Thursday 13 February 2014

A Sampan through the Mekong Delta: Part 2 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

From (Almost) the Sea to Chau Doc on the Cambodian Border (Almost)

13/02/2014

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City to the Mekong Delta and our Sampan

After an early breakfast we set off down Highway 1 towards the Mekong delta. This is a densely populated part of a densely populated country and for two and a half hours we passed through continuous ribbon development.

Down Highway 1 to the Mekong Delta

Approaching My Tho we turned off the main road, and drove down a lane. Spotting three white coated individuals waiting by the roadside, the driver pulled over. One of them introduced himself as Tai, our new guide, while the other two took charge of our luggage and wheeled it off down one of the concrete cycle/motorcycle tracks that criss-cross rural Vietnam.

We followed and soon arrived at the waterside where the sampan that would be our home for the next two days was moored.

After a brief tour of the boat and an introductory coconut we set off for a stroll round Phu An hamlet.

Introductory coconut aboard our sampan, Phu An

Phu An, a Delta Hamlet

It was 11.30 and most local residents had already eaten lunch and were now swinging in their hammocks, dozing through the heat of the day. All was peaceful, except for the crowing of cocks, the creaking of hammocks and the roar of fluttering butterflies.

The houses were well built and tidy, the people relaxed and friendly, those awake shouting greetings as we passed.

Gardens full of banana trees, Phu An

Fruit grows wild here; cultivating it in gardens merely involves managing its location. Huge jackfruit hung from the trees; there were bananas and papayas, mangoes and star apples (new to us, but not for long), pineapples and mangosteens.....

Pineapple, Phu An

....coconuts and water coconuts, (a close relative producing smaller nuts but with the same flavour),...

Water coconut, Phu An

...dragon fruit budding from trailing cacti, guava, durian, pomelo and the strange an phuoc plums which had mystified us on our previous visit. There are salad plants and vegetables, too; sweet potatoes, taro, Indian spinach and lemon grass grow beside the path. The first time we visited the Mekong delta it felt like the Garden of Eden nothing had changed.

The concrete paths through Phu An

Outside her home we found a woman peeling and stoning longans, the flesh destined for drying in a local factory. She worked quickly and deftly, her knife a razor blade mounted on a stick. She told Tai she was paid 5000 Dong (15p) for every kilo of fruit delivered - no wonder she worked quickly. She glanced at this photograph and grinned, her left hand already reaching for the next longan.

Peeling and stoning longans

Children on bicycles yelled ‘hello’ as they rattled past. A child on a verandah shouted ‘Hello Americans’, which we are not, but we smiled and waved anyway. Even his parents would have been born since the war.

A small shrine sits outside most homes and incense sticks are lit every morning to ensure good luck. Some homes have tombs in the garden, the ancestors may be dead but they are not forgotten and remain part of the family.

Household shrine, Phu An

Lunch at Le Longanier, Phu An

At 12.30 – a more appropriate time for lunch in the western mind – we reached Le Longanier (The Longan Grower) a restaurant occupying a colonial mansion on the edge of the village.

Le Longanier, Phu An

The spectacular elephant ear fish was the star of the show as it was last time we lunched by the Mekong, but the ‘exotic fruits’ were modest given the wealth of possibilities just outside the door.

Elephant ear fish, Le Longanier, Phu An

Cruising Upstream to An Huu

We returned to our sampan and set off upstream. Checking our programme with Tai I discovered we had very different ideas about the cruise. I thought we were headed for Chau Doc from where we could cross into Cambodia, Tai thought we finished at Cai Rang, 200km south of the border.

We set off upstream

He phoned head office, and they phoned Phong back in Ho Chi Minh City. I am old enough to still be amazed by what you can do with a mobile phone even in the middle of a river. Calls went backwards and forwards, somebody in the boat company office was delegated to shoulder the blame, and eventually we all agreed on Chau Doc as our destination.

We cruised gently up the Mekong, passing houses and gardens, shacks on stilts, temples and churches. Barges laden with sand and gravel battered their way downriver while patches of water hyacinth drifted gently with the stream. Water hyacinth is sometimes collected and anchored and the prawns, water snails and eels living among the roots are harvested.

