rice. I guess this would be like taking shots of recycling bins back home.)

Although I enjoyed playing the camera toting tourist in Saigon, I find my attitude gradually changing. The exotic has become part of my daily life. Every day I still see novel things, but so many things have simply become the setting for working, commuting, eating and socializing. Canadian Hanoi expat Claude Potvin observes in his book, Vietnam Chronicles that in fact the exotic is a moment in time. It is hard to put yourself back into that moment and look again at everything as strange.

Meanwhile I am often reminded that of course I am the curiosity. It seems almost every time I'm at my gym (where I am the sole Western member), some guy will work up enough courage to come try out his English on me. As soon as he starts asking me questions (where are you from? do you like Viet Nam? are you married?) two or three other guys will sidle up to overhear it all. And I just came from a little open air restaurant I discovered in my neighbourhood that specializes in bun bo Hue. I became the focus of the whole joint as they inspected my chopstick technique ("You eat well!") and peppered me with questions. The owner tried to explain the ingredients of the soup. They howled in approval when I couldn't understand his English, but understood instantly when he explained the three main ingredients (rice noodle, pork and beef) in Vietnamese.

Goat Testicle Wine

Are you blog readers out there actually all that interested in my descriptions of food? Well, I don't know what the attraction is to reading about food when you can't eat it, but there must be something to it. After all, think of the Anthony Bourdain phenomenon, not to mention the Food Network (and how many of us actually cook those recipes?). And if you think I'm obsessed, try reading a blog called Sticky Rice which is dedicated to Hanoi food discoveries.

I don't cook here at all, unless you count inserting cheese in baguettes. I don't have the pots, pans and utensils and I don't know where to buy things here (nor do I have the time). And it's hard to justify cooking when there are the most incredible food adventures around ever corner and every meal costs about a buck. Instead I eat all my meals out. This is part of the reason I am always talking about my meals.

The highlight last week was my goat dinner on Wednesday night. Huan took me out to a famous place called Nhat Ly. It's a smokey open air affairs on the 2nd floor of a non-descript building near St. Joseph's Cathedral. Each table has a hole in the middle in which they place a pot of red-hot coals. The first course is barbequed goat. There are two types: a red meat, and a white meat which is apparently breast. They looked like two totally different species to me. You grill them over the coals and then wrap the morsels up in rice paper with herbs, green banana, star fruit, vermicelli, scallions, etc. and then dip the whole thing in a creamy sauce. The next round is a goat hotpot. Traditionally this is drunk with some kind of ruou which is a kind of rice wine. Huan asked me if I was interested in the variety with fresh goat blood. I politely declined. At this point he just ordered another kind in Vietnamese and that was that.

It wasn't until the flask was empty that he asked me what I thought of it. I loved it. I expected it to taste like sake, but it tasted closer to an earthy whiskey or mezcal. It turns out it is called something like ngoc duong, which is in fact rice wine flavoured by goat testicle.

I mentioned this at our communal library lunch the next day, and this seemed to result in a kind of male bonding with all the male staff in the library. Goat is considered a male food which is associated with virility, like dog and snake. A kind of Viagra meal. Immediately they wanted to know about the rest of my evening. Maybe I was looking a little worn out from a late night? A whole series of bawdy jokes ensued. My usual (female) interpreter shook her head and refused to translate. It turns out the word for goat de also doubles for horny.

My other recent favourite meal was at the Hom Market which is about a 20 minute walk from my house. I thought I had already eaten my lunch when I wandered in and discovered these little bars where you sit down on a plastic stool and point at fresh salad rolls you want. Most of them contain dried spicy beef jerkey. Some of them were rolled in lettuce and tied into little packets; others were rolled up in rice paper. After 7 or 8 of these, the woman made me a drink from fresh passion fruit. I sat there with a big grin on my face.

Village Life

Even though I have another five months left, I feel like my weekends here are numbered and so I have to make my best of them. I have a list of day trips I want to do. Perfume Pagoda was one. I was thinking of doing Tam Coc and Hoa Lu yesterday with a little travellers' cafe. In the meantime my new friend Hung invited me for a tour of the Red River countryside on the back of his black Vespa. I couldn't resist.

