Foreign Indulgences

Okay, as much as I ranted about the local food in the previous post, I must admit hauling along quite a number of what you could call “ foreign essentials”, things which are either too dear in Vietnam, too difficult to source out or just impossible to find (for reasons of either legality or culture). Turn the cart upside down, though, and they could be called a Westerner’s “lavish indulgences”, or more harshly; unnecessary excess crap to lug along on an already long flight. Of course I prefer the former term.

Be it as it may, I’d like to share with you now these fine items which are of various values; sentimental, monetary, sanitary or just plain sanity.

First on the list was an essential collection of 20 cds. I think Sarah and I have managed to put together a fine assortment of new albums , cheesy treffers (as they call rubbish music that’s only good for drunken singalongs in South Africa), local (as in Aussie and Saffa) or nostalgic albums. Classified geographically, these are:

Australian: Xaviar Rudd and Izintaba (Koonyum Sun), John Butler Trio x2 (April Uprising and Three), The Whitlams (Love this City), Eskimo Joe (A Song is a City) and Powderfinger (Golden Rule).

South Africa: Jack Parow (Self-titled), The Rudimentals (Set it Proper), Valiant Swart (Die Mystic Boer), The Dirty Skirts(On a Stellar Bender), Max Normal.TV (Good Morning South Africa), Springbok Nude Girls (Goddank vir Klank) and Black Mango Presents (Breathe Sunshine Vol 3).

International: The Flaming Lips (The Soft Bulletin), Florence + the Machine (Lungs), Pendulum x2 (Immersion and In Silico), Kings of Leon x3 (Because of the Times, Youth and Young Manhood and Aha Shake Heartbeat), Putumayo Presents (Sahara Lounge).

Cheesy World Cup Fever induced purchases: African Musical Safari, K’Naan (Troubadour), Listen Up! (The official 2010 World Cup Album).

*A quick endorsement from Metallica: If you haven’t heard of any of the above-mentioned artists go out and illegally download all of their music (except for the ones in the last category which are all pretty naff), and send the royalties to the Royal Society for Protection of African White Tigers.

Next on the list, (and never far from my mind) was foodstuffs: From South Africa and still in the mail are a fine range of Ina Paarman’s spices, stocks, and sauces. Sarah reckons Ina is like South Africa's very own Martha Stewart, but without the criminal record. Also, choccies (think Tempo and Bar One), four small potjies – quintessential SA outdoor cast iron cooking pots).

Our Australian amassment contained…wait for it, Tim Tams! Mint Slice! Gigantic Kit-Kat Chunky bars! Now before, you say: “But you can get Tim Tams in Vietnam, stupid.” As any discerning chocololic worth his block clearly knows, they’re just. not. the same, so rather keep quiet as not to look like you don’t know your cacao from you co…coffee. They’re made in Malaysia where different criteria are used to determined deliciousness, or is it deliciosity?

Anyways, sadly but not unsurprisingly none of the above consignment made it to Week Two of “The Return”. A half-jack of mezcal complete with two alcohol-bloated little worms only just made it into Week Two.

There were also numerous toiletries: think face cleansers without whiteners – I know it’s hard to imagine – and things that won’t make you break out in a rash and hives from just looking at the chemical ingredients on the label.

There were heaps of shoes in Western sizes, including a pair of gumboots (for Saigon downpours), and “real” football boots. What?! You mean the boots they sell for a hundred thousand uncles on Huyen Tran Cong Chua Street aren’t real?! The fact that your toes were sticking out of them after your first kickaround should’ve made that clear, buddy…

Books! I wish I could list all the books we had, but sadly the two pristine rectangular boxes we sent from Australia by post, containing our books, teaching material and other odds and ends arrived a few days after us, battered, bruised and misshapen sans most of our books. Luckily a lot of Sarah’s cook books were saved the culling and I’m pretty sure it’s not the first time Salman Rushdie’s novels haven’t made it into a country. A lot of our teaching materials were also rifled through and some removed (at least we’ll soon have a new generation of Vietnamese postal workers getting 7.5 on their IELTS tests).

Now to what I believe to be the most important items: A Bundaberg Rum Wallabies overall (great for messy nights out with the boys), my silk SA flag, as well as beanie and scarf and the ultimate South African cultural weapon: Our modern day assegai, that much maligned, often misunderstood hornet's nest in a stadium, the bane of all English supporters existence at the World Cup (or possibly a tight second after the Uruguayan referees in the second round match against Germany). The vuvu. The vuvuzela. 

Lavish indulgences? Please, mate. Essentials.

The food, the glorious food!

To pick up where I left off on Friday’s post, there isn’t a single raison d'être for returning to Saigon, but rather the amalgamation of factors which I touched on. Yet, one item that is high up the list, peeking over the top edge with greedy little eyes is this country's gastronomic delights, in extreme plurality.