Gravel barge, Mekong Delta

At 3.45 Tai brought us a tray of green tea with dragon fruits, rambutans, longans and tiny bananas. I have been unkind about dragonfruit in the past; despite its exotic looks, its flavour, to quote the Rough Guide, is ‘mild, verging on bland.’ I take it all back (well some of it); this fresh and this juicy, dragon fruit too are a delight.

Tea with dragon fruit, rambutan and bananas

An Huu Market

We moored at An Huu and walked up the narrow concrete path through the bustling market.

An Huu

Everybody wanted to say ‘hello’, but nobody was hustling or thrusting goods at us just because we were foreigners and so, presumably, rich. The market was packed with fruit, vegetable and trays of live chicks and ducklings. Tai bought a watermelon and a pineapple (for 10,000 Dong - 30p) and we acquired some incense sticks to take home for Siân.

Rambutans, durians and incense, An Huu market

On to Our Night Mooring and Dinner

Beyond An Huu....

Leaving An Huu

....the river became quieter, the banks wilder and the birdsong louder. The delta has a dense rural population and you cannot avoid people for long and soon we were passing more homes. As dusk fell, swiftly followed by darkness, we pottered between fish farms, or perhaps fish smallholdings, lining both sides of the stream.

The sunsets over the Mekong

Our captain swept the bank with a powerful searchlight, finally selecting what appeared to be a random piece of jungle and after a complicated parking manoeuvre we found ourselves alongside a rough bamboo jetty where a glowing red light indicated the presence of an electricity hook-up.

The boat carried a crew of four. The captain, like Tai was in his early twenties, the other three were teenagers. Mostly they had little to do, but one of them had been busy in the galley. We dined on thick, tasty yam soup, spring rolls with the inevitable fish dipping sauce, tofu with chilli, prawns and mushrooms in a clay pot and finally the watermelon from An Huu. How it was produced under such cramped conditions, I do not know, but it was excellent. I was less enthusiastic about the complimentary half bottle of Da Lat red. Made from cardinal grapes (a variety widely grown in Europe and California, but only for table grapes) eked out with mulberry juice, it is said to be Vietnam’s best red. It is (possibly) the best wine to drink when no others are available

Dinner aboard the sampan

14/02/2014

Dawn on the Mekong

The river is not an easy place to sleep. Boats come past at any time, the sound of their engines bouncing across the still water. Lynne snuffled and suffered with the cold she had picked up on the plane and I fought an endless battle with the mosquito net.

The Mekong at dawn

The morning, though, was serene and peaceful. A large red sun rose over the trees across the river and the water hyacinth floated gently upstream on the tide.

Sunrise over the Mekong delta

In the darkness we seemed to have moored by an electricity hook-up in the jungle, in the morning light it still looked like that. Tai arrived having spent the night in a nearby house, so civilization must have been close by, if hidden from view.

We set off while I was still in the shower. When I had finished we ate breakfast on the rear deck, the captain sitting on the ‘bridge’ above, navigating us upstream. Finding your way up a river sounds easy, but the Mekong delta has two main streams, which are huge, many dozens of smaller branches, which are still substantial, and thousands of backwaters. We were making for Sa Dec, which meant heading diagonally across the delta.

Past fish farms to Sa Dec

The youthful cook had produced a professional looking omelette. There was the usual regrettable sweetish bread, pineapple jam that was more jam than pineapple, yoghurt and, almost unforgivably, synthetic orange juice. All shortcomings were redeemed by the fresh pineapple from An Huu market.

Sa Dec

Marguerite Duras, The Lover and the 'Ancient' Chinese House

We reached Sa Dec at 8.00. French writer Marguerite Duras spent part of her childhood here and in 1929, at the age of 15, embarked on a doomed love affair with the son of a rich Chinese businessman. She tells the story in The Lover a semi-autobiographical novella published in 1984 and filmed, partly on location in Sa Dec, in 1992.

Arriving in Sa Dec

Our first stop, very near the jetty, was at the ‘Ancient Chinese House’ which, being a 19th century construction, was hardly ‘ancient’, but was once the home of Huynh Thuy Le, the real life lover of the teenage Duras. Both Tai and the guide at the house assumed we had seen the film - unlike most Vietnamese (the authorities consider the sex scenes too graphic). Actually neither of us has, but we have read the book (a self-indulgent analysis of a self-obsessed young woman – I hated it, though others clearly disagree as it won the Prix Goncourt).