He picked me up yesterday morning at 8:30 for a bun rieu breakfast in the Old Quarter. Breakfast here are generally savoury so it's not unusual to eat something like crab noodle soup in the morning. That wasn't enough so we also ordered some kind of herbal omelette and a sweet bean thing in syrup to follow up. (Gradually I'm becoming more street vendor literate. They usually only sell one or two things which they advertise with Vietnamese only signs. If I don't know the dish I'm too timid to dive in and order. I usually like to know what I'm eating and how to eat it. But after six weeks now I'm building up a repertoire of street foods names.)

Back to the Vespa. We crossed the muddy Red River - it looks as wide as the Mississippi. Looking north we could see the famous Long Bien bridge built by Eiffel (of Tower fame) in the 1890s. There are only chopped up segments of the original left because of heavy bombing during the war; the bombed bits have been filled in. Apparently the Americans would bomb it in the morning and the Vietnamese would be rebuild it by the evening. Apocryphal? I dunno.

It was heavy traffic on a Saturday morning because all the migrant countryfolk were returning to their villages for the weekend (whatever they get of it). It's a fascinating mix of traffic: trucks, cars, motos, bikes, homemade tractors, horse pulled carts, and water buffalo. There was also a big green moving bale of hay. It was weaving in and out of traffic. The hay was so big you could hardly see the wheels of the motobike or the driver. It looked like some Jim Henson creation bobbing around the highway.

Our first destination was Chua Dau (Dau Pagoda). This is a very significant pagoda complex tucked away in a humble village. It is not as spectacular as some of the complexes around but happens to be the first Buddhist site in Viet Nam and dates from the 2nd Century. Little remains of the original buildings because it it is built of wood, but it has an ancient feel nonetheless. It is currently under renovation. Before entering Hung and I were invited for herbal tea with some of the pagoda caretakers who were sitting in one of the collonaded areas. They don't see many foreign tourists, mostly just Vietnamese, and so were fascinated by the guest from Ga Na Da.

Our second stop was Chua But Thap. This pagoda is merely 800 years old, but most of what you see is 17th or 18th Century. Although not as important as Chua Dau it is much more spectacular: beautiful rooflines, courtyards, relief carvings, and statuary. In the middle is a building with a huge Reincarnation Wheel (more like a pillar) which pilgrims gather around once a year to rotate.

Before visiting a temple complex dedicated to the kings of the Ly Empire, we stopped off at a village known for its wood block prints depicting Red River village life (boy with flute on water buffalo, domestic scenes and fanciful animals scenes like the mice wedding procession, and a classroom of toads). At the Museum of Ethnology last month I had read about a famous master artisan who is largely responsible for keeping the tradition alive. I asked Hung if the man is still alive. He nodded and pointed to the old man from who I was buying five prints (40 cents each). I was in the master's living room.

On another note, today I finally had bun cha. This is one of the classic dishes of Hanoi (up there with cha ca, bun rieu, bun thang, and of course pho bo). Bun cha is only eaten at lunch and you can usually tell who has had it because they reek of garlic. The place I ate was thankfully light on the garlic. This is a hard dish to describe. You eat it out of two bowls. One has diluted fish sauce, the other has a broth with little minced pork patties. It is served with a big plate of vermicelli and a massive heap of herbs. It's a mix and match meal, nothing like the premixed Southern style bun dishes we get in Saigon-style restaurants in North America. Each mouthful is a different combination of all the elements. I've got to start taking aerial photographs of my meals before I eat them, but I would look (even more) like a ridiculous tay ba lo if I did.

Lenin Park

This past weekend was a big holiday weekend here. September 2nd is Independence Day and this was the 60th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by Ho Chi Minh in Ba Dinh Square. This is an intensely patriotic country, and every house hangs a flag for the holiday. Nonetheless, anyone who can tries to get out of town for the holiday weekend, because the city becomes a bit of a zoo. Originally my plans were to go to Hai Phong with a friend (his hometown), but his studies got in the way and our plans were abandoned. Plan B was to witness the big military parade down at Ba Dinh Square - until I discovered it was called for 7am. A colleague at work recommended I make my way down there at 3am. If he was joking he has a very dry sense of humour. In any case, I was told that if I wanted to go I'd have to walk; the xe om drivers wouldn't even try to get close because of gridlocked traffic. Needless to say, I decided to sleep in and pass on the goosestepping orgy.