Despite being a self-confessed hedonist, okay, honestly more of a glutton than a bon vivant, I haven’t had time to revisit and resample all of the epicurean delicacies we so salivated over in Australia. Sarah and I would sit down, with a bucket tied under our chin and knotted behind our ears, which acted as a catchment area for our drool (remember Australia is in a serious long-term drought and any moisture whatsoever is as welcome there as it is on Frank Herbert’s Dune). We’d then remember all our old haunts and reminisce about our favourite dishes:

“Oh, do you remember the ca ri hai san at that com binh dan with the purple taro soup side?” *slabber slabber slobber* or “Beef and cheese, beef and cheese!” that coming excitably from me thinking about that delectable cholesterol bomb at Barbecue Garden, as I dribbled salubriously into my bucket. Memories rekindled and drool arunning, we’d go on for quite a while, before I stomachs would join the festivities, pounding at the door, asking to be fed in substance and not in spirit alone.

In the nine days that we’ve been here, I’ve managed to gulp down mounds of noodles in various forms: mi quang, hu tieu, mi xao and more pho than you can throw a rubber chicken, infused with cilantro and rubbed down with mint, at. I’ve eaten pho probably every day for breakfast, otherwise for a snack or lunch. I’ve got bean sprouts emerging from my nostrils like a newly seeded wheat field, beef brisket on the brain and broth sloshing around in my stomach like a LG top-loader on high. I’ve had goi cuon, bo kho, banh xeo, bo bit tet, com heo nuong and xiu mai, suon heo, soft-shell crab covered in what looked like green Rice Krispies, green mango salads, green papaya salads, freshly baked banh mi's and a steamy, fluffy banh bao filled with well, thap cam, a lot of interesting bits and pieces, some identifiable, some not. 

 There's a marinated rubber chicken submerged in there somewhere.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s still to come. I’m watching and waiting in the dark, biding my time, sourcing out the best bun cha (my all-time fav) and pho Hanoi joints, like a serial killer stalking his prey…I think I need a bucket again, the dribble is making rivulets down my chest and pooling in my belly button.

Any recommendations as to your favourite Hanoi food spots in Saigon? I’d love to hear them.

Adios en lekker eet.

Flour Power

Bot Chien is a favourite pre- and post-class snack for Saigon’s school kids and you’ll nearly always find a vendor eagerly parked outside a school or language centre. I first discovered it when I was working at a school up in Tan Binh District about three years ago as I headed outside for a between-class ca phe da. I saw dozens of little backpacked, black heads clamouring around a single steaming cart, elbowing for space and right of way. My curiosity piqued, I went over, towering over the children to see a vendor furiously scrambling, tossing and adding ingredients to a boiling hot stovetop, colours and flavours flying and I decided right there I had to have it.

Bot Chien is basically fried rice flour (bot gao), mixed with a bit of normal flour, salt and water. When it firms up, it’s cut in lego-sized blocks and fried in a super hot pan. Nui, or macaroni, is added for that extra carb hit, tossed with chopped shallots and onions and an egg is cracked and swirled in to add some consistency and colour as well as to hold it all together. It’s served on top of shredded radish with chilli sauce (tuong ot) and soya sauce (nuoc tuong) for flavouring, and yes it needs a lot, but nothing a bit of saucage overkill can’t cure.

This is a great hold-over between meals, when your stomach is just groaning for some carbs or, more importantly, a greasy hangover snack. From a parental point of view, it will ensure your lovely, darling child will turn into a lucky little Buddha faster than you can say ‘cholesterol issues by age 18’.The friendly vendor in this photo fries her trade outside Marie Curie High School in District 3 and the price for a non-Beer Lao t-shirt wearing foreigner is 10 000 Ho’s, VND.

Thing's I've eaten

With time running out in the country I’ve come to love with a smirk on my face and a tasty banh mi in the hand, I’ve started reminiscing on the things I’ve seen, eaten, and experienced, places I’ve been, people I’ve laughed with and at and all the fillings in between that make everything just, well, bloody good. Now, I’m not trying to compare myself with Andrew Zimmern, but I think it would be worth diarising, before I forget it, some of the random things I’ve managed to put in my mouth, but not always managed to keep down. Caz and anyone who hasn’t experienced the crunchy, juicy goodness of a feathered, baby duck foetus crackling between their molars look away now. From the top.

· Snake. Cobra snake. Head to tail. Bile and blood in shots and crunchy bones. All of it. It had beady eyes so it had to go.

· Fried black scorpion. Tasted like bacon.

· Ox penis. Cartilagy grossness.

· Goat hotpot with pig’s brains. Erm, well, in hindsight I’m not sure the brains needed to be added.

· That fermented duck egg with the little baby (beak intact) inside – hot vit lon it’s called around here – and the worst part, the part that hits the gag reflex, isn’t actually the bits with substance, it’s the sauce that floats on top when you crack it open. It’s like the eggiest omelette you’ve ever had. Like a hundred eggs concentrated in one – very potent.

· A big duck head.


· Fried chicken feet. They chow these in South Africa too – in Kayamandi they call them walky-talkies because you can tie a string around them and wear them around your neck.

· A nice cup of intestine and innards soup. I’m not actually sure what animal it was though.

· A few metres worth of grilled eel. My friend Danga actually has a bit of a thing for these eels and tends to order them whenever they’re available. As well as fish. Lots of them. Jesus can be glad Danga wasn't around when he pulled that stunt with the bread and fish cause disciple John may have had to omit that certain miracle from the good book if he was.


