What's different: Food and drink

Fried spring rolls with the special dipping sauce

As the end of our time in Vietnam approaches I thought I would put together some of the differences I have noticed between life in Australia and Vietnam. The first one is on food and drink.

While living in Hanoi, I have heard this saying a couple of times from two completely different sources - "Vietnamese eat anything with four legs, except the table". They also eat things with two legs and no legs at all. The more unusual foods that many eateries sell include turtle, dog, ostrich, buffalo and coconut worms. Eel, duck, snails, frogs, chicken, beef and pork are very common.

Peanuts with bia hoi

They love garlic and they love chilli. their diet consists of a much broader range of fruits and vegetables than we eat in Australia. Dried meats accompanied with aniseed flavoured leaves. Blokes will sit back and enjoy sliced cucumber with a beer. Peanuts are served almost always with beer. But here the peanuts are boiled, not roasted. They come out of their shells quite soft, almost mushy, but once you get used to it they are excellent.

There are very few pubs here as we know it, but restaurants and cafes are where you can buy beer. The local beer here is called Bia Hoi, which means "fresh beer", naturally brewed and consumed very quickly after brewing. It is quite low alcohol compared to Aussie beer and it is possible to drink 15 glasses of beer and still be quite coherent.

Food is served progressively. So when you order you almost never get your entire order in one serving. People take ages to eat their food compared to us. They drink beer, eat a little, have a cigarette, then nibble a bit more. People don't care if the food goes cold. Chop sticks lend themselves to eating slowly as it is hard to pick up huge amounts of food in one go like you can with a spoon. Knives are almost never used as all meat is cut up for you when it is served. As plates arrive on the table people almost invariably share their order and split the bill at the end. So a smorgasbord style of eating is the norm, whereas in Australia everyone gets their own plate, and compared to Vietnam, Aussies eat their food as fast as possible.

Our neighbours sharing a banquet with us for lunch

People chew their food with their mouth open and it is a little difficult at first to listen to this. People eat their food from small bowls after taking what they need from the selection on the table, but unlike Australia, they lift the bowl to the mouth and scoop in the food, whereas the Aussie way is to leave the plate on the table and lift the food to the mouth.

Meat market

Another thing that is a bit hard to get used to is the food markets that sell meat that is not refrigerated. Walking through the markets with the smell of meat when it is 35 degrees and flies buzzing around is a little off putting. We did buy meat from here a couple of times and never did get sick.

Our favourite tea lady

There are many old ladies here that sell green tea on the side of the road. Unlike in Aus., tea and coffee are drunk cold, and often with ice. I guess you need to, when most of the time the weather is so hot.

What you almost never see here is bread or dairy products. Having said that though, we lived in Hanoi in the same block as the Australian Embassy. There are many embassies near where we lived and all sorts of foods  could be bought from a supermarket nearby.

We did buy bread from here and were even able to buy Vegemite to have on toast for breakfast. After being away from home for a long time the familiar things seem to taste so much nicer.

Sa Pa

One of the villages in Sa Pa

Kim reckoned that Sa Pa was her favourite place in all of Vietnam, so with that sort of wrap we had to go there. Sa Pa, or Sapa is pronounced "sar par" or "sappa" depending on how posh you are. Sa Pa is located well inland from Hanoi and is very close to the Chinese border. It is the home of the  Hmong, Dao (Yao), Giay, Pho Lu, and Tay minority peoples of Vietnam.  Sa Pa is high up in the mountains and is therefore much cooler than Hanoi. For the first time in ages we started to feel cold. It was probably got down to 20 degrees Celcius, brrrr! ;-) Sa Pa is very beautiful too, you can  picture vivid green rice terraces on the misty mountains. As a result of this beauty, it is a favourite place for tourists to visit, and unfortunately the local culture has adapted to the tourist influence only too well.

Kim at the train station

We started off with an overnight train journey, arriving at the station at about 7:30 pm. We walked across numerous railway tracks to wait on our platform until we were shown our cabin. We had to share with a couple from Vietnam that spoke no English. An hour or so after the train leaves they turn the lights off and you try to sleep. But after becoming accustomed to having very late nights and with the rocking and noise of the train, getting to sleep proved very difficult, even though we could stretch out on a bed each. Maybe I got a couple of hours sleep, because at about 6:30 in the morning some really awful music gets played to wake people up and half an hour later we arrive at the railway station. We get our stuff and walk out and it feels cool and it is starting to rain. Outside the station we see a sign with our name on it and then wait for some others to join us before being bundled into a mini-bus with another 12-15 people for another one hour drive to the village of Sa Pa.

