Holiday Horse Hotpot

YUM!


Christmas 2009 will not soon be forgotten. While many of my cohorts in Ha Noi opted to spend the holidays back home or at some tropical beach resort in Viet Nam, I decided to head north into the mountains with two friends and find the coldest town in Nam. Destination: Sa Pa.

View of the town from our hotel



We took the overnight train on Christmas Eve and crammed into a 6-person hard bed cabin for a few hours of sleep (the bottle of wine on the train definitely helped) and arrived 6:00am Christmas day at Sa Pa, near the border with China. We spent the next few days eating and walking our way around the small town and nearby ethnic villages. Although cold and blustery at night, the days were beautiful and sunny and allowed for some spectacular views.


Space was a little tight on the overnight sleeper train


Sa Pa was formerly a resort town for wealthy French colonialists and military personnel and comes complete with quaint villas nestled into the picturesque mountain landscape. Today it is a stronghold of ethnic minority groups such as the Hmong, Dao and Tay. You walk the streets among fellow tourists decked in Goretex jackets and giant packs, and shoeless children dressed in traditional garb of bright colors and dangly jewelry. As a popular tourist destination, the constant chorus of "You buy from me" adds to the background sounds of nature.


Typical grilled sweet potatoes, pork, rice, and eggs from the area

And when in Sa Pa, why not try the traditional hotpot of horse meat (lau ngua)? Well, horse pieces really. So while most of you were eating your turkeys, potatoes, and pies, my two friends and I sat down to a giant boiling vat of horse intestine, liver, kidney, and other parts. I can now say I've eaten horse...and it probably won't happen again.


Season's greetings from Uncle Ho Ho Ho

HANOI 5-7-5

My roomate Julia has recently created a website to capture life in Hanoi in the age-old verse of Haiku. I was sceptical at first, not being the poetic type myself- however, there is something to be said for trying to process life in Viet Nam through three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Mom, I thought you would appreciate this, seeing as you love your Hike-Kus. You should post one on Julia's website Hanoi575!

Here's one I submitted after coming out of a week-long stomach/digestive episode, all thanks to the wonders of my new-found friend, ciprofloxacin.

Homage
my belly rumbles
forces inside pull and tear
ciprofloxacin

One thing to Haiku about- picnic lunch on the swan boats in the middle of West Lake

The Temples of Angkor- Cambodia cont'd

Saturday afternoon my boss left to go back to Ha Noi from Phnom Penh and I made my big break. Hopped on a bus and 6 hours later was in Siem Reap, the gateway town to the temples of Angkor.

Angkor, meaning "city", served as the capital of the Khmer empire which lasted from about AD800 - 1431. Angkor was the largest preindustrial society in the world and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site with over 1000 temples. The most famous is Angkor Wat (literally meaning 'temple city'), which I tried to capture in the artsy photo below. Alas, the giant blue tarp while the temple is undergoing renovations, takes away from the godliness and intrigue of the place.

One of the 54 giant stone heads of the Bayon temple

It took me a full day to explore as much of the temples as I could (including Ta Prom, where parts of Lara Croft Tomb Raider were filmed- that's right, I took some awkward action shots of myself in front of ancient ruins).

The day concluded by watching the sunset from the highest temple in the area. Not an original idea, seeing as every tourist within a 50mile radius had flocked to the same perch, but still pretty magical.

When I got to my hotel the receptionist showed me to my room and told me to look out the window. This is what I saw. No chance of escape in the event of an emergency.

Kampuchea aka Cambodia

A few weeks ago my boss approached me with the following question: "How would you feel about going to Cambodia?" HELLZ YEAH!!! Ok, I didn't say it quite like that, but I was excited for a chance to travel outside of Viet Nam.

My boss and I got an obnoxiously early flight and jetsetted off to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We were going for a final wrap-up meeting of a Sustainable Collection of Wild Medicinal Plants project. Successful meeting and successful trip.

The national monument at night. I didn't realize I was trespassing until the guard started yelling at me in Khmer. Oops!

We stayed in Phnom Penh for four days and I did some sightseeing while, ahem, "working" from the hotel. I took a visit to the royal palace and national museum. I also went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which is a school in the middle of the city that the Khmer Rouge turned into a torture prison from 1976-79 (now a museum), before taking victims out to the Killing Fields (an equally popular tourist destination) to be bludgeoned and buried in mass graves. It's strange that these places have become the big tourist draw in Phnom Penh. Literally every tuk-tuk driver that sees a foreigner will say something like "Hi lady. I take you to killing field." Creepy.

One of the temples in the royal palace.

