Regularity Report: Oh Chi Minh!

Inputs (some western stuff creeping in as Saigon is tres cosmopolitan and expect to be back on the rice noodle express in Cambodia and Laos):

Carbs: Toast, Bread, Rice, Noodles, Canelloni, Burritos
Meat: beef, pork, chicken, bacon
Fish: shrimp, prawns, crab
Fruit: mango, custard apple,
Veg: beansprouts, carrots, red pepper, cucumber, tomato, sweetcorn, vietnamese mint, basil and cilantro Dairy: mango shakes, real cream cheese
Drink: beer, water, orange juice, coke, soup

Outputs: only good news to report. Bowels still working like a automatic baseball pitching machine that needs no oiling. Think it must be the lack of dairy and fat.

Frequency: ****************************
Density: ********************************
Gaseosity: *******************
Wipeability: ********************

Toilet Review:
Multiple Saigon Restaurants: **/***
Rex Hotel Saigon: *****
Caravelle Hotel Saigon: *****
Saigon Trade Centre: ***
Saigon War Crimes Museum: **
Saigon Reunification Palace: **

A special shout out to the regularity report 2- and 4-legged North Vancouver correspondents. You are the Adrienne Arsenault of latrines.

More reports were expected from the Dunbar (including Southlands) correspondents (2- and 4-legged). Maybe you have been constipated for 4 weeks and have nothing to submit.

Ode to Deep Fried Chicken Wings

Oh Chicken Wings
Feasting on your crunchy batter
Fat locked in its own little safe
Bones discarded
like VTV discarded Simi

Ode to Pho

Oh Pho,
Noodles so fresh
unlike smell of drains
broth good for colds
mint, basil
hot n steamy
like Cheryl Ladd album
but no
country twang

Toad on the Road: Vietnamese Pop Music

Here is the Vietnam Top 5 based on what we have heard on the radio on buses and in restaurants.

5. Celine Dion (any track, they are all fantastic when blasted at full volume in a location you cannot escape from like a a 7 hour bus ride)
4. Vietnamese Pop featuring the lyric: Vietnam, Vietnam and Bam, Bam, Bam
3. Vietnamese Pop featuring the lyric: Louie Louie
2. Barbra Streisand: Woman in Love
1. Carpenters: Yesterday Once More

Barbra was ahead until we heard Yesterday Once More yet again whilst supping mojitos on the roof bar of the Rex Hotel, Saigon - a classic Graham Greene of a place that was only enhanced by the ghost of Karen Carpenter.

A special shout out should also go to Gloria Estefan. There we were with our native guide Chi, hiking across rice paddies in northern vietnam when out of nowhere blasts Gloria singing something slow and sad. Old GloGlo was Chi's celphone ringtone.

Tracks I have not yet heard but would like to:

Kim Wilde: Cambodia www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI2K8d-52rE

Vietnam ephemera (Jennifer)

I have been reading The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong, the story of Kim Phuc, who was the subject of a famous photo from the American war (she's running down the street naked, her arms out, clothes burned off by napalm). As it happened not far from Saigon, it's particularly poignant reading at this point in the narrative.
There's a copy of the photo in the War Crimes Museum. Quite the gut wrenching museum. A lot of attention is paid there to the photographers of that war, especially to those who died in it. It really was their war, the first where their craft played a pivotal part to the West's knowledge and opinion of it and to war in general. Ironic that "we" are still waging wars that get it wrong - that get on the wrong side through some ideological fear.

Fear really is the worst attribute a government or a people can have. Fear plays on ignorance and all sorts of horrible things result. It was the knee-jerk fear of communism that put the US in Vietnam, when Ho Chi Minh was mostly about uniting his divided country.

I am amazed at the lack of bitterness we see in the people here. They are open and friendly and welcoming to all visitors no matter their nationality. Even after a generation would there be many other countries so forgiving? The Vietnamese very much look to the future, and see the past mostly as an opportunity for making money and moving forward. They are extremely proud of their country and any praise is warmly received, as is any knowledge outsiders might have of their history no matter how rudimentary.

It is a country in transition. Demographically young, entrepreneurially inclined and hard working. The business opportunities afforded by tourism have lead to some pretty aggressive behaviour. Hawkers are quite demanding, although not abusive. You can't stop on a street, look at a map or sit in a cafe without several offers for moto rides, cyclo rides, taxi rides, private tours, watches, books, maps, gum, zippo lighters, postcards, shoe shining (even while wearing flip flops!) - it's never ending and can be quite annoying, but a smile, clear shake of the head and a few words in Vietnamese dissolves any unpleasantness. And really who can blame them? We really are rich, able to travel and stay in hotels and eat in cafes.