The 'Ancient' Chinese House, Sa Dec

Market and Temple

It is a pleasant old house, but did not detain us long and we left for a walk through the market, pausing as Tai bought star apples and mangoes. The variety of fruit and vegetables available was, as always, staggering, even aloes can be pressed into culinary service. Morning glory is a popular vegetable and is often sold chopped with banana flowers as a salad. The banana is a versatile plant, not only can the fruit and the flowers be eaten, but the inside of the young shoots is used as a vegetable.

Tai buys star apples, Sa Dec

There was plenty of fish available, but little meat as it was the first full moon after Tet (New Year) which is a time to abstain from meat.

Sa Dec

Leaving the market we turned down the main street, lined with frangipane, and then right again to complete a circuit back to the river. On the way Tai dropped into a temple and made an offering to mark the day, and Lynne followed suit.

The appropriate thing to do on the first full moon after Tet

Back on the boat....

Returning to our boat, Sa Dec

...we continued north through the urban straggle, past a Cao Dai Temple and the ‘flower village’ which supplies the florists of Ho Chi Minh City – though the gardens were out of sight.

Cao Dai temple, Sa Dec

Sa Dec to Chau Moi

Beyond the houses a series of rice processing plants lined the bank. Conveyor belts churned out sack after sack of polished rice or spewed piles of husks onto waiting barges.

Rice polishing factories, Sa Dec

Brickworks

Brick kilns line the next section of river and the husks are used as fuel in their kilns.

Brick kilns, Sa Dec

Brick making is almost a cottage industry. The workers, overwhelmingly women, earn 80,000 Dong (£2.50) for an 8-hour day. I imagined our daughter’s reaction when we were told they have two hours off at lunchtime to ‘go home and cook a meal for their husbands and children.’

Making bricks, Sa Dec

Star Apples

Back on board we had a cup of tea and ate the star apples. With a texture somewhere between pear and mango, they have an intensely sweet, milk-white juice (they are also called ‘milk apples’), but have no pronounced flavour.

Star apples

It took an hour to clear the urban/industrial straggle north of Sa Dec, but eventually we reached a stretch of water bordered by trees. Dwellings lurked among the vegetation, some simple shacks others much grander, though each had its own access to the water.

Each house has its own access to the water

For a kilometre or so every house harboured a squadron of pale coloured ducks who enthusiastically paddled out to meet us.

Greeted by ducks

We reached Chau Moi where one of the crew went ashore in the rowing boat to fetch our lunch - slices of barbecued pork in chilli and lemongrass sauce, fried fish in a rather over-salted batter, pak choi and rice.

Floating market, Chau Moi

From Sa Dec we had been following smaller, though still substantial channels. We now emerged into the main western branch of the Mekong, so immensely wide and deep that ocean going ships can dock here.

Ocean going ships, Chau Moi

The local ferries are bigger too, carrying cars as well as motorcycles, reminiscent of the Washington State Ferries.

Ferry, Chau Moi

Tiger Island

We reached Tiger Island around 4pm. The plan was to row up a side stream, disembark, walk to the museum of Ton Duc Thang, Vietnam’s second president, walk through the village to a house which would provide our dinner, then be rowed back.

Like lunch, dinner would be a takeaway. We could have stayed on the island and dined there, but we were still four hours from our destination and it seemed better to leave at six and end the day’s sailing around 10.

Water Hyacinth

Our plan was thwarted by water hyacinth. The side stream was already densely packed and as we watched, more and more drifted in. After some indecision we climbed into the small boat and set off. One lad stood at the back rowing with two oars in the local scissor-like manner, one sat at the bow clearing the way and a third gave advice. Tai’s job was to translate the advice so Lynne and I could nod sagely.

They made a valiant effort but we did not get far. A small barge carrying concrete slabs tried to go up the channel, but even with a powerful outboard it was beaten back.

If this couldn't get through, we had no chance

We tried to extricate ourselves by going round the edge of a fish farm, but the last three metres was just too tightly wedged. Other possible exits were barred by a fish trap, a sandbank and a banana trunk tethered across the waterway.

