Noble truth number 1 - bad things happen

Literally the day after I'd prepared a long blog on the peace and safety and general loveliness of central Vietnam, and the day before I left for Thailand, someone broke into my friend's house and took my laptop. So for the foreseeable future I won't be online much, and won't be blogging. I still have a lot of things I'd like to share about this incredible year, so I'll post more when I can, but for now.... 'hen gap lai' amigos.


Thanks for reading

A splash of colour...

I'm working in a small village, where everyone knows everything about everything. So back in January, when an orphanage opened nearby, we were invited to visit and join the small party.

There I met Co Minh Hanh, a nun from Saigon, who raised the money to build and open the place, Chu Hung, the director, and the 15 children living there (either orphans or from families who just can't afford or cope with them). Some have physical disabilities, some have learning difficulties; all are gorgeous and deserving and fun to be around. Over the next few weeks the centre will become home to up to 30 children. The staff somehow find the money to pay for the children's meals, school fees, medical fees and clothing - allowing them to continue in education and live in a safe environment.

Since the party I've visited them regularly, enjoying games with the children and scrumptious vegetarians meals with Mrs Minh Hanh, the director, his wife and the ladies living there to look after the kids.

I was feeling sad that while the people were really loving and positive and nurturing, the building itself was very dull - typical blue/green walls, tiled floors, barred windows....  no toys, no colour....

So I asked some friends from nearby Hoi An to come and help me with a little decoration.....

A massive thank you to Yves, Matt, Stephanie, Thilo, Sue and Rob for making the trip and for bringing toys, books and colouring pencils, and to the kids at the centre for the creative input, help with the painting and just generally being fabulous.

Today I went back to do another wall. Big smiles all round.
And I got a big ol' Valentine's kiss.....

xx

More food, glorious food....

One of my favourite things to do here is to set out from the house. on foot, with no destination in mind. I love to wander around, sometimes for hours, just looking and listening and smelling and tasting. Moving slowly, with your senses alive, leads to some incredibly beautiful experiences, and some, well, slightly less beautiful ones....

Here's a few of the interesting street dishes I've found on my wanderings, both alone and with friends, over the past few months.....

Steaming bowls of bún riêu cua. This tomato, pineapple and shrimp flavoured broth is served with crab meat balls (sometimes with shrimps, tofu or cabbage), and served over thin rice noodles. Shredded herbs and beansprouts add colour and flavour, along with a squeeze of lemon, a couple of teaspoons of pickled sour veg, and a good dollop of chilli jam...... mmmmmmmm 

A breakfast favourite (particularly after a night drinking Bia Larue) is now 'Bánh mì ốp la' - a fried egg sandwich, Vietnamese style. They are so delicious it's making my mouth water just talking about them. A hot baguette is broken open and stuffed with fresh salad leaves, herbs, shredded spring onions and cucumber. Then in goes the hot egg; quickly fried with some minced pork and seasoning, the yolk broken and runny. The final touch is a good squirt of soy and chilli sauces (some would say it has to be Maggi, but soy sauce is amazing too). The resulting sandwich is warm, a bit crunchy, a bit moist, very difficult to eat with any kind of elegance, and just perfect. An incredible mix of flavours, and very 'Vietnam'.

'Xôi' - You have to be up early to enjoy this dish of sticky (glutinous) rice. They're normally sold out by 7.30am. It can be cooked on it's own or with all sorts of things added - sweetcorn, green beans, black beans, coconut, meat, peanut, cassava, mung beans..... and then on top you can put coconut, sugar, salt, peanuts, meat, fried onions, onion oil, chilli oil, egg, shrimp..... these really are the difficult decisions of life. I tend to stick to the sweet varieties (as in the picture below, which is black bean xoi) with coconut, peanut, sugar and salt on top. I find it's the perfect mix of carbohydrate, sugar (to replenish energy after a long sleep), and salt (to balance electrolytes and set me up for another long day of sweating!)

'Bánh xèo'. These small rice flour pancakes are cooked in shallow pans (8-10 at a time in the market) with shrimp, pork, shallots and bean sprouts. They're taken by hand and rolled in dry, translucent rice paper, with a heap of leaves, herbs, fresh beansprouts, cucumber, green papaya, banana flower....  into what looks like a huge fat spring roll  (I'm still teased about the first time I ate this, when I had to roll it up on my knee - I watched and learned, and now roll deftly in the air like everyone else). Then you dip into a delicious sugary, vinegary, garlicky, chilli-y liquid, which helps to cut through the oiliness of the pancake. It's incredible to watch my teeny tiny colleagues eat these things. I can manage 3 at the most (and I have a good appetite, as you all know...) They can eat 7 or 8, easily. I honestly don't know where it goes. They don't even stop talking.