Tourism is a way out of poverty. And there are countless buses, tour companies and private operators. We've found it much easier than we expected to get where we want to go, although not necessarily with any flexibility. Ford's mantra ("you can have any colour of car you like as long as it's black") fits here - all sorts of tours, but they are all the same. You can't make any sort of adjustment. That will no doubt change before long.

Life is mostly about work and family. There's not much recreation, although we have seen impromptu badminton and soccer games in the parks in Saigon and Nha Trang. Gambling is popular, and everywhere you see groups of men playing cards or a local version of checkers in the streets for hours at a time. Lottery tickets sell well, and I imagine casinos abound if you look hard enough.

Women don't play so much, although we've seen young women in tailor's shops playing cards to while away the time. The women do seem to be the economic engine of the family. It's a status symbol to have a husband with enough free time to read, pursue scholarly pursuits, converse with other men, and gamble. Hard for a westerner to watch these women work so hard, before dawn to long after dusk, in order to allow their husbands time to laze away the day!

Other status symbols cropping up are new houses. You still see the old thatched and wood slatted shacks, but also new concrete boxes with false fronts. Height is more valued that girth (architecturally speaking) so a house that is one room wide but four storeys high is prized higher than a wide, low house. A new house, with a western toilet, an open top floor (with a huge statue of either Buddha, Bodisatva, or the Virgin Mary depending on religious inclination) and painted plaster decorations (usually doves or flowers) on the front facade means stability for the family - the most highly prized attribute money can buy. The most lavish houses we saw were in the countryside near Dalat. It made me oddly satisfied to see that the richest people in Vietnam we've seen are farmers! (Couldn't take any pictureas of them though - the bus ride was too bumpy!)

Prized possessions among the youth are cell phones and motos. These have multiplied so rapidly in recent years that resultant behaviour is wild. Poor courtesy regrading cell phone use is just as rampant at home, because we've discovered cell phones at about the same time and have yet to bring in controls. Having a motor vehicle however is new to the Vietnamese and they drive with complete lack of awareness of anyone else. Along both sides of the road, up sidewalks, parking whenever and wherever, horns blaring, blocking up the roads and passages. No one ever looks around to see who is behind or beside or in front - it's a complete free for all - just start it up and go. No wonder there are so many accidents (we've seen 8 alone). It's like children on morotcycles - millions of them!

There are signs of concern for the environment (rivers are quite polluted - Saigon is reckoned to be the 5th most polluted city in the world) and of endangered species (normally prized as a lavish course at dinner) and care for those that are underpriviledged or disabled. We succumbed to a Western style breakfast (bacon and eggs, coffee, mango joice) in a cafe that employs, trains, houses and cares for physically disabled youth, and which teaches them English and sends them off to elderly homes to meet with those who have no one, or who can not be supported by their families. There are several restaurants and cafes that promote this kind of action, mostly set up with outside initiatives (Australian predominantly it appears), so with tourism being such a big money earner it is hoped that there will be positive noises sent about these other issues - sooner rather than later.

Education is prized, and there are large schools in every tiny village. And if you look up just right, you can see children playing on computers in a house that has dirt floors and no plumbing. It's likely to be a computer game, though, but at least that's something!

Regularity Report - Special Bug Edition

Finally the diet has expanded to include bugs and insects. You knew this had to happen.

Inputs:
Carbs: Bread, rice, noodles
Meat: crickets (deep fired in batter - insect tempura), silk worms (crunchy dust with hint of old popcorn), bacon, chicken, frankfurter pieces
Fish: shrimp
Fruit: mango, banana, lychee, strawberry jam
Veg: mushroom, carrots, greens, onion, green pepper
Dairy: mango shakes, egg swirl in soup
Drink: 70% rice wine, strange hooch from tree root (also lethal - see photo), water, broth, coffee

Outputs (waxing poetic):
Frequency: **************
Density: *************
Gaseosity: ***********
Wipeability: *************

Toilet Review
Dalat Hotel: ***
Nha Trang Hotel: ***

Nha Trang Sailing Club: *******************
Multiple stops on night bus: *

Ode to Spring Roll

Oh Spring Roll,
I like you stuffed
Meat, veg, shrimp... doesn't matter
If you were a TV star
You would be Simi Sara

Days 20-21 - Dalat

Dalat is known as the city of honeymooners, with couples mooning around flower gardens and images of swans abound.

All well and good but having been married awhile what we really like about Dalat is the coffee! Alexandre Yersin, the French rennaissance man (doctor, medical research pioneer, explorer, botanist, biologist, entomologist, photographer, astronomer) introduced coffee to Vietnam. After so many wars and other intrusions, about 14 years ago, coffee plantations took off in this 'mountainous' area (and we use that term loosely speaking as Canadians familiar with real mountains). There are three main types of coffee cultivated here: Aribica, Moca and Robusta. There is also "weasel coffee" where the beans are eaten and excreted by a weasel-like animal, but the cultivation for that is slightly different! (think 'regularity report'!)