At Sa Pa we wait for another hour for our guide to arrive in a hotel lobby. There are young children running around making heaps of noise while their parents seem oblivious. But we are both pretty tired and somehow manage to get a little bit of sleep before our guide arrives. Our guide was a female, maybe in her late 20's or early thirties dressed in traditional hand made and embroidered clothing and gum boots. We leave the hotel and start our maybe 15 km walk through roads and bush tracks in the countryside. We are joined by maybe another 4 women also dressed in traditional clothing, gumboots and with large round baskets on their backs and they seem quite friendly and talkative. They ask the usual questions, where are you from, how old are you, do you have children ... I ask them what the baskets are for and they don't say much at all. They all spoke the best English of any group of people that we have met so far.

Tony getting the hard sell

We walk along a road, up a hill and then start to walk through the countryside on some tracks. Once the track gets a bit steep or slippery the ladies grab your hand and give assistance. Its all very nice. Except the ladies seem to lead you through the steepest  and slipperiest sections so that you really do need their assistance. Once or twice I had to ask them to move so that I could walk through the easy sections. 

3 purses, thanks, what I always wanted

When we had lunch we were basically get mobbed by heaps of them trying to sell you stuff. Of course you say no thanks, but that seems to encourage them more. You tell them you don't want and they just ask how much you pay. They drive you insane with their persistence, so you make them an offer just to get rid of them. What ever you say is never enough, so they try to talk you up. In the end I bought about 5 handbags, pillow cases and purses. As you can imagine I really "needed" these things, or more-so, needed not to be crowded and pestered. This happened at least another two or three times at Sa Pa, and in the end they are ruining the experience for tourists with the relentless selling. Either that or tourists will start becoming very rude to them so that they go away. This is a real pity.

The view from our home-stay looking through some drying corn

We finally arrived at our accommodation which was a "home stay" with some of the locals in one of the villages. It was really nice, peaceful and relaxing. We had a good outlook to the mountains and other village houses in the distance. There was another another Australian family staying with us. They had two young sons who were enjoying having a few fights and learning to make pop-guns from bamboo with the locals. The father ran a sheep farm and winery in Victoria and the mother taught psychology but as an online teacher. We got on pretty well with them.

At tea time the locals prepared as huge meal with plates of different meats, vegetables, fried rice and tofu. One of the local ladies there brought some rice whiskey which she shared liberally with us. Their guide was a local woman that told us of the customs in the village. The classic tale is how people go about getting married. The potential bride is kidnapped by the potential groom and has to go and live with the groom's family for a few days. If she likes the family then she can agree to marry if she wants to. It sounds like fun really, tradition dictates that the groom needs to be accompanied by females too so there isn't really any violence involved. This particular woman had been kidnapped six times by six different blokes before she decided who to marry. In the end she was getting used to being kidnapped, so she said to her kidnappers, "ok, I'm coming" rather than going through the ritualistic dragging, because as she said, the next day you feel all sore.

The view from the waterfall with some of the tourists

The following day we walked out, this time up the side of a mountain and through a bamboo forest. Along the way we stopped at a huge waterfall. It was pretty spectacular, except for maybe another hundred tourists there. We finished the walk at a village and were transported in a van back into Sa Pa, where we were taken to a hotel and were given a room to have a shower and relax a while before going out to walk around the town of Sa Pa. Here there were plenty of women, in traditional clothes, wearing gumboots and carrying big round baskets, but we did not buy off anyone as by now we had learned to say no, and really mean no.

Down town Sa Pa

We caught the train back in the night and got lots more sleep this time. At the train station we were met by taxi drivers wanting extortionate amounts of money to travel back to our room. But we told them that we knew prices and not to bother us and kept walking until we found another taxi driver asleep in his car. But this one was the from the reputable Hanoi taxis, and we got home for about 1/6th the price of what we were to be charged at the train station.

We starting to know the prices and the scams and how to avoid them and begginning to feel like locals now.  

Ha Long Bay

The view from Sung Sot Cave (Cave of Surprises) 

While we waited for Kim's work to start we did an overnight tour to Ha Long Bay. Ha Long Bay is a bit like Cradle Mountain, in that the geology is so remarkable that it is a 'must see' destination if you ever visit this part of Vietnam.

Ha Long Bay is an archipelago of almost 2000 islands or islets that jut vertically out of the sea. The islands are mostly limestone, so there are many caves here, and earthquakes over the millennia have collapsed some of these, leaving the high points, and eventually the area was flooded by the sea. Ha Long Bay has had human habitation since about 18000 BC and has been the setting for a few wars over the years, most recently the Vietnam (American) war, where the area was mined, which even today still pose a threat to shipping.

Ha Long Bay is a World Heritage Site and has recently been named as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. So, its pretty flash!