Later in the evening there were firecracker displays at 5 locations in Hanoi. Andrew and I were out and about and didn't really intend to wade out in the chaos but got swept up in it. Before heading to pick up a friend of his on his chopper we had to stop by a building where he works. It's a huge posh marble building with a mall full of high-end designer stores and grand fountains at the entrance. He had some business to do and when we stepped out onto the terrace to leave we were faced by a sea of gridlocked bikes. Gradually the crowd edged into the building grounds and began to discover the marble fountains. The security guards seemed powerless. Instead of retreating to the top of the building to watch the fireworks from the roof, we waded out into the crowd, somehow crossed the intersection and into Lenin Park to watch the spectacle. I don't care about fireworks so much but it was great people-watching. Hanoians seem to overcome their reserve in large crowds.

I have been to Lenin Park for a morning run twice now. Apparently the park used to be a huge swampy dump but it was transformed into a leafy park centred around a large lake with several islands. It's quite a sight really early in the morning. The Vietnamese are health conscious and the park is packed at 6am when it is still cool. It's a weird kaleidescope of activity. Many people just walk or run the circuit around the lake, but there are also spontaneous aerobics classes (women only), ball-room dancing, lots of badminton, volleyball and even fishing. But my favourite are the old men and women doing tai chi like moves. I say "tai chi like" moves because they are completely idiosyncratic and are, I'm sure just made up on the spot. The tai chi improv often looks bizarre and comical. Then there are the teens practicing their breakdance/hip hop moves. It's hard to believe that these gangsta types wake up at 5:30am to practice their grooves. Last week I was trailing another runner making a loop around the lake when suddenly he broke into some kind of airborne kung fu move. All this frenetic morning activity evaporates quickly though. By the time my bus passes by the park on the way to work, it has mostly emptied out.

Well, no posting of mine is complete without a food update. Every day is a culinary adventure, though some dishes have just become absorbed into my routines. For instance, breakfasts are either pho (beef or chicken) or my new obsession: banh my trung, which is just a simple baguette stuffed with an omelette, cucumber and chili sauce. Yumm! And I could have both if I so desired for under a dollar. But there are two meals that are particularly noteworthy. Of course they were both meals introduced to me by Viet. He's not a foodie at all, but just keeps taking me to one brilliant (and dirt cheap) place after another. Sunday night 5 of us went again for lau (hotpot) at another one of these sidewalk joints. Hanoians say that hotpot season has begun since it is now "cool". I would never call a humid 32C cool, but any old excuse is fine by me. My first lau was all beef; this time it was almost everything but beef, including: clams, live jumbo shrimp (the lid was covered so I didn't have to watch them squirm), various types of tofu and greens, mushrooms, chicken, frog legs and pig brains. Frog legs were not new for me, but the brain was - very soft, tastes like liver. The broth was incredibly rich by the end when we added the noodles.

The other discovery was tonight on the way to the linen store to buy sheets for my new house (more on that later), when we stopped by a hole-in-the-wall specializing in eel. The main speciality was mien luon, which is a glass noodle soup topped with deep fried eels strips (no bones thankfully) and garnished with bean sprouts, lime juice, and chili sauce. I was starving and so had to follow it up with a bowl of chao luon (eel congee). I think the time has come for a really good Hanoi themed restaurant in Toronto. Saigonese restaurants are a dime of dozen, back home, but what about the poor neglected art of eel soup, sour snail soup, cha ca and bun cha! All I need is a little old Vietnamese lady to take me in as a cooking apprentice, and maybe a few silent business partners.

Cell phones, Gyms & Dog Meat

I now have two Ha Noi weekends under my belt. It's hard to believe it's only been two. I feel like I've been here months now. Yesterday I took a motobike taxi (xe om) home from the outskirts of town where I played my first game of ultimate frisbee (a kind of frisbee football). It was a long and chaotic ride (the driver complained: xa qua, xa qua!) and lasted perhaps 20-25 minutes. I thought how much I have acclimatized, when I was hopping off the bike I realized that I spent the entire journey text messaging people on my phone with one hand while I hung on the back of the seat with the other. This is significant for at least three reasons: 1) I am no longer phased by the traffic; I was mostly oblivious to all the swerves and near-misses as I typed away; 2) I have at least a dozen friends and contacts in my cell phone already; and, 3) I have succumbed to the epidemic of texting that has swept Asia. This must be the most networked city on earth (or is it just Asia?). Everyone knows everyone, and once you have contacts in a few different groups, you are quickly known to entire networks. People don't seem to leave home without their cards which they hand out liberally. Ha Noi has been called a city of villages and perhaps that explains it. Everything is everyone's business.