'Bánh cuốn' - rolled and sliced steamed rice noodle sheets, with a variety of fillings; sometimes something pink coloured and savoury and completely unidentifiable, sometimes mushrooms, sometimes crumbled pork meat. The noodles are often topped with pickled julienned vegetables and chilli, or a fried spring roll, and drizzled with a sweet, vinegary liquid. Described in words, it sounds pretty unappetising, but it's really tasty, especially with a glass of fresh hot or iced soy milk. (The name 'bánh cuốn' refers to the rolling of the noodle sheets, so fresh spring rolls go by the same name, and are equally as good) 

 

'Bánh rán' - golden balls of a gluey rice/cassava mixture, deep fried to crunchy outside, with a gorg­eous grainy filling of bean/sugar paste inside. Warm, very tasty, and at least 10 billion calories per ball.

'Hến trộn' - baby clams fried with lemongrass, chilli and spring onion, served with crushed peanuts, fried shallots, nước chấm (a fish sauce, sugar, chilli and garlic dipping sauce) and a crunchy rice cracker to break and scoop them up with. A great snack to tuck into with friends.



This picture is borrowed from http://www.hoian.vn/  - I was so hungry last time I ate it
that I forgot to take a pic! I'll put my own soon

Another delicious snack dish, 'bò bía', consists of a pile of shredded pickled vegetables (carrot, unripe papaya and daikin), a dark thick sw­eet, caramel-y, soy-saucey, open-sesame-ey sauce, caramelised shredded dried beef (I think, although it might be jackfruit), roasted and crushed peanuts, heaps of fresh Asian basil, and again, a big dried rice cracker to scoop and scoff it all up with. I've never eaten anything like it before, and I'm sure I won't find it anywhere else (when I googled it for recipes I found that in the rest of Vietnam it's a different dish - a form of spring roll with Chinese sausage). It was astoundingly good.

A common sound on the streets of Vietnam is that of the 'Bánh bao' sellers, as they cruise around on their motorbikes. They carry ingenious dispay cabinets, small charcoal fires and metal steamers around with them, from which they pull fluffy steamed rice flour pockets filled with spiced and peppery vegetables, rice noodles and pork fat.  They're very cheap, and popular with kids.

Fresh seafood at the beach. Bliss.

This street barbeque smelt absolutely amazing. I was a bit unsure when I realised what was sizzling on it, but I didn't let myself w­imp out. The marinade ­was delicious, and I actually enjoyed the small hot crunchy birds. The fresh beer ­­was pretty good too   :o) 

My favourite evening snack is hủ tiếu from the cheerful mobile vendor up the road. Mien (vermicelli noodles), lots of beansprouts, pork broth, meat and crackling, a heap of lettuce leaves, a squeese of lemon, soy sauce, chilli jam.... I can rarely stop at one bowl (and at 15p a pop, why would I?)

Over the winter, I really enjoyed hot chè, to be found bubbling in in Tam Ky's markets, in huge vats over charcoal fires. I think I described chè before - it's basically any type of legume (red bean, green (mung) bean, black bean, lentil) slow-cooked with a heap of sugar - but there are a million varieties and all sorts of things are added. So far I've tried sweetcorn chè, tapioca chè, fruit chè, banana chè, seaweed chè, sweet potato chè, coconut chè, longan chè, lotus seed chè, ginger chè, rice chè.... but I'd never eaten hot chè before, so I had to sample it.... a small bowl of sweet green bean soup with chunks of taro and ginger and a good splash of cool coconut milk on top. Ridiculously sweet, but delicious.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

So now I'll move onto dishes I'd put into the 'glad I tried them, but won't eat again' category....

First up is mực khô, a whole dried squid, barbequed in front of me, and served with a potent and fiery jammy chilli/tomato/fish sauce dip. Really Not Good. Tough as leather, and very very fishy. I could neither bite a piece off or swallow the stringy mouthful I finally managed to rip off with my fingers. I managed to wrap half the thing in newspaper and hide it in my bag to dispose of later.

I would never have ordered this next dish, but ettiquette forced me to try it when I was invited out for dinner one day. It was either frog or toad, I'm not sure which. It had big dark blotches on it's skin, which was still very much connected to the 'meat', and lots and lots of little bones. The dogs under the table got a good meal from me that night. I'm getting pretty good at the subtle dropping of things...

And then I was devastated when I realised what I'd ordered at the little stall by my house, when I'd just moved to this town, it was very late, raining heavily and I was desparately hungry..... 'trứng vịt lộn' are considered very nutritious for children and people recovering from illness, and are apparently recommended for guys wanting to enhance their, erm, performance. They're boiled duck eggs - with an almost fully developed duckling inside. Yep.. feathers, feet, beak... I took a deep breath and managed half a spoon. With my eyes closed. And kept it in my mouth as I escaped to spit it out at home. Sorry - I'm sure a lot of people love them, but I couldn't handle it. I went to bed hungry that night!

 

Again, this isn't my picture. Mine came out dark and blurry, and I'm not about to repeat the experience to take another one. This picture comes from a website http://www.baochi.info/ if you want to see more.



And now onto Tet food....

