2. Start thinking about how to make proper food.
3. Stop waking up at noon.
4. Start sleeping at night.
5. Stop looking at others.
6. Start praying for myself.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Halong Bay
Near death crossings/lala/CSI/jugs of joy.
Upon reaching the other side, continue forward for....hmm...quite awhile. Along the way ask for some directions at the KFC (because Vietnam does not believe in McDonalds) and sooner or LATER you will arrive at the bus station! At this point do not dally too long as you will have to purchase a "bus'' ticket to the Halong Bay. Friendly ''bus'' drivers will escort you to your ''bus'' which is actually a magic van!
One of my most memorable bus/van rides in Vietnam, the first taste of local commute! It was truly amazing if not hilarious how along the way they found ways to fit more and more people into the van, i lost count after 20! And don't for a second think cramping people in meant they compromised quality. No sir. You get first class treatment, the co-pilot is well trained in his duties to call out to you from the door, read your mind, pick up your bags before you even knew you were going to board, give you his very affectionate hand and sometimes if you are really lucky even lift you up by your waist. No extra charges=p And the scenery was as colorful as the people are. Along the ''highway'', (well it is a main road but it is lined with shops and houses I don't know whether to call it a highway because it quite different from those we have back home) you can very well continue your shopping if you had not already in Hanoi. First we saw a someone selling baguettes, very nice for making ''Banh Mi" with liver pate, pork slices, spicy sauce and berlambak-banyak other things. Then we saw 20 other people selling baguettes. Can't help but wonder if the dust and exhaust added to the smoky crispy crunch I loved in my Banh Mi. Then we say someone selling sunglasses. Followed by 20 other people selling sunglasses. Further along the way were conical hatted people who occasionally peered up from their green green paddy fields. It is the greenest green you could ever imagine, almost neon!
Somewhere along the way after many "Oouhs" and "Aaaahs", I fell asleep.
When I woke up it was HALONG BAY!!! Not really because we were dropped of at the side of the 'highway' where we were brought of motorbikes into the HALONG BAY!!! At the first mention of motorbikes, flashbacks of riding a motorbike with Eunice around Pangkor Island reminded me how wobbly my sense of balance was. But golly my proprioception must have matured since then because the ride was a breeze! Felt quite yeng whizzing down the slopes, if only I had a leather jacket! And aviators! And a tattoo! And boots! And a beer belly!
"Hai San" means seafood. And seafood means good food. Had the bestest hugest lala soup and other sea creatures. Dining al fresco, I pretended we were dining in Italy, the breeze and checkered table cloth helped too! The weather was heaven sent. This was also where we continued our devotion to "bia hoi" and had draft beers by the jugs. One particular night we met a group of 4 young Vietnamese who embodied the spirit of ''bia hoi''. The happiest lot I have seen, who found amusement in everything, and were curious enough to invite us strangers next to them to join them and showed us how it was done.
After lots of Hai San and Bia Hoi it was time to set sail, across the Halong Bay for the Cat Ba Island....
*Took our time with the long walks and hearty food, the city mouse converted to a little town mouse*
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Oh why not...
Shedding my shirt, my book, my coat, my life
Leaving them, empty husks and fallen leaves
Going in search of food and for a spring of sweet water.
I'll find a tree as fat as ten fat men
Clear water rilling over its grey roots
Berries I'll find, and crab-apples and nuts,
And call it home.
I'll tell the wind my name, and no one else.
True madness takes or leaves us in the wood
half-way through our lives.My skin will be
my face now.
I must be nuts. Sense left with shoes and house,
my guts are cramped. I'll stumble through the green
back to my roots, and leaves and thorns and buds,
and shiver.
I'll leave the way of words to walk the wood
I'll be the forest's man, and greet the sun
And feel the silence blossom on my tongue
like language.
- Going Wodwo, Neil Gaiman-
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Hanoi
Mist/fog/haze. Uniforms. Lakes. Ice Cream. Dog meat.