Maybe because of this intense interconnectedness people aslo erect social partitions in order to try to protect their privacy. In a previous post I think I mentioned how the gay community is composed of groups. People are members of these groups and are identified as belonging to one. I haven't had much luck getting people to mix between them. It's paradoxical: people know everything about each other and yet pretend they've never met. I asked a group of Vietnamese guys what is the fascination with text messaging. They said it is popular for two reasons: it is cheaper than calling, but it is also a way to communicate without the risk of being overheard. It's a way of networking, but keeping silent at the same time. Maybe this is the consequence of living in a very densely populated society and one in which people live much more communally than we do in the West.

I'm realizing how taboo my blog is. Here I am publicly writing about people. If this blog were discovered by Ha Noi, I'm sure it would be social suicide. If I can find a way, I might make it accessible by invitation only (stay tuned).

Back to my weekend... Viet picked me up on Saturday morning and we spent the day riding around. Viet just treats me like one of the guys, and so I find myself with a guide of Vietnamese life. The great thing is that he doesn't even think about it. In fact, he often doesn't even tell me where we are going until we are there. So Saturday he took me to a Vietnamese gym out in the outskirts of Ha Noi.

I wasn't prepared for the sight, but it seems neither were the other guys prepared to see the likes of me. The gym was just one small room crammed with equipment and people working out. There were very few woman, and almost all the men work out topless. These guys were in very good shape. Let's just say it was distracting. I know I'm a curiosity as a white guy outside of the tourist areas, but generally people don't make much of a fuss (except perhaps little kids who gawk). In the gym though I seemed to have created a stir. The entire gym stared at me as I walked in and as I worked out.

After the gym, Viet's friends met us at a dog meat (thit cho)restaurant. Dog is generally only eaten in the second half of the lunar month when it is considered lucky. Eating it too early can bring bad luck. And it is mostly eaten by men, since it associated with virility. I would have been happy with just a taste, but dog meat is a multi-course meal. It is eaten with a mixture of fresh herbs, vermicelli noodles, and dipped in shrimp paste (mam tom). Frankly it wasn't my favourite. It was a bit gamey and grisley. Probably the lemongrass grilled pieces were the best. I wasn't that fond of the little sausages of dog intestine stuffed with some kind of nut. They tasted a bit like liver. Even though it wasn't my favourite meal so far, I must say though that it really was not a disturbing experience. It felt quite normal. Just not my favourite. The restaurant happened to have a little pet toy dog running around. It was definitely not the kind for eating (dog meat comes from a special breed which is farmed), but still I don't think it had any idea of the irony of its situation. I just hope it has been trained not to eat scraps off the ground.

Apocalypse Now!

It's not what you think! It's a gay club, not a war movie. Well, not entirely gay, maybe 3/4 and it depends on where you are standing in the club. It looked and sounded like any North American club, except for the 95% Viet crowd and the very stern looking green uniformed cops posted around the club.

I had a blast! By law all clubs are supposed to close at midnight, but I guess the club has "connections" so the music winds down around 1 (yeah, okay so it's not Fly). I'm starting to notice a strange trend though: like any scene it has its cliques, but these groups tend to be keep entirely apart. The guys recognize each other and may even know a lot about each other (through gossip?), but there is little mixing. I know guys in two different circles, and when I tried to introduce them, I was told "It's really not necessary." It's as if people are scared to have too many gay connections; it's like an allergy to community.

The after-hours scene seems to be pho bo at the night market. The streets at 1am are devoid of activity, but when Apo (as it's called for short) lets out, an gay armada of motorbikes sweeps the streets - about 40 motos travelling as a clump towards the city centre, bikes gradually peeling off. Eventually a small group of us arrived at the Dong Xuan Market in the Old Quarter, established ourselves on little plastic stools and ordered beef noodle soup. I'm totally into this and would like to suggest 60 cent bowls of pho be served on little squat benches at Timothy's after the clubs let out in TO. Unfortunately late night rice noodles might not go over on carb-phobic Church St.