Tet (the lunar New Year) is a really big deal in Vietnam - it's like Christmas, New Year and the entire nation's birthday rolled in one big 5-10 day party. And as with every good holiday,  a considerable part of the celebration revolves around eating. There are a lot of traditional and symbolic dishes for Tet. Unfortunately I went off without my camera for the two week holiday, so I don't have pictures of any of it! Some dishes were very good, but the most memorable were the more 'challenging' things.... a spoonful of pig brain eaten straight out of the boiled pig's head (it looked like moist blue cheese, and tasted a bit like creamy pate), being woken up with a bowl of rice porridge with a chicken head sticking out (a big honour - the bird had spent the night on the altar before being hacked up), endless bánh chưng and bánh tét - traditional sticky rice cakes stuffed with pork fat and mung beans, and chalky dry green bean biscuit/cakes. It was a real pleasure to spend time with families over this important holiday, but I have a renewed appreciation of our UK festive cuisine - I'll stick with warm homemade mince pies and mulled cider, thanks!

Well there you go. A few more Vietnamese treats. I hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as I did discovering them.

Now, what to have for tea....   :o)

Some favourite Vietnam things....

Just for you, ma, here's some of my favourite things.....(I'm not going to include foods - it'd take about a couple of years to write!)


The smell of warm damp tropical greenness

Smiles and games with the children

The patch of sunlight that comes through the mosquito net at 5.30am

Ca phe sua (nong hai Saigon) any time any where 

Stopping on the footpath to watch old nanas with crinkly faces, beady dark eyes and pointy bamboo hats carrying veg to the market. And having them smile back and stop to talk

Walks and yoga on the beach

The way it takes just a couple of years of alternating strong sun and intense moisture to make buildings look prematurely ancient, in a very beautiful and atmospheric way

Understanding the naughty jokes of the women I work with. And being able to crack some too

Squatting to play the Vietnamese version of 'Uno' with Thuy and other friends in a village doorway, slamming cards down, crunching watermelon seeds and joking around for hours on end

Riding my bike along the winding mud paths between the rice paddies in the sun

A cold beer as the sun goes down at La Plage, playing chess with Stephanie-oi (and keeping an eye out for Dons, of course, eh missus?!)

Picking salad leaves and herbs from Chi Thong's garden, as we prepare the evening meal. Being considered family enough and capable enough to help.

Riding on the back of friends' motorbikes as we zip along, wrapped in warm nights, and tilting my head up to look at the stars

Thought-provoking discussions with other development and health workers - life stories, achievements, ambitions, ideas, different opinions....

Beaming smiles when I banter in Vietnamese at the market

Hair washes and head massages (and the way it's something that all women treat themselves to, regularly, and cheaply) 

A glass of iced sweet lemon juice, with a tiny, salty, preserved peach sunk in it, on a hot hot day

Cooking experiments and hanging out watching movies and 'The Good Wife' with my buddy Sam, before a beer at her local (600m away on the beach)

Watching and listening as my interpreter works and gets into what she's explaining - and seeing people understand the concepts

Getting lovely emails from lovely friends at home. Thank you so much

The rare but deeply special appreciation of imported treats - a small bowl of olives, some brie, a glass of good red wine (as opposed to Dalat!) - a reminder me that these things are so much better when you can't have them whenever you like

The everyday enjoyment of simple local food - fresh vegetables, seafood and rice (and the communal spirit of preparing and eating)

Rice, in all it's forms, but particularly when it's just freshly cooked. A little bit sticky and moist and utterly delicious (I know I said I wasn't including food, but it's just too big a part of life to leave off the list)

Simple text message conversations with my friends Khai and Thuong in Hanoi, who speak no English at all. Despite the language barrier we have a strong bond. I like to think of them, and know they think of me too

A Mango Guapo at Mango Mango with the 'Friday family' after the stressful journey - you know who you are guys xxx

Sitting outside looking over the fields, having afternoon snacks with the kids and staff at the small rural centre

Having more, and better conversations with my parents than I ever had in the UK

The view to the right along the river from the bridge as you ride back to Hoi An from Cua Dai

Watching lightening storms from the rooftop of Cargo - with girlfriends, something dark and chocolatey and lots of giggles

The astonishing depth of love mothers can have for their children, and the un-ending and un-complaining care and attention they give them

The beautiful quiet dignity of most of these people

Observing and being infected with the child-like joy at karaoke - a few hours of freedom for people who have to conform and follow rules in almost every other aspect of their existance. singing, dancing, drinking, losing track of time....

The noise and bustle of the markets, and the freshness of everything

Witnessing the magic of my nephew's transformation from a baby into a little boy, via Skype. The astonishingly rapid development of his language and communication, his funny faces, his tummy, the squiggle wiggle, and the little games we play. Knowing that he knows me. Thank you internet, you crazy flying electromagnetic fantastical thing you

Listening to the pounding tropical rain on the metal roof, when I'm snug in bed

Knowing how lucky I am to be seeing this world from the very inside

Knowing how lucky I am to be able to leave