Exploitation of the human obsession with disaster aside, these places do bring to light the horrendous truth of the reign of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. Equally sickening is that the UN supported the Khmer Rouge during and after all of this was happening. Needless to say, my visit to the former prison was a profound and disgusting experience. But as someone I met in PP advised me, "Go to the Genocide Museum, and then afterwards go sit in local cafe, drink a cup of coffee, and watch daily Phnom Penh life. The contrast is astounding and inspiring"

At the prison

So I did, and he was right. Like in Viet Nam, another country with a war-torn and bloody past, Cambodians have reestablished themselves and moved forward with their lives and country.

Two things

1) The other day at the Ha Noi International airport I walked through the metal detector at the security checkpoint at the same time as a worker carrying a metal ladder.

The alarm went off.

Security waved me through.

2) In case you haven't heard me talk about Gaelic football enough- one of our players is a journalist and wrote up this story about the team. Check it out- I'm on the BBC!

Update from the BKK

A quick update: I am alive! Slightly bruised and battered from my foray into the world of international sports competitions. But Bangkok was a blast!

To recap, I went to Bangkok the weekend of the Oct 17-18 to play in the Southeast Asia Gaelic Football Tournament. Our team of 12 ladies, dubbed the DuraCelts (like Duracell baterries), hail from France, Germany, England, America (me), and Viet Nam. Zero Irish players, and almost zero previous experience playing the game. After about 1 month of intensive training 3xweek and a 1-hour rule-learning session 4 days before we left for BKK, we decided we were ready to take on the giant players from teams around Asia. And I have to say I'm really proud of us. Despite the torrential downpours. Our team played 7 games (7 more than all but 1 player had ever played before): won 2 games and lost by 1 point in two others. We were even the runners-up in the Bowl championship and lost by one point in an epic battle to the end, with Marion, our captain spraining her ankle in the final few minutes and another girl playing with a broken nose. We all came home with a medal. And very smelly uniforms.

Definition of surreal: watching a traditional Thai song and dance performance and moments later an Irish step dancer, then eating spring rolls with Guinness beer and signing traditional Irish songs with a bunch of drunk Gaels

Afterwards, I did 2 days of sightseeing in Bangkok with a friend and really enjoyed the trip. Bangkok is surprisingly modern, which was a nice respite from the craziness of Ha Noi. We visited the Grand Palace and eased our aching muscles with an AMAZING massage at Wat Pho, which is a temple that has been training masseuses for centuries. I got back early Wednesday morning and went straight to work and was so exhausted I had to take an afternoon cat nap so I wouldn't start drooling on my computer. Naps are actually pretty common here- another coworker who was on travel has been consistently napping this past week until the jet-lag wears off. And if you go into any cafe or shop after lunch, chances are you'll have to tread carefully around the snoozing shopowner on the floor as your peruse the wares.At the Grand Palace in Bangkok

Internet Snafu

For the diligent few of you who are actually following this blog, my apologies. I haven't posted in a while, and I'll tell you why. Ok, laziness and neglect aside, I came back from Bangkok to discover that the internet at our house was no longer working. A perplexing situation. We got the landlord to help, and turns out the internet company had turned off our internet because we hadn't paid the bill for September. INSERT SAD TROMBONE HERE.
Just to reassure the parental types reading this, I swear, I'm not that broke. The thing with bills here is that you never know when they will be collected. What happens is some late Sunday or equally random night there will be an aggressive ringing of the doorbell. Then you will step outside to find a little old lady on a bicycle or motorbike with a stack of papers. She will hand you one of those papers, written entirely in Vietnamese, and demand money for something that you're not quite sure what it is. You will give up trying to decipher the bill and hand over the 100,000 or 1 million dong she demands. And then, voila! You have just paid that month's electricity or water bill. Given the completely erratic nature of bills here, I guess it's not so unreasonable that we would miss a month.
But thankfully we got things sorted out (mostly thanks to Big J) and now I can post this message to you from the comfort of my bedroom. This also means I can stop trying to sneak some quality Facebook time while at the office.

Busy day...

Today I tried my hand at Vietnamese bargaining in the gigantic Don Xuan market in the old quarter. The place is huge and an indescribable assault on all your senses. Imagine a cramped labrynth of fabrics, shoes, purses, jewelry, souvenirs, silks, cottons, toys, dishware, knick knacks, pretty things you want, many things you don’t want, and an army of tiny Vietnamese women either calling to you to buy their wares, or else elbowing you aside as they make their way through the stalls with lunch. It’s an experience for sure, and I plan on making many more trips there. Gift requests, anyone?