It looks like I'm back to food, so while I'm at it let me describe a late breakfast (brunch?) I had with Viet this morning. The Globe and Mail just came out with an article (which I should link to from my main blog page) about Hanoi cuisine. It was called something like "Down the rabbit hole of Hanoi cuisine". Well, it truly feels like a kind of secret world sometimes. The rabbit hole this morning was a den of sidestreets and alleyways which Viet squeezed his bike down with me on the back to this tiny room packed with locals eating bun oc (snail noodle soup). Damn! 50 or 60 cents for this delicious bowl of slightly sour broth with herbs, round rice noodles, a few tomatoes and these little delicate snails of varying sizes. It's got to be about a 5 min. walk from here, but I can't imagine I'd ever find it again.

Pho Bo Mornings

At this rate, I'm going to come home with a flat little tummy. The food is simple, delicious, satisfying but they don't know about supersizing yet. I'm never in danger of overeating. I have to resist turning this blog into a prolonged meditation on food. Everyone knows I'm obsessed by food - esp. Viet food. It's an unavoidable topic.

So far I've had pho bo (beef noodle soup) three mornings in a row. Back in TO, this classic dish can be bought for dinner for a scandalous $8 in Asian fusion restaurants on Yonge St. Here it is a humble breakfast, is served from boiling pots on the sidewalk where you sit on kindergarden stools and slurp away. And it costs 60 cents. It's a Hanoi original but is eaten throughout the country. The garnishments are what distinguish the different regions I'm told. Here in Hanoi the style is spare: julienned scallions, a couple leaves of herbs, some chili sauce and a squirt of lime (but kind of more like a tiny orange?).

Last night was ga tan. It was delicious and completely like any soup I've every eaten in North American restaurants. Chicken drumsticks in a broth with bitter herbs (identity unknown), lotus seeds, red raisin-like things and maybe a few chunks of herbal root. Each piece of chicken is dipped in a salty milky looking dip. Very satisfying and sure enough it took care of my upset tummy. I would never have picked out this restaurant, but Viet took me there. You'd think that one of the finest purveyors of this dish in a city of several million would seat more than 6 people at once. A little kid (age 3?) sat with his mother at the end of our table and stared at me with his huge black eyes the whole time. What's this white monkey doing here eating our food?

Okay, I just noticed the last two postings are named after dishes. So I'm predictable.

It was a beautiful cool night (well cool is relative), and after dinner Viet took me for a moto ride around West Lake, by Ba Dinh square with the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, and around the ancient Citadel, which I'd never seen before. It's a significant historical site, but is off limits as a military complex. Over the walls you could get fascinating glimpses of ancient yellow gates and the tiled roofs of pagoda-like buildings. Then to a cafe for bubble tea.

I see I'm back to food again. I must be hungry and it's roughly lunch time. Oh, the possibilities!

Beef Ball Hotpot and Other Curiosities

Okay, back to the beginning...

The flight was actually much much easier than I remembered. Maybe it helps to dread it to the point where the reality can't help but be better than what you imagined. I think the Xanax sleeping pill Paul B. gave me was a big part of it too. I slept like a baby all the way to Alaska and beyond (I think). I was surprised how fast it all seemed. I hardly spoke a word to anyone on the flight to HK (again Xanax may have something to do with that), but ended up next to a young guy named Du~ng on the flight from HK to Hanoi. We got to talking and it turns out he's Viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese) from Wuerzberg Germany of all places. His English was shaky, but his German excellent since he's lived in Germany since he was 5. This was his first trip back home to VN after 14 years. I hardly have a chance to practice my German in Toronto, but there I was giving my German a workout while flying over the South China Sea. Go figure! We were both so excited when we touched down in Hanoi. I was trying to imagine all that was going through his head returning to a homeland he hardly remembers and to meet his grandparents for the first time in their native city.

After I picked up my luggage I wheeled it out through the exit doors into a crowd of people. I was searching the crowd and praying I'd see James Ha's friend Viet holding a little sign for me. Sure enough, there he was. It’s wonderful to have someone waiting at the other end, especially somewhere so far from home. We took a cab back to his friend Andrew's place. Andrew is an expat Ozzie who has been here two years. He’s incredibly generous and has been an invaluable source of advice and insight.