Working our way round a fish farm

We eventually squeezed our way free, then successfully fought through a smaller patch to the end of a long jetty. We disembarked right beside Ton Duc Thang’s museum and wondered why we had been bothering with the blocked channel.

Reaching the jetty, Tiger Island

Never had so many people made so much effort to get us to a museum dedicated to somebody we had never heard of. It was closed by the time we arrived, though we were able to visit his shrine and light an incense stick. Ton Duc Thang became president of North Vietnam on the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969 and then of a united Vietnam from 1976 until his own death, aged 91, in 1980. During his time in office the presidency was largely a ceremonial office and he was never a key policymaker.

Ton Duc Thang's Museum, Tiger Island

Tai’s bowing in front of the great man’s bust inevitably reminded us of North Korea and our being required to bow to the statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The Vietnamese version is much more modest and there was no pressure on us to bow. Afterwards we walked through the village. Unlike North Korea it was not a show village and was full of normal people, many of whom were the keen to say ‘hello’ and offered us big, beaming smiles.

The village, Tiger Island

Having secured the boat the crew caught up with us and we walked along like minor celebrities with a small posse of minders.

The house that was providing our dinner was a solid wooden construction behind a beautiful garden. We sat on the verandah, drank tea and ate sweets while the crew rounded up our food and took it back to the boat.


The house that provided dinner, Tiger Island

In due course we followed them and found the captain had managed to bring the large boat to the jetty. We hopped aboard and set off.

Our Valentine’s Day dinner was eaten at the stern of the boat as we slid up the now dark Mekong under a full moon. Pumpkin soup with pork balls, stewed pork with pineapple, and pork in a clay pot with fish sauce was perhaps an overly piggy feast, but there was also a fish lying on a bed of chopped tomatoes. With papaya to finish there was enough food for four, and we washed it down with a half bottle of Da Lat white, a wine which makes Da Lat red seem classy.

We pottered on for some time in a narrower channel some 50m wide through an urban and then suburban landscape. Karaoke bars are popular throughout Vietnam, and we could hear each one for 200metres either side. The standard of singing plumbed depths even for Karaoke and every time we passed one we hoped the captain would not stop here.

We eventually moored within earshot of, not karaoke, but a live performance of Vietnamese folk music. The music was pleasant, the singing in tune but it finished at 10.30 – early to bed, early to rise is the Vietnamese way.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
 

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Return to Saigon, Cookery and Music, Part 1 of Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

Passport Photos, a Cooking Lesson and an Introduction to Vietnamese Traditional Music

11-Feb-2014

Vietnam

Our morning arrival in Ho Chi Minh City followed a journey which had been long and tedious, though otherwise unremarkable. I am not complaining, I can think of few memorable experiences that would be welcome on a plane.

As we trundled our cases through customs Lynne realised that the photographs for our Cambodian and Lao visas were in her other handbag – the one she had not brought with her. This presented a problem that needed solving before we left the big city, so as Phu the driver piloted us across the city to our hotel we sought advice from Phu the guide.

Acquiring Passport Photographs

We checked-in, had a nap and ignored lunchtime – it just did not register on our body clocks - and then Phu (the guide) returned. Advice, he had told us was not enough, we would need help.  He was right, the solution involved rather more than finding Tesco’s and shovelling coins into a slot. Vietnam has no Tescos – nor any coins - and we would have had difficulty finding a photographer.

We took a taxi across the city centre (the area still known as Saigon) to a shop-front photographer.

After enquiring what they were for, our pictures were taken and pulled up on a computer. Before cropping to size, the photographer deftly removed the inappropriate background and then the bags from under my eyes. This was kind of her – after an overnight flight they were at their most capacious – but it was a passport photo and those bags are permanent features of my saggy face. She had less work to do on Lynne, but we both looked ten years younger when the photos were printed.

Lynne is prepared for her photograph, Saigon

Dinner with Phong

We dined with Phong, the manager of Haivenu Travel's Ho ChiMinh City branch and the man who did the hard work for this trip and our 2012 visit. We ate at Hua Toc one of half a dozen restaurants in a quiet courtyard off a busy street. The clientele were mainly tourists, with a sprinkling of Japanese businessmen – the city centre is home to many Japanese expats.