Next stop and HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEKEND: the International Hip Hop Competition to watch two fellow gaelic football teammates compete in the freestyle group dance competition. The event was legitimately like all of those Step Up, Stomp the Yard, cheesy - yet makes me want to join a dance crew- dance movies. Only Asian. It was called Ring Masterz and people came from all over Southeast Asia to compete. While I was there supporting my favorite crew, I got to watch the on-stage Popping battles and a video recap of the break dancing from a friendly Thai dancer. I even got my own Ring Masterz oversized t-shirt so when I find my own crew we can take it to the streets with style. Fo real.

Then I rushed off to GF practice, as I’m now calling it, which of course takes place on a field that just happens to be surrounded by corn and palm trees on a small island in the middle of the Red River that you can only get to by driving halfway across the Long Bien bridge, parking your bike/motorbike on the bridge, and then taking a mysterious set of stairs down to the cornfields. I mean, where else would you expect to find a soccer field? Oh, and this weekend also happened to be the first annual Long Bien bridge festival with vendors, music, art, and lots of people blocking the bridge off to all but pedestrian traffic.

This city never stops.

All Things Absurd: A Montage

One of the best aspects of living in Hanoi is the absurdity of daily life.

The extreme cultural differences and my awkward attempts to navigate life here accumulate to one ridiculous existence. For example, the fact that I (all 5'1" of me) tower over people or that I am somehow now on Viet Nam's national women's Gaelic Football team being neither Vietnamese, Gaelic, or knowledgeable of the rules. Or the fact that utility bills are collected by random women on bicycles who ring your doorbell unexpectedly at 10pm and demand to be paid 1million dong for something written in Vietnamese on a 'bill'. Or that I spent most of lunch yesterday at work discussing with my Vietnamese co-workers the linguistic complexities of blink vs. wink and wobble vs. jiggle.

I am starting to get desensitized to some of the things I found wonderfully ridiculous before. So for your viewing pleasure and to remind myself of the reasons I am here, I present to you the following images.

This is how I look most of the time while traveling the city.

Viet Nam's recycling and waste management system: wooden carts and lots of grunting.

Everyone has business cards here. You're nobody without one.

People put anything and everything on the back of their bikes- like this women with a collection of giant red dog pinatas.

Sometimes pointing to random words on the menu doesn't work out as I would hope.

I frequently dish out millions of dong.

Goal #439: get my picture on one of the ubiquitous 'Star' tables in cafes around the city

So much activity

In my last post I went on for a while about Traditional Medicine. (I’m learning all sorts of interesting facts about wildlife trade in Viet Nam so prepare yourself for more posts about that). Reading a report on TM I came across this statement: “In traditional medicine systems, the prevention of ailments and disease are considered to be as important as the cure.” In this post I would like to tell you about the amazing phenomena that is Viet Nam’s culture of exercise.

EVERYONE DOES IT! The busiest times are before 7am or after 9pm when it finally gets below 95 degrees in Ha Noi. And there’s such a range of activities. From the old couples practicing Tai Chi by West Lake, to the middle-aged couples learning to tango on the street to the delightful sounds of ABBA, to the youngsters playing soccer in the park. Even in my own life I’ve suddenly become really active. 1-2 times a week I’m playing Frisbee, riding my bicycle around town, and I’ve recently taken up badminton with my friend Jonathan, a very popular sport among Hanoians. Oh, and I might be a member of the Viet Nam women’s Gaelic Football team in an upcoming Southeast Asian competition….more on that later…

I think my favourite activity to watch is the women’s jazzercise groups that spontaneously emerge in floral exercise pajamas and do a lot of synchronized hip thrusting and shaking. Some day I’ll get up the courage to join one of these ensembles. Then look out Flash Dance- I’m taking it to the streets Ha Noi style.

I googled "excercise Hanoi" and this video came up. It's so accurate and includes Bahamen's only slightly less well-known hit "Who let the frog out"

The Healing Power of...star anise?

I’ve noticed that every floor in my office building has a bowl of star anise sitting around. At first I thought it was for decoration, or at most, potpourri. Then I found out it’s supposed to prevent the spread of swine flu. Very comforting.

How? you might ask. Well, the thinking is that star anise is one of the primary ingredients in Tamaflu and so by inhaling the essence of anise, we absorb some of the healing powers into our bodies. Apparently the faint aroma of black liquorice wafting the halls and offices of TRAFFIC and WWF is enough to stop the pandemic that has infected more than 3600 people in Viet Nam.