Coffee trees take two years to produce their first harvest, and continue for about 25 years, when they are cut down and another planted. The only sort of pest problem is the possibility that a cicada makes its home in the soil, where it eats the roots, but again, the tree is just cut down and another one planted. Without predators, the crop is extremely easy to grow.

Beans are harvested by hand when they are mostly red, but green ones come off at the same time. These are then spread out to dry in the sun for three weeks, after which they have turned black. A roasting machine can handle 50kilos in 4 minutes, then, after another drying session, they are roasted again and ready for market.

Five hectares of land will produce 20 tons of coffee, making it extremely profitable. Being an industry only 14 years old and a mere two years traded on the world exchange, Vietnamese coffee is relatively unknown on the world stage. But we can attest to its taste and strength - it's fantastic.

The Vietnamese drink a lot of it, usually either black with lots of sugar or with sweetened condensed milk. There are a ton of local coffee houses, full of people sipping the small glasses of coffee that has filtered from small aluminum cups, so it's not piping hot, but it is strong and round in flavour. And it delivers quite a kick. They laugh when you describe decaf.

Dalat is also know for its teas (our favourite was artichoke tea, caramel in colour and slightly sweet while at the same time delicate) , fruits (and resulting jams, juices and dried fruits), Dalat wine (which no one seems to know how or where it is made, but which is quite decent I assure you), flowers (familiar roses, gerberas, chrysanthemums, carnations and others), vegetables (mostly European varieties introduced by the French who came to live here in the early decades of the 20th century to escape the heat, as again suggested by the illustrious Alexandre Yersin), and silk.

Silk is made here as everywhere - the coccoons are destrung onto machines, which are then spun onto spools, dried and then worked into patterns determined by looms fitted with old-style computer cards, then died and dried. The left over stuff is dried above a furnace (heated with old coffee husks - nothing wasted!) then later made into canvas. The worms at the centre of the coccoons are a by-product. They sell in the market for people to fry and snack on. (Our cooking class teacher in Hoi An bought some for her grandmother - there's a photo in the Hoi An part 2 diary entry)

Another snack also high in protein is the cricket. Crickets can't jump far, so they cannot escape the shallow plastic buckets they are grown in, while being fed a diet of corn powder and water. A few of the adult crickets are put in a bin with a small round cement container of soil where they lay their thousands of eggs after mating. These eggs grow one month before hatching and the cycle continues. Again, a lucrative and easy crop, as the whole process - from egg to adult - only takes 2 1/2 months and 1 kilo of insects can realise $20 in the market. What to do with them? Why deep fry them and eat them of course!

And what meal of insects is not complete without 70% proof rice wine, fermented in buckets, put through a homemade still withthe resulting liquid condensed into a pot in the ground, but beautifully bottled for mass consumption - only $3 a bottle.

Day 19 Nha Trang

Our plan was to travel to the highland hill station of Dalat, which meant a 12 hour overnight sleeping bus to Nha Trang, changing to a sitting bus for 6 further hours to Dalat. However..... there was a road accident that backed up traffic for 3 hours, and we had not one but two flat tires so ended up limping into Nha Trang 5 hours late, and missed our connection. So nothing for it but to spend the night in Nha Trang.


Nha Trang is a beach resort town, party central, big and brash, like a budding Waikiki, with cement towers going up weekly. Being typhoon season as well, we weren't too upset about passing on it, but in the end we had a bit of a gift. The sun actually shone (well ok there was one downpour, but it didn't last long) and so we spent the afternoon walking the beach, then the evening getting caught up on email. Nice when a problem turns into such a postive experience!

On the road musings: Vietnamese TV

Every hotel room comes with a TV, usually satellite with a bizarre mix of channels. The vietnamese channels are a mix of game shows, pop idol shows, videos and news. We have also had access at various times to BBC World, BBC World Asia, MSNBC, CNN, CNN World (much better than CNN), entertainment channels from France, Italy, Germany, China, US and Australia.

Nothing says travel broadens the mind like vegging in front of Friends and mediocre US films on HBO including such gems as The Holiday (an xmas film), Mission Impossible 3 and a horrid appallingly bad film called Number 23 with Jim Carrey trying to act tortured.

Days15-18 Hoi An pt 2

Our time in Hoi An did not solely focus on being in a neverending episode of Vietnam's Next Top Model.

We also spent a morning taking a cooking class and learned how to make Cao Lao (noodles, croutons, pork, prawn crackers, beansprouts), spiced baked eggplant, stir fry chicken and veg., and decorative edible flowers out of tomatoes and cucumber. The chef and hostess of the restaurant that held the class (a private class as it happened - there were only us two) are newlyweds and making a go of it, working with an Australian organization to set up training and work opportunities for disadvantaged youth, who wait at the tables and who are all very sweet and efficient, filling your beer after each sip.