It’s amazing how all these connections have worked out. James introduces me to Viet who sets me up at Andrew's house and introduces me to half a dozen of his friends. And I guess all my chatting online is paying off. Yesterday I met Dat for coffee, and Thach has been calling at least twice a day from Saigon to see how I am making out. Thach has also asked his friend to help me look for housing. I hope to go house hunting with her tomorrow. She’s got a few places in mind. So I feel well cared for. On the other hand, I feel quite helpless most of the time. I don’t know my neighbourhood well enough to venture more than a few blocks away on my own - it’s a maze of boulevard, alleyways, markets and a buzzing sea of two wheeled traffic - so I’m always depending on someone to ferry me around on the back of their motos. And all the little things take so long to figure out. You take for granted the familiar routines that provide the context for your life until suddenly you are in a radically new context and all the minutiae of your life have to be reconstructed and reinvented from scratch. The expats say it takes a while.

Viet has been especially good to me. My first night here (Tuesday) he called up 6 of his friends (4 Viets, 2 expats) and took me out to a hotpot restaurant in the Ancient Quarter where we ate lau bo. It was dusk as we set out and by the time we got to Hoan Kiem Lake it was sparkling with lights and the pagoda floating on the island in the centre of the lake was glowing magically. We drove up the street Jon and I stayed on in 2002 and past our old hotel, past the bia hoi (fresh beer) vendor where I remember watching the theatre of the street. It was comforting to finally see something familiar. Our destination was near the ancient gate of the old walled city.

(Every ride through the city so far is an eye-popping and often hair-raising experience. There is so much activity; the streets bubble with life. And there is something so distinctive about the look and feel of a Vietnamese city street. It could be nowhere else: the street vendors in their conical hats, the moto traffic weaving madly, the canopied trees, the ubiquitous cafes with their miniature plastic stools.)

As for the restaurant, it was completely devoid of chairs, only grass mats and low tables. We shared a large beef hotpot and chatted in a combination of Vietnamese and English. Only two concerns. One was the big chunks of ice floating in the sweet corn tea we were all drinking, but I followed the lead of the two expats and have lived to tell the tale. The other concern…amongst various other cuts of beef in the hotpot were sliced beef testicles. Actually I was fascinated and it appears it was a bit of a novelty even for the Viet guys. I would have nibbled at one if it had found its way into my bowl but somehow it never happened.

It was great to be surrounded by such a friendly group on the first night. Viet has been great that way, and has been going out of his way to make sure I feel connected.

Today was my day to go to the university. I woke up early enough to find breakfast on the street. The vendors here each sell one thing only, so I went to one place for beef noodle soup, another for a baguette, and a third for a coffee - all within half an hour. The woman running the cafe looked me over and then began her questions. It was at that point that I realized how much I have actually learned from my Vietnamese tutor in the last 8 months. I was able to stumble through a 15 min. conversation with her. All basic stuff, but it felt like a victory for me.

After breakfast I negotiated a ride for about $2 on the back of a moto (xe om) to the university which is about a 20 minute ride south of my neighbourhood. The campus is set off from the street and very leafy and quiet with yellow painted buildings. I was met by one of the librarians at the administrative building and she brought me to the Foreign Office where I made my presence known. Of course it was accompanied by tea. Always tea. Then off to the library for a tour. It was there that I met Stephen, an Australian with whom I'll be working quite closely it seems. I think he's glad to have a English speaking colleague - as am I of course. I'll write more later about my impressions of the university and library. The best part was the lunch. The library staff has its own cook who lays out a communal lunch every day at 11:30 in a little glassed-in rooftop room. I'm looking forward to 6 months of these lunches. The chit chat will be a great opportunity to work on my Vietnamese. My colleagues are so curious and friendly and show such goodwill. We ate rice, plain tofu, sliced potatoes, pork belly dipped in salt and lime juice, and some kind on unidentifiable greens in a soup broth. Very simple but healthy.

Each day my experiences exceed the time (and ability) I have to describe them. I am sure I will always feel like I'm catching up as I am now.

Viet is coming to pick me up on his moto at this internet cafe for dinner in a few minutes. My tummy is starting to notice that it's not in Kansas anymore so he's taking me to a little place that serves an herbal chicken soup called ga tan. He has explained that it's good for what ails you, containing ingredients for the stomach, brain, circulatory system, energy, etc. A cure-all meal for about $1 each. (Now I expect half of you will be thinking I'm foolish given that I'm ground zero for the supposed impending bird flu epidemic, but I've done my research and cooked bird is all quite safe. I've never been a big fan of raw chicken and I guess I'll just have to pass on the experience of fresh duck blood.) Ok, enough for now.