Among the islands

The bus trip out there from Hanoi takes four hours, which sounds like a long time, but it was only a relatively short trip compared to some we've had lately. We get off the bus and walk over to the wharf area where there are literally hundreds of boats taking tours and tourists everywhere. Here we get on a small boat that takes us all out to a larger boat which has cabins and dining facilities. We put our stuff in our room then go up for lunch and they started brining out food, then more food, then even more food. As you don't really know what to expect, you tend to eat a fair bit more of the first courses then are too full to even try the later ones.

Out the back of the boat

Then the boat heads out among the islands and we are looking out the window, taking photos and taking it all in. Eventually we get taken to a huge cave which was possibly my favourite part of the whole place. It was massive, lit up with colourful lights and probably just as spectacular as the islands themselves. Our guide De Cheng showed up many of the features or similarities to other things in the rock. There are words for this, apophenia or patternicity, like the man on the moon for example. So we saw what were snakes, dragons, monkey, and in the back of our minds we thought, "really??", but the classic of all classics was the "happy finger", which was perhaps intended to be a polite description for something else... I'll let you guess.

The happy finger

After about an hour in the cave we went kayaking. Kim and I had had a gut-full of kayaks after 6 hours of getting "dragged off" by all the young-uns in Laos. This was a much more relaxed though and you could take the kayaks inside some smaller caves. After that we were invited to go swimming. I haven't been swimming for the sake of swimming for years, and as you could imagine I am no body builder, so wasn't too keen to be walking around scantily clad in public. But it was pretty hot and humid and everyone else had gone in. So I did a big dive head first from the deck, which was probably 2-3 meters high. It seemed to impress a few people because everyone else had jumped. It was just like in the "olden days", when I was a kid spending all my spare time at the Burnie Olympic pool.
We had been told by the crew not to buy beer from the people coming up to us in small boats, or if we did we would be charged a surcharge. It has something to do with keeping the profits on the boat we were on. However, I did buy a couple of cans for about 1/4 of the cost on our boat. I bought one beer from upstairs and bought the same brand of the  lady on the row boat. No one ever knew, except Kim, who I shared the beers with :)

A fishing boat heading out

Then it was tea time and once again they brought out plate after plate of food. This time I paced myself a bit better and got to try most things. The evening entertainment consisted of squid fishing out the back of our boat or joining in the karaoke. No surprises that I spent a lot of time trying to catch a squid. I did see one and it chased the lure for a second then swam away. No one else caught a squid either. I talked to a couple from Switzerland that had spent some time camping in Australia while they also tried in vain to catch a squid.

The other happy finger

Kim was in at the karaoke and I went in to see how she was going. They offered me the microphone at one stage and I politely declined. But Kim did sing Down Under, the old Men at Work classic and did a pretty good job. What else do you sing when you are one of only two Australians? I did contemplate Helen Reddy's "I am woman" but chose not to disclose those thoughts to anyone in case I got pressured into singing.

In the morning I dragged myself out of bed before the sun came up hoping to get a good photo, but it was really cloudy and we never did get to see the sun. But still it was nice just to stare at the beauty of the place in silence.

Eventually we had breakfast and the boat headed back. Often our guide would show us islands that were supposed to look like other things, including another 'happy finger'. We sort of grinned and thought "yeah, right oh".

Luang Prabang to Hanoi

From Luang Prabang we rode a took-took to the airport. It was pretty hot, a little dusty and the occasional truck billowing out the black diesel fumes, so wrapping up the face in the Cambodian head scarf as a precaution was the go, even if I did look pretty stupid. Out of the took-took, at the airport under the blazing sun, with no wind, you sort of try to put the heat out of your mind and head into the terminal. Here we had the usual airport checks and went to wait in the lounge, where briefly, the air conditioning made it feel cool. There were maybe 150 other people in the room, which wasn't much bigger than the terminal in Wynyard, so pretty soon, even with the air conditioner going, we had the beads of sweat rolling down. We had to wait here for about two hours.

However, the monotony was broken when suddenly 3/4 of the room went up and crowded around the window. Military vehicles and army types in uniforms started gathering outside. Then a plane landed, and based on what was written on the plane, I guess, it was the King of Thailand that got out. He walked out with his wife onto a red carpet with the military types providing a guard of honour on both sides of the carpet. They got into a big flash black car on the runway and drove off. After that they lackeys unloaded massive amounts of suitcases. Then they drove off and we were left thinking "that's hav'na, I wonder who that was". Most other people in the terminal were French speakers, so we will never know.

It was really good to get on our plane. We almost had the plane to ourselves, with only about 10 other people on it. The air conditioning was working really well this time and gradually the sweat evaporated and we felt cool again.

A couple of hours later and we were in Hanoi. We had multiple entry visas for Vietnam, so had no hassles or delays getting through. Also, we are getting good at beating the scammers and had arranged for our hotel to pick us up from the airport for free, rather than pay the usual ridiculous fee that seems to be charged to anyone that doesn't look Vietnamese. We were taken to our first hotel in the historic old-quarter of Hanoi.