Ok, sarcasm aside, the star anise raises an important point- many cultures still use traditional medicine as a primary source of health care. The World Health Organization has estimated that 80% of the population of developing countries still use traditional medicines. Viet Nam is no exception at around 75% of the population depending on traditional medicine- or TM as we refer to it in the language of acronyms. TM made of plants and animals is huge with TRAFFIC because of the use protected wildlife like endangered tiger bones, rhino horns, and pangolin scales. Interestingly enough, many of the contraband wildlife medicines are meant to be used for ‘male enhancement.’ My friend working in WWF recently came back from a TM filming trip that included tanks of floating seal and other penises. She reflected on the homoeroticism of it all and concluded that one day she will use Asian men’s fear of homosexuality to campaign against wildlife consumption. You know, she brings up a good point….

But as silly and backwards as some of it seems, like seal penis and star anise, maybe there’s something to be said for TM. I come from a culture that spurns most homeopathy and holistic healing as new-age hippy BS. But how do botox injections and the hundreds of oxy-cyclo-benzo-etc-etc chemicals we fill our bodies with appear to the average Vietnamese person? In Viet Nam, the government implemented a policy to equally support TM and western medicine. Imagine that! Federal support for nature’s Viagra!

Here are some facts I found interesting...

In Viet Nam, there are :

• 48 hospitals and institutes devoted to TM practices only


• >240 TM departments in central and provincial governments


• >900 TM health centers


• 1500 TM remedies are licensed by the Ministry of Health for trade

EPIC TRANSPORTATION FAIL

This has been the week of bad bike karma.

As you all know, I recently bought a bicycle. I was starting to feel like a legitimate inhabitant of this city, as I wound my way through the market-filled alleys and carried large bags of food in my front basket. Then, the other day while riding my bike home from work, the front brakes fell off. Literally. Fell. Off.
I had to ride the majority of the trip during rush hour using my significantly less effective back brakes- an exciting trip to say the least. This is an irritating setback, especially since I just bought the bike, but I have faith it will all work out, although I’m not too sure about the return policy of the random guy on the street I bought the bike from….

Setback number 2. I finally brought my motorbike home from work to practice driving it at night when the streets are empty. Last night, after enjoying an iced-tea with the three men who live nearby who invited me to sit and watch Vietnamese TV with them and say things to me in Vietnamese I don’t understand and then laugh, I decided to take my motorbike out for a spin. 20 minutes down the road, it ran out of gas and I was stranded with a dead motorbike and only $4,000 VND in cash (the equivalent of $0.25). In my defense, it’s hard to tell how much gas you have when there’s no fuel gauge. Fortunately, my friend Jon and his boyfriend came to my rescue with a plastic water bottle full of gas and saved the day! In the end, I only had to spend about an hour waiting and playing charades with the security guards at the hotel/night club I happened to stop at about why I was loitering- and I learned a valuable lesson:
ALWAYS CHECK THE GAS.

Din-din!

In an effort to settle into our new lives, and supplement our daily intake of grease and noodles with some fresh veggies, the girls of house 139A have signed up for a the Ha Noi version of a CSA (community supported agriculture). Every week we get 2 kg of fresh ORGANIC vegetables from local farmers that Julia picks up at the blind massage place near our house. It's great, although just like CSAs in the States, we do seem to end up with large quantities of random vegetables. For example, the baseball bat-sized bitter melon- I'll have to work on a recipe for that...

We have successfully made a few dinners with our fresh mystery greens, brand new rice cooker, and the two frying pans that came with the house. Tonight we made fresh spring rolls (nem)! It's actually not that hard. For a high production value short on how to make spring rolls, check out this video that Julia put together. The Food Network would be proud! (and please note my very 'graceful' tasting at the end)

A Trip to See Uncle Ho

Sept 2 was the National Independence Day of Vietnam- and Jon's birthday, Happy Birthday Jon!! This marked the 64th anniversary of the day in 1945 when Ho Chi Minh and his nationalist/communist Viet Minh declared Vietnam's independence from France (and from the Japanese occupation during WWII).

Ha Noi was all decked out in red banners and flags. Everyone got the day off so I spent it getting lost in the city on my bike. A perfect use of a free afternoon.

In continuing efforts to become Vietnamese I decided it was a good time to visit Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and museum just down the street from my house. I got on my 'USA Army' bike and pedaled my way through the throngs of traffic and Vietnamese tourists that had sojourned from all over the country to come see the final resting place of of their beloved Ba Ho (Uncle Ho).

The plaza was impressive in that overbearing way with excessively large and angular buildings that I tend to associate with communism. I think the Vietnamese tourists were as intrigued with me as I was with the mausoleum. I was even approached by a group of 5 or 6 teens who asked to each take a picture with me. I was sweaty and smelly and greasy- so of course I said yes.