Spinach & Green Mango Salad, Hua Toc, Saigon

Phong had arranged an upmarket Vietnamese menu, fishcake wraps with spicy fish sauce, spinach and green mango salad with barbequed chicken and shallots, stir fried fillet of beef with watercress, pan fried tilapia with sautéed pineapples and finally banana and sago pearls in coconut cream.

Pan fried tilapia with pineapple, Hua Toc, Saigon
It may look like fish and chips, but the 'chips' were definitely pineapple

It tasted as well as it read and we were just awake enough to appreciate it. Thanks are due to Phong for the meal and the meticulous organisation of our entire journey.

Lynne & Phong, Hua Toc, Saigon

Before bed we watched ten minutes of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’. Being a millionaire in Vietnam is no big deal (1 million Dong buys around £30) so maybe they use a different title. The top prize was written as 150,000 (presumably 150,000 thousand, less than £5000). ‘Ask the Audience’ involved quizzing individual audience members, but otherwise the format and music were unchanged.

12-Feb-2014

With Chef Mai at Banh Tanh Market

A good night’s sleep put my mind and body into the same time zone, though Lynne was less refreshed.

As arranged we met Chef Mai at Ban Thanh market at 8.30 where we were joined by a French foursome for a look at the produce before our cooking lesson.

Tropical fruit was abundant – and of high quality – exotic looking dragon fruit, pineapple, papaya, juicy mangoes, mangosteen, rambutan, longan, huge pale green custard apples and piles of durian smelling, as durians do, like overfull chemical toilets left out in the sun.

Durians and dragonfruit, Banh Thanh Market, Ho Chi Minh City

Vegetables come from the cooler upland regions round Da Lat, 200km to the North. Many were familiar, but we had not previously seen lotus roots in their natural state (though we have often eaten them) or elephant ear plants whose stalks are used in soups.

The meat section was also high quality and included those parts of the beast we have difficulty finding at home; tails, tripe and huge marrowbones – though what you would do with cows’ tendons was a mystery

Impressive ox tails, Ban Thanh Market, Saigon

There were many types of fish, mainly from the Mekong delta, some brightly coloured. Tilapia and bassa are becoming increasingly well-known at home, but many others were new to us and have no English names. There was fresh fish – much of it still alive – piles of dried fish and, incongruously, packs of imported salmon.

A selection of fish, Ban Thanh Market, Saigon

I am not a vegetarian and I know animals die for my food. I am not squeamish - I can skin and butcher a rabbit when required – but I am not uncaring. I believe it our duty to ensure the animals we eat live a natural life and have a quick death. I have often enjoyed eating frogs (they really do taste like chicken) and if there are many small, often sharp and shattered, bones, well that is a minor inconvenience. I had heard that frogs are not well treated in eastern markets but this was the first time I had seen a woman sitting on a low stool using a large pair of scissors to cut the legs off live frogs. Like Lynne and our French companions I averted my eyes and hurried past, which seems an inadequate response, but I don’t know what else we could have done. I will not eat frog again.

Soft shell crabs, Ban Thanh Market, Saigon
Just so we can all take our minds off the frogs

Cooking at the Mai Home Kitchen

A short drive across town brought us to the Mai Home kitchen, more elegantly (or pretentiously) styled the Saigon Culinary Arts Centre.

Crossing the city it was clear that the shoals of motorcycles are as vast and undisciplined as they were two years ago, but I do not remember there being so many sites cleared for new building. Vietnam’s economic miracle is well behind China’s, but momentum is gathering.

At the Mai Home kitchen the six of us were guided through the preparation of fish spring rolls, green papaya salad with pork and shrimps and a Vietnamese chicken curry.

At our work stations, Mai Home kitchen, Saigon

We bought rice paper from a ‘factory’ in Cai Be two years ago but my attempts at producing spring rolls have been lamentable. Now I know how to make them so they do not disintegrate in the pan I will have another go.

Now those are proper spring rolls, Mai Home kitchen, Saigon

We also made the sweet chilli dipping sauce that accompanies most meals in Vietnam and Thailand. At home we buy it ready made, but the ingredients, sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, garlic and chillies are readily available so we can make our own. In England we can only easily get Thai fish sauce which (Mai told us) is made from tuna, while the Vietnamese version, like Worcester sauce, is based on anchovies.