All turned out well, and the results were our lunch. The class was preceded by a trip to the market to scout ingredients. Much at the market was familiar but with Vietnamese variations, such as betel nuts and leaves, fresh noodles, various less well known fish, insect larvae (to be raosted and eaten as a snack!) The main issue with the market (which was as busy as Granville Island on a Saturday morning) was all the motorbikes roaring through with baskets of chickens, flats of eggs and baskets of veg all under blankets of tarps laced at about head height for us - lesson learned: stoop if it has recently rained or you will get wet when your head tips the tarps that are full of water over!

The end of a typhoon lashed the town with torrential rain. It had been worse before we arrived and the river had burst its banks and was a half a block into the town. Our faded grandeur hotel was right by the river so we picked a room on the second floor just in case (right hand balcony), and we could keep an eye on the river level from the corridor

Whether it was dashing about from seamstress to seamstress or browsing through the ancient mouldy buildings of this "venice of vietnam" we were always getting caught in downpours. Our umbrellas from the Bay and waterproofs from the 3 Vets came in handy. Our shoes pong as nothing dries here.

Everyone in Vietnam owns a voluminous plastic poncho that immediately comes out at the sign of a downpour. You take a second look when a bike or moto goes by with two or three sets of legs hanging down below.

Hoi An is a jewel of a town, all its old buildings preserved and no new building allowed in the centre. The narrow roads are lined with ochre coloured walls, peeling shutters, moss on the tiled rooves and decorative patterns of mould (inside too I have to say).

Regularity Report Vol 4

Amazingly the vietnamese diet and the bowels are in complete agreement with each other and getting along famously.

Inputs (looking kinda boring):

Carbs: Bread, rice, noodles, spring rolls, fantastic prawn crackers, soft rice crepes
Meat: beef, pork, chicken - did get some bacon!
Fish: shrimp, squid, prawns, crab, unknown vietnamese white fish
Fruit: mango, banana, pineapple, does coconut in a curry count?
Veg: eggplant, chilis, the usual stir fry mixed, lots of vietnamese mint, basil and cilantro (is this veg?)
Dairy: mango lassis, mango shakes, vache qui rit cheese triangles
Drink: beer, water, orange juice, coke, soups

Outputs

Achieved the most fantastic nirvana - regularity without the need for loo roll which is not always present.

Frequency: *****
Density: *****
Gaseosity: *****
Wipeability: ******

Toilet Review
Hoi An Hotel: ***
Multiple Hoi An restaurants and shops: **
Overnight bus: *
Hue Hotel: ***
Multiple Hue restaurants and shops: *
Hue Imperial Palace: **

Days 15-18 Hoi An - part 1 +addition

Knowing we were coming to Hoi An, which is famous for its tailors, I had a big decision to make. Do I get a frock of the sort favoured by the Vietnamese party set?

Or perhaps a traditional Ao Dai, elegant yet sexy? Hmmm, lovely but hard to imagine being able to wear with my lifestyle.

In the end, I chose to have my dress copied in silk, and succumbed to the lure of silk tops and trousers. Martin, who had dissed the whole idea, got religion (so to speak), and started to imagine silk shirts made to measure, then ties and pocket squares in brocade, then, oh my goodness, you mean a suit of wool/cashmere blend is only $70? 'Well, I will need a new one when I get back and I hate shopping so why not get it here and now?' Then Jennifer Louise decided that having a suit might be a good idea, as there will be some sort of work required upon return home, and one that might warrant a vaguely professional appearance.

There are endless small tailoring outfits, each aggressively targeting travellers as they pass. Fabrics are much the same in each, as are general designs, although if you want something - anything - you can get it. It's mostly silks (Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai), suiting materials and cottons suitable for shirts, buyt there are a few rather garish cottons and polyesters too.

When you've decided upon the shop that feels right, you choose or draw your style of choice, choose (or bring in, or go online and point it out) you fabric of choice and discuss any other elements you'd like, then your measurements are taken and you are sent away, after being told to come back about 10 the next morning. You do, and your outfit is complete! Should any adjustments be needed you come back at about 7pm and there it is.

Shoes too - you can have anything made or copied - perhaps a Manolo knockoff with your own name stitched along the side? Or perhaps a pair of these babies - combat boots in Chinese silk brocade!

Of course we trust and hope we will see our purchases again, as we have consigned them to the Vietnamese postal service, not really wanting to carry around wool suits for the next few months.

Additon - If you are silly enough to order a high-waisted, slim fitting pencil skirt, it may need so many adjustments that you get a moto ride with the proprietess to the seamstresses' house to get it sorted out, then a moto trip back to eat lunch and wait for it to appear all complete - now that's service!