If a visit to Ba Ho didn't reinforce the fact that I am living in a communist country, I recently heard from a writer friend that a couple of Vietnamese were imprisoned for political blogging.

I'm starting to consider using code words, like communism = pho.

A Dichotomous World

This weekend I bought a bicycle so I could cruise the streets of Ha Noi at break-neck speeds. Ok, well, maybe just the one speed of my one-geared bike. After some perusing of the Japanese and Taiwanese options that the shop-owner assured me meant quality (they looked the same to me) I settled on a classic Vietnamese bike complete with plastic basket in the front and a metal passenger seat in the back. The shop owner threw on some flashy stickers that said things like 'USA' and 'Amrny' and other words that don't make sense without me even asking, and I was good to go!

What struck me about this trip was my brief escapade into the Vincom towers, a popular shopping mall in the Hoan Kiem district. Inside I was suddenly transported into the high-fashion realm of Coach, Gucci, bright cosmetic counters, and smelly perfumes. This was a big change from the smell of exhaust and rotting garbage just outside. I was so overwhelmed by it all (and acutely aware of my shabby state and lack of shower) that I quickly left.

Inside Vincom Tower

Vietnam is proving to be a dichotomous country. For the most part, it's a poor developing country. The per capita income in 2008 was a little more than $1,000 and many people live on less than that. However, I see an upper class that is able to shop at Vincom and drive their Mercedes and BMW SUVs amongst the VN war-era motorbikes. I fall somewhere in between, I suppose. Even with my meager intern wages, I manage to live a relatively luxurious existence here with daily meals out and a weekly maid.

The country has come a long way into the free market world since the economic reforms (Đổi Mới) of the early 1990s shifted away from a centrally planned economy, as proven by the Louis Vuitton-toting Vietnamese businesspeople. But then again, scenes like this one of the market by my house remind me that the majority of the country still practices a non-Gucci lifestyle.

Bia and soccer

A typical street in the Hoan Kiem district. This is more of the 'touristy' area.

It's Saturday night and I'm currently watching Australian rugby on TV and the 3-inch spider running around on my wall. What else would I be doing in Ha Noi? Julia and I had a grand ol' Vietnam adventure today. We ended up walking around our neighborhood for lunch and errands for five hours. It went smoothly, except for the part when we were at the checkout line in the giant Japanese dollar store and realized we only had the equivalent of $1 between us. Oops. We did eventually get our dollar incense, scented candles, and buddha (we're so Asian now) and sweetened the deal with a kem xoi with Betty, which is icecream with sweet/salty sticky tea rice and coconut. Delicious! We did some more wandering around dinner time and I think I can now find my way to the park area nearby. Maybe this means a run tomorrow? Hmmm...
We finished our evening by stopping at a local cafe (the lady knows us well as the bewildered white girls who sometimes stop for ca phe sua da- iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk) and joined the crowd of Vietnamese men who were drinking their Bia Ha Noi (Ha Noi beer) and watching a British soccer match on the big screen. All in all, a pretty good day.

This is me riding a xe om around the city.

If my smile seems a little too cheery, it's masking the hint of concern...

Julia made a video of the walk through the alley to our house. Check it out on her blog!
http://profoundfluxpudding.blogspot.com/

Greetings from the other side of the world!

Hello All!

So I decided that a blog would be a good idea to keep everyone up to date on my life on the opposite side of the planet. I'll try my best to keep this current....we'll see how that goes.

I landed safely in Ha Noi August 7 and moved into my new pad. It's great! Four floors, air conditioning in the rooms, and wifi. My roomies are nice. Betty has already been here for almost a month and Julia just arrived on the 16th.

Week 1
For those of you who know (and love?) my awkwardness, you would appreciate the many bizarre interactions I've had so far. I'm really honing my non-verbal communication skills. I've successfully made friends with cab drivers, old beggar women, and an assortment of flavorful locals- well, I at least give them something to laugh at.
Work is going well. I work for TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. The office is small and all but the director are Vietnamese. Everyone is very nice and welcoming. Apparently I came to the office during one of their busiest weeks of the year. TRAFFIC co-hosted a conference on illegal wildlife trade with the Communist Party. It was held in Van Long Nature Reserve in Ninh Binh province about 2 hours south of Ha Noi. I bonded with elderly comrades over pig intestine soup and snails and saw rare Langur monkeys. Overall, a successful trip-I even brought back a nifty stomach parasite that wreaked havoc on my intestines for a solid three days. Hurray!!

Last night Betty and I went with some other expats to a Girl Talk concert in the city outskirts. Random, but so much fun! I'll be washing the glitter out of my hair for the next week...