The filling for the spring rolls involved snake-head fish and dried ear-mushroom, but we can find suitable substitutes.

The same cannot be said of the green papaya salad, the main ingredient is irreplaceable. Green papaya is shaved by hand into spaghetti-like strips and used as a salad vegetable. The papaya, with mint and other herbs, is topped with ready cooked pork and prawns (tom and thit in Vietnamese) and eaten with the dipping sauce.

The chicken curry was the only actual cooking we did, the rest was chopping and mixing. It was a simple dish relying on coconut milk and a commercial curry powder. Those who like to eat wet coconut based curries (and that includes me) would be better off in Thailand - or southern India - rather than Vietnam.

Eating our morning's work, Mai Home kitchen, Saigon

For lunch we ate our morning's work, and pretty impressive it was, too, even if I say so myself. We must have been good, we have certificates to prove it.

And we got certificates! Mai Home kitchen, Saigon

The Truc Mai Music House

In the afternoon we went to see another Mai, this one a musician rather than a chef. At the Truc Mai Music house, Tuyet Mai and her son Nhat played a variety of traditional instruments with great skill and panache.

Mai on a dulcimer (of sorts) accompanied by Nhat on monochord, Truc Mai Music House, Saigon

The monochord (if it has a Vietnamese name nobody used it) we have seen before. I could understand how manipulating the gizmo on the left tightened or slackened the string and allowed the performer to bend a note or apply vibrato, but I could not see how plucking the single string nearer to the gizmo raised the tone. After the performance I had a go and learned that as you pluck with the bamboo pick you lay the side of your hand on the string, thus shortening it and raising the note.

Letting an idiot loose on a monochord, Truc Mai Music House, Saigon

She played a series of bamboo tubes by clapping at one end to send a puff of air through the tube. Lynne and I could sometimes produce a note, sometimes no sound at all. Mai produced complex tunes with apparent ease.

The skilful can produce a tune from this while the beginner struggles to get a note
Truc Mai Music House, Saigon

Another set of bamboo tubes were set up as though you might rig a sail on them and struck with a double ended striker so both ends could be used at once or in rapid succession. Sliding the striker over the tubes produced a mellifluous glissando.

A sort of a bamboo xylophone, Truc Mai Music House, Saigon

The finale is best described as Fred Flintstone’s xylophone; tuned slabs of rock struck with wooden hammers. It looked crude, but sounded anything but.

Back to Bank Tanh Market via the Opera House and the Hotel de Ville

One CD purchased, we returned to the hotel for a coffee and then strolled down to the market to buy some coffee beans to take home. Our walk took us past the opera house....

Saigon Opera House

....and the Hotel de Ville.

Lynne and a bougainvillea outside the Hotel de Ville, Saigon

Dong Khoi, The former Rue Catinat House

On the way back we turned down Dong Khoi and walked to its end at the Saigon River.

Dong Khoi, the former Rue Catinat, Saigon

Dong Khoi was known as the Rue Catinat when it was the heart of French colonial Saigon. It was here that Graham Greene’s Thomas Fowler lived, where he met The Quiet American and drank Dubonnet with French policemen and American diplomats. The street has mirrored the fortunes of Saigon. As its colonial elegance faded, the American occupation turned it into a street of brothels and seedy bars. Under the first communist regime it became drab and run down, then came liberalisation and the Vietnamese economic miracle, so now it boasts names like Armani and Louis Vuitton. The Majestic Hotel, the shop called 'Nguyen Frères' and the small Hotel Catina (sic) are the only obvious remnants from colonial days.

The Saigon River at the end of Dong Khoi

In the evening we returned to Dong Khoi to eat, not at the Majestic (French food, French prices)....

The Hotel Majestic on the corner of the Rue Catinat (Dong Khoi)

...but at Pho24, a nationwide fast food chain which, unlike Kentucky Macpizza Whoppers is essentially Vietnamese and relies on fresh ingredients rather than trans fats. Cheap and wholesome, it was exactly what we needed.

Following the Mekong through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
 
Part 3: Chau Doc