Passport Photos, a Cooking Lesson and an Introduction to Vietnamese Traditional Music
11-Feb-2014
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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....
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| Saigon Opera House |
....and the Hotel de Ville.
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| Lynne and a bougainvillea outside the Hotel de Ville, Saigon |
Dong Khoi, The former Rue Catinat
On the way back we turned down Dong Khoi and walked to its end at the Saigon River.
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| 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.
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| 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)....
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| 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.
Part 8: Siem Reap (2) Angkor Thom and Other Temples
Part 9: Siem Reap (3) Tonle Sap Lake
Part 10: Luang Prabang (1) The Old Town
Part 11: Luang Prabang (2) Back on the Mekong
Part 12: Luang Prabang (3) Elephants
Part 13: Luang Prabang to Phonsavan
Part 14: Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars and UXO
Part 15: Vientiane (1) Wats, Stupas and a Heavy Buddha
Part 16: Vientiane (2) A Buddha Park and a Fond Farewell
Great that you've got a photo of the Majestic, which is where we stayed. I agree that Pho 24 is a real find. The frogs bit reminded me that we watched them being skinned alive when living in H.K. Who would want to be a frog?!!! Hilary
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