Arriving in Hanoi was a mysterious introduction to the country my severe lack of general knowledge had narrowed down to conical hats and rice noodles. The "foggy" weather only added more to the ambiance. Not knowing how things would be like once I crossed the glass doors onto foreign soil, I did what any self respecting paranoid woman would do in my situation: Relish my last moments in a proper toilet, with real live sized doors, and stock up on free tissue paper. Walking out of the airport friendly faces would chorus rehearsed lines of "Taxi?" They call once and they called twice before letting u off with the same friendly face. No pressure. Exiting the airport and along the main highway, were more solemn looking faces, the first of many smartly uniformed government workers. Man they looked so...clean..and important..and oh don't touch that it might be important to the government.
One of my favourite memories of Vietnam would be the scenes of the passing countryside, seen from aboard a rickety public bus, cramped minivan, motorcycle, "air-conditioned bus" etc. From Hanoi down to Ho Chi Minh, every time we travelled the scenes never failed to make me sit up, looks back, point, smile, crinkle in wonder or laugh a little. There was always something to see and the first things I saw were the tiny tables and chairs of Hanoi! The road from the airport to the Old Quarter is lined with little shop houses. Colourful narrow units are sandwiched against each other, very much like the buildings I used to build with Lego! Another peculiar sight were the young women who boarded the bus donning personalised fabric face masks. Suddenly the "foggy" weather wasn't so mysterious anymore, it was dust =p But hey, a little (hmm..maybe more than a little) dust isn't going to spoil the cool weather they had. It was perfect!
The Old Quarter is an amazing maze of shops, inns, nooks and crannies. Each of the criss crossing street specializes in something eg: hardware street, TOYS street (HEHE), silversmith street, even a tomb stone making street! And nestled amongst the web is a school, a market a theater, and a romantic lake! In Hanoi, the lake is THE (pronounced thee) place to play chess, read, have lunch, walk your dog/child/boyfriend, eat ice cream and hold hands. The serene lake is lined with ancient bald trees whose wrinkly branches go to extreme lengths to stretch out and delicately ripple the water a little. The spherical white lanterns adorning the sleepy trees and the silhouette of the bridge and floating pagoda in the middle of the lake completes the look. Did I mention the ice cream? The ice cream is good! And I still can't tell what flavour it is.
Turn your back on the lake and you are immediately brought back to the traffic of Hanoi abuzz with vespas, motorcycles, bicycles and cyclos. By a cross junction along the blacksmith's street is a little shop serving draft beer from a rubber host and keg. Sit down awhile on the knee high chairs under the huge tree and watch the motorists magically untangle themselves from a cross junction without rules or traffic lights. This was how I enjoyed my first bia/beer Hanoi, and it has become one of my favourites! Honking is not deemed rude, rather a norm/courtesy. Elderly people can cross busy roads as these without flinching. The secret? To always walk at a steady pace, the other motorists with take que and maneuver their way AROUND you.
Food highlights are aplenty! Baguettes stuffed with pork and liver pate, cow's heart in tomato soup (really much nicer than it sounds), ice cream (again), sticky pork with sticky rice, pig brains (more tolerable than it sounds), eel soup, bia/beer hanoi (again again because it is so cheap = price of chinese tea in malaysia), fried fish in noodle soup, some special yummy sweet sour and spicy salad with peanuts i no can remember the rest, and last but not least dog meat. Yes, there is a whole stretch of shops serving dog meat and only dog meat. Cooked versions are fine, but cold slices are a little too advanced for me.
As the capital city, Hanoi does not lack in museums and official buildings. Who knew a mausoleum could take my breath away? It was beautifully grand! Guards dressed in snowy white marched to and fro which such pride in their stride. And flowers were always fresh to bear witness to the love the people had for the one honoured by this monument. A war museum, a gothic church, a citadel, an art exhibition turned badminton court.
" With a tattled map, a flower from the market, and the perfect ice cream cone, I would no sooner love to get lost again in the dizzy vespa streets of Hanoi with you."
