Blue Trees

After the initial din in the streets of Hanoi, slipping into an art gallery or two, was soothing to the senses. I entered a world with long empty spaces and up narrow staircases, I discovered wall after wall covered with contemporary Vietnamese art that attracted and entranced.

It's easy as a visitor to find the galleries as there are a few streets in the Old Quarter of Hanoi which have a gallery every few steps. I wandered into the Green Palm Gallery, and a few others along the same street and finally came across the Mai Gallery which had paintings by my favourite Vietnamese artist, a woman called Phan Thu Trang, who paints lyrical, impressionistic scenes of trees, houses and people with the colour of the trees showing the season: green, pink, orange/yellow and blue for spring, summer, autumn and winter. I especially liked the winter and summer landscapes. I also came to the conclusion that the Vietnamese must love their trees as quite a number of artists had clearly taken some pains with their trees lavishing them with a nuance, gradation of colour and suggestion of movement that caught my eye. And Hanoi had a great number of old trees in it with the roots spilling across the pavements.

Other pieces which stayed in my memory were the oil and acrylic mixes of bucolic farmhouse amid field scenes where it was more the impressionistic mix of colours that was so striking. The haunting, subtle monk or monks disappearing into a canvas of dark black or orange also stood out.  

But the surprise was saved for the last as one of the last galleries we entered turned out to be a gallery where one could order a masterpiece so to speak eg if you wanted a Van Gogh Sunflowers, you could tell them this was what you wanted and in three days, they would have one ready for you at USD $30-40 depending on the size.  Some of the work was original but the gallery clearly did their best business simply in providing a poor art enthusiast with an inexpensive rough copy of his favourite artist's work.  These paintings were sometimes simply in the style of, sometimes outright copies, albeit not fakes as they were clearly copies.  These would have no investment value obviously unlike the expensive S$700-1400 pieces of emerging Vietnamese artists, but they had their own market niche.   

So, a blue tree by an unknown artist anyone? 

Picture courtesy of Taking5.  All Rights Reserved.

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.