We spent a couple of nights here waiting for Kim to be called by her contacts in GeoVisions, who were brokering her teaching. Soon we met up with them and had a big night out, and they arranged for a different hotel for us nearby. 

The second hotel was to be our new home for the next couple of weeks. Much of the time here we just spent walking around the city and Hoan Kiem Lake. The old quarter looks nice, but is pretty much full of tourists, scammers, too much traffic and crammed impassable footpaths, so you end up having to walk in the traffic. It takes a bit of getting used to being dodged by motorbikes doing maybe 30-40 ks/hour and missed by maybe 15 cms. While it is a good place to visit, it was starting to get a little tiring saying no to almost everyone that wanted to talk to us. While here we went on a 3 day tour to Halong Bay, which is a spectacular area of large vertical islands jutting out of the sea.

Once Kim had her work lined up we found an online broker that found accommodation for us 5 minutes walk from where Kim was working. Here we leased an apartment for 3 months at $125 US per week, which includes blazing fast Internet (compared to my pathetic ADSL 2 back home), housekeeping 3 times per week and washing. It has been great living here and getting to know people and joke with them. More on our street in later posts.

Luang Prabang

After recovering from our ordeal on the bus, we ventured out onto the streets of Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang used to be the Capital of Laos and is steeped in history with Buddhist temples and French Colonial architecture. The city is World Heritage listed. We hired bikes while we were here and that let us have a good look around. This video shows some of the sights.

Sagas, slackness and sidetracking

Sorry about the lack of posts on here lately. First of all I had the blog ban to contend with. That kept me busy for quite a while trying to sort out a legal work around. For people with an IT background, if I used a proxy server from another country then it worked, but it is also against the law to subvert the Internet policies here. I'm not unhappy about that. Governments have the right to govern as they see fit. All blogspot sites had been banned as well as all wordpress sites, very suddenly, and I thought the problem would go away, but it didn't. In the end I registered the domain www.vietmanian.com through Google for just $10 and put through a redirect, and it worked first time. As far as I know I have not broken any laws by doing this as I am not using any covert means to access any unendorsed material.

So then I started compiling a video about our time in Luang Prabang in Laos. I have taken lots of video while travelling around the city on push bikes. That went really well and took a few days using Windows Media Maker. I had it finished, it was perfect, all I had to do was to produce the final video to upload to Youtube then link it to the blog. When the final production phase got to 28% through, the program just crashed, with a message saying something like "An unexpected error occurred". I tried everything, moved it onto different hard drives, deleted sections out and retried producing. Nothing worked and I felt sick in the guts with despair.

So I then went looking for alternative video production software than runs under Linux. I have found a program called kdenlive, which seems to do most things, but is a little difficult with the titles and transitions. I've had a bit of a go with that and need to do more, but I have lost a bit of motivation to learn yet another bit of software, when I had the last video perfected before the crash.

Since then I have become extremely side tracked by my involvement in the campaign to prevent the FV Margiris super trawler coming to Australia. This has involved a few phone calls to Australia, emailing various fishing organisations on the mainland, helping with a paper-based petition and setting up another website www.stopthemargiris.net to enable the petition to be printed and circulated Australia wide. I even emailed Rex Hunt last night, hoping he might give some support. Other than the effect that this might have on the food chain, I am concerned about the risk that professional fishermen's jobs will be displaced, and recreational fishing will diminish further. Its been a long time since I have been fired up so much on an environmental issue.

Other than that we are settling well in our flash apartment in Hanoi. We have made lots of friends with the locals in our street. It is always a good thing to be on good terms with the locals, especially if you want to save money. We keep buying from the same people and make them laugh. I use Google Translate on my phone a lot and can't really survive without it. Today as I write this post we are at about our half way point of our time in South East Asia, two months down and two months to go. Yesterday we booked our return flights to Australia for the 27th of August. It will be great to be home again for a few days and very sad to leave here as well. Not sure how we will handle the cold.

Blog ban!!

I woke up this morning and clicked on this blog, but nothing happened. I thought it was pretty strange, I can't see anyone else's blogspot or wordpress blogs either. I have also tried browsing using my phone, which is on a different network, but still no luck.
As an IT bloke I understand that it is possible to find a work around. However, I don't really feel safe doing so in case I am being monitored. It is illegal to subvert the system. Last thing I want is to get in trouble for this.
However, if you are reading this post, then it must be possible to create and edit articles, I just can't see them here.
I am not sure why, but it appears to be a blanket ban, it's not just me being banned. I can still post on Twitter and Youtube.
I realise now, how much I take my freedom in Australia for granted.