Arriving in Hanoi was a mysterious introduction to the country my severe lack of general knowledge had narrowed down to conical hats and rice noodles. The "foggy" weather only added more to the ambiance. Not knowing how things would be like once I crossed the glass doors onto foreign soil, I did what any self respecting paranoid woman would do in my situation: Relish my last moments in a proper toilet, with real live sized doors, and stock up on free tissue paper. Walking out of the airport friendly faces would chorus rehearsed lines of "Taxi?" They call once and they called twice before letting u off with the same friendly face. No pressure. Exiting the airport and along the main highway, were more solemn looking faces, the first of many smartly uniformed government workers. Man they looked so...clean..and important..and oh don't touch that it might be important to the government.
One of my favourite memories of Vietnam would be the scenes of the passing countryside, seen from aboard a rickety public bus, cramped minivan, motorcycle, "air-conditioned bus" etc. From Hanoi down to Ho Chi Minh, every time we travelled the scenes never failed to make me sit up, looks back, point, smile, crinkle in wonder or laugh a little. There was always something to see and the first things I saw were the tiny tables and chairs of Hanoi! The road from the airport to the Old Quarter is lined with little shop houses. Colourful narrow units are sandwiched against each other, very much like the buildings I used to build with Lego! Another peculiar sight were the young women who boarded the bus donning personalised fabric face masks. Suddenly the "foggy" weather wasn't so mysterious anymore, it was dust =p But hey, a little (hmm..maybe more than a little) dust isn't going to spoil the cool weather they had. It was perfect!
The Old Quarter is an amazing maze of shops, inns, nooks and crannies. Each of the criss crossing street specializes in something eg: hardware street, TOYS street (HEHE), silversmith street, even a tomb stone making street! And nestled amongst the web is a school, a market a theater, and a romantic lake! In Hanoi, the lake is THE (pronounced thee) place to play chess, read, have lunch, walk your dog/child/boyfriend, eat ice cream and hold hands. The serene lake is lined with ancient bald trees whose wrinkly branches go to extreme lengths to stretch out and delicately ripple the water a little. The spherical white lanterns adorning the sleepy trees and the silhouette of the bridge and floating pagoda in the middle of the lake completes the look. Did I mention the ice cream? The ice cream is good! And I still can't tell what flavour it is.
Turn your back on the lake and you are immediately brought back to the traffic of Hanoi abuzz with vespas, motorcycles, bicycles and cyclos. By a cross junction along the blacksmith's street is a little shop serving draft beer from a rubber host and keg. Sit down awhile on the knee high chairs under the huge tree and watch the motorists magically untangle themselves from a cross junction without rules or traffic lights. This was how I enjoyed my first bia/beer Hanoi, and it has become one of my favourites! Honking is not deemed rude, rather a norm/courtesy. Elderly people can cross busy roads as these without flinching. The secret? To always walk at a steady pace, the other motorists with take que and maneuver their way AROUND you.
Food highlights are aplenty! Baguettes stuffed with pork and liver pate, cow's heart in tomato soup (really much nicer than it sounds), ice cream (again), sticky pork with sticky rice, pig brains (more tolerable than it sounds), eel soup, bia/beer hanoi (again again because it is so cheap = price of chinese tea in malaysia), fried fish in noodle soup, some special yummy sweet sour and spicy salad with peanuts i no can remember the rest, and last but not least dog meat. Yes, there is a whole stretch of shops serving dog meat and only dog meat. Cooked versions are fine, but cold slices are a little too advanced for me.
As the capital city, Hanoi does not lack in museums and official buildings. Who knew a mausoleum could take my breath away? It was beautifully grand! Guards dressed in snowy white marched to and fro which such pride in their stride. And flowers were always fresh to bear witness to the love the people had for the one honoured by this monument. A war museum, a gothic church, a citadel, an art exhibition turned badminton court.
" With a tattled map, a flower from the market, and the perfect ice cream cone, I would no sooner love to get lost again in the dizzy vespa streets of Hanoi with you."
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