In Celebration of the Vietnamese Salad

In the five days I spent in Hanoi and Halong Bay, I did not see a single fat Vietnamese.  Our tour guide in Halong Bay was a little plump but by and large, the Vietnamese were slim bordering on the skinny.  A lot of this has to do with their diet which is made up of salads, fish for the most part with meat such as pork and beef taking a smaller proportion and rice as the basic staple in either noodle or its natural form.  

(Photo is courtesy of Taking5 and all rights are reserved.)

I delighted in the salads which were clean in their taste often with liberal amounts of basil and coriander leaves.  I noticed also a free hand with spring onions often and garlic.  Sometimes tropical fruit was used as in the green papaya salad and peanuts delicately sprinkled on top but never enough to come anywhere near overwhelming the dish.  Vinegar seemed to be the main sauce used with a touch sometimes of fiery little chilli padis and fish or shrimp sauce.   One of my favourite dipping sauces turned up in Cha Ca La Vong, that mother of all grilled fish restaurants as a pungent shrimp sauce, slighly pink in colour.  However sadly this sauce never quite made its appearance at any of the other restaurants I was at.  It reminded me of a non-salty version of chin cha lok (that odiferous shrimp condiment famous in Malacca in Malaysia).

Perhaps, as a largely agricultural nation, their food is fresher, with the farmers having walked miles into town each morning with their produce neatly arranged in two baskets hanging off a bamboo pole and Hanoi filled with little side streets of markets.  Whatever it is, the clear, spare frame of the Vietnamese ladies riding with ramrod straight backs in their ao dais on their scooters are a testament to a diet of freshly prepared salads.  

The Sidewalk Sidle

Photos courtesy of Taking5. All rights reserved.

Being in Hanoi was a dusty, noisy experience on the sidewalk as it's often filled with motorbicycles, cyclos and scooters taking up half or more of the space and the remaining space being taken up with little hawker stalls selling all manner of vietnamese meals and snacks.

The hawker stalls are a picturesque sight with little communities forming around them and often regular customers chatting to each other and to the hawker. The food is often cooked in a largish metal pot and the customers sit on kid-sized wooden stools. They usually sit on the side of the sidewalk nearest the road, leaving the pedestrians a little space to squeeze past whilst still on the sidewalk. The country folk come along with their baskets at a tidy little jog, their fruits neatly piled in a conical fashion and always on the lookout for a customer. These hawkers have walked for miles from their farms since 3am or so to sell their wares in the cities before returning in the afternoon or evening back home.

It struck me altogether than the Vietnamese were extremely efficient in their use of space in the Old Quarter but of course that often meant the pedestrian was often forced to walk onto the narrow road, which is filled with hooting motocyclists and scooters and the occasional car, truck or minibus. The din has to be experienced to be believed but by the end of the first day, I had a splitting headache from walking around amidst this lively scene no doubt accentuated by the difficulties of figuring out how to cross a Hanoi street. (The answer for those who might be visiting, is to wait for a little gap preferably with no cars or trucks and walk out slowly into the river of motocyclists who will part like water around you. )

The little narrow shopfronts which I slipped into to escape the din were a welcome relief of coolness and quiet. They often ran deep inside and I often found myself mounting a flight of very narrow wooden stairs into a further floor deep within. No wonder the Vietcong were so very efficient at living in tunnels!

Now that I'm back in safe, clean Singapore, I miss the din of the Hanoi streets and the sense of life lived literally out on the sidewalks.   There is a sense of warmth in seeing these little communities out on the sidewalks, of little side street markets where people often know each other and settle down to drink a cup of Vietnamese coffee together as they get an early start to the day.  It's a city which grows on me and doubtless if I lived there long enough, I'd start looking past the dilapidated or gentrified shop fronts, to see more the heart and soul of the people of Hanoi, and the communities they've created in so very little space. 

The Gift of Anticipation

I have recently been planning a holiday. It will be my first visit to Vietnam so I'm quite excited. It's been a long while since I've travelled to a city or country that I've not previously been to, to a country where I don't speak the language and is not all that developed. My previous trips over the last few years have generally been to places I've been to before and where I know people so the excuse for travelling has been to renew kith and kin ties. My shorter trips have been to nearby seaside resorts and the familiarity was comforting since those trips are really just to chill out rather than be adventurous.

So for the first time in years, I'm actively anticipating a trip fraught with discovery of new sights and tastes and people. A planner by nature, I enjoy having something to look forward to, a precise date and time I leave and a good sense of what I want to do there. I'm past the age where I research things to death before I go, but it's still nice to have a rough idea of what the Temple of Literature is like and why it's worth visiting or that Halong Bay is worth the side trip as it's a UNESCO heritage sight . I've even "planned" to have days where my travelling companion and I can just hang loose and wander around the older parts of the city, replete with history and culture.

I truly enjoy this sense, of preparation, of working towards a clear goal, and of feeling it draw a little bit closer each day. Not of course that it was particularly difficult to organise since the only real questions that confronted us were whether to travel on a budget airline or a better airline. Or whether to spend one night on a junk or two. But as I approach my holiday in a similar way to how I approach most of my life, my work, my relationships, I find for me, this advent period to be just as important as the event itself.

So here's to the gift of anticipation: may it help us to remember that it is the journey that matters just as much as the end itself.

Listening to Grasshoppers

I've been thinking a lot about democracy lately since I'm reading the book "Listening to Grasshoppers" which is a litany of how democracy has allowed the tyranny of minorities and the dispossessed in India. It's a searing, gruesome account in essays by the celebrated writer, Arundhati Roy. It's the world's largest democracy but it's a sad day indeed when all the institutions have been corrupted so that it fails to function to protect minority interests. I think the tyranny of the majority definitely happens in places that are the bastion of democracy in the Western world as well with slavery, women etc all being prime examples but the sheer bloodletting is hard to get over in Arundhati Roy's book.

So I guess I'm cheerful then about living in a country where by and large it's a safe place for minority races and groups still. And I hope it remains that way although I do wonder what the best way of safeguarding that is. Pray for all our leaders then, because the temptation to use power for one's own ends can be strong indeed.

Does Winston Churchill's comment on democracy still hold, "...democracy is the absolute worst form of government except for all other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Departures

Departures is one of those entrancing, beautifully made and filmed Japanese movies. With great attention to detail and a quiet humour, it's the story of how a man deals with transitions in his life from his transition to his new job as a mortician, to the transitions that each family undergoes as they experience the death of a beloved family member. And the underlying transition of how he comes to terms with the father who deserted him when he was six years old.

It stars a cast so perfectly cast with the highly expressive Masahiro Motoki as the lead character, my heart ached for each character as their stories played out. It showed how each of the members was able to make their own transition in a way that led to reconciliation and new life even though death seems like the end. It's gentle inspiration for me and a very cathartic movie. One of those movies that help me value my own life and relationships more.