· Frogs. Crumbed and fried in butter, they taste like fishy chicken.

· Some kind of fowl. We’ve actually had this twice at a local restaurant around the corner. The waiter brings it live to the table to make sure that THIS is the bird you’d like to have slaughtered (quite unnecessary, really) and then about an hour later the poultry dishes start arriving. First the heart, liver and kidneys, then then some other random bits and then the rest of it. Not my favourite.

· There were also a few beery nights of quail eggs and pigeon.

· Wild boar and deer, grilled at your table, by yourself, seasoned in five secret spices.

· Some random tropical fruit like durian – which Sarah says taste like meat and onions and even gets the before-mentioned Bizarre Foods host squirming. It’s an acquired taste. My mate alan wasn't a fan either as far as I remember. Now that I think of it, I don't know anyone who's really a fan.

· A variety of crustaceans and snail, round and corckscrewed, thumbnail size and fist sized, raw and cooked, slurpy and very slurpy, funky and funkmeister G.

· Bits and pieces of crocodile, kangaroo, lots of rabbit and I don’t know what else. And that’s just in Vietnam! That’s not even including the salted grasshoppers in Thailand or the yak butter, steak and cheese in Nepal, etc.

Oh and for the record, I’m not a fan of munching down feathered little friends, but I did it and I burned some joss sticks to Uncle Scrooge and the Duck Tales cousins after that little incident to atone for my heartless curiosity. My mate Christoff took the easy approach and just puked in the nearest pot plant.

Things to look forward in Oz No.1

I'm moving to, officially, the fattest country in the world. I'm looking forward to putting my investigative journalism skills to the test by uncovering some of the reasons behind this phenomenon. Hey, I've already started, look what I found: The Bogan Burger! If you don't know what a Bogan is - check out this site dedicated to their ilk (they're sort out like the Aussie version of karavaankinders or someone from Hobhouse or Boksburg). Anyways, the Bogan Burger is "a big Turkish bread roll stuffed with a steak, a chicken schnitzel, a potato cake, bacon, egg, cheese, onion, pineapple and beetroot and stands 13cm high". I'm getting more excited about moving every day. This is going to be great!

Ancient Hedonism

Ahhh the ancient town of Hoi An, not the central jewel in Vietnam’s crown – that privilege belongs to the imperial town of Hue – but definitely one of great history as a trading sea-port for centuries, quite well preserved and wonderfully quiet. I wish I could espouse its distinctiveness some more, but now houses as many lantern shops, tailors, shoe-shops, backpacker dives, travel agents, lacquerware stores, Chinese descendants, monuments and pagodas and yummy restaurants as any of Vietnam’s major cities. Not that I’m complaining when it comes to the eating part, though.

So instead of just making you puke-green with jealousy as I know no-one really reads anything about anyone else’s holiday (at least I know I don’t thanks to a childhood memory of some distant moustached aunty’s endless slides of her Namaqualand holiday), I’ve decided to put things in list form.

So, in no particular order, here’s my list of what I did in Hoi An, and it was so good you may as well take it as a list of the “Top things to do in Hoi An”. Actually, let me rephrase that as “Top things to do in Hoi An on a limited budget, whilst constantly searching for strong coffee or a drink, with a massive propensity for eating and all things hedonistic and a very limited concentration span”, more accurately.

1) Living quarters

We stayed at the prodigiously-spectacular-on-a-small-internet-picture Southern Hotel, also known as Khach San Phuong Nam. To be honest, it wasn’t bad in real life, seeing as we got our room for half the normal price – oh the joys of internet booking! A bit out of town, but with a nice swimming pool and eerie concierges who glare at you in a unnerving manner, if you’re into that sort of Norman Bates stuff.

Poolside non-action at Southern Hotel

2) Made to Measure

We perused the cloth market and found the same lady Sarah had her clothes made at three years ago (such good quality she can still wear all of the clothes to this day). Check out Ly Ly’s shop – they’ve got high quality cloth, speak English well, have everything tailored by the next day, are happy to readjust all the clothes and are way cheaper than the kazillion tailor shops peppering the streets of Hoi An. I got two dapper suits, two shirts and a kimono tailored for about $125! The one suit is a funky pin-striped one-vent suit with slightly flared sleeves and legs, two buttons and an elongated collar. The kimono is just plain porno: full-length dragon-patterned black silk with red sash and lining. Think Triad leader meets the Don meets Ron Jeremy and you’ve got the idea. I hope I don’t pick up weight otherwise it would all be futile…

Inside the cloth market

The fabric of life

3) Don't sell your sole, just get new ones made

We were on a “let’s get random stuff tailored” frenzy so we got some shoes and boots made. I got a pair of work shoes as I’ve been wearing the same shoes to work that I wore to my Matric Dance eight years ago. Flappity flop. Sad, I know. The new ones are nice comfy, black leather slip-ons with white stitching.

4) Hobbit treatment

As we were getting our feet measured another girl wandered up and said: “You should get your feet shaved”. No, not in the hobbit sense of the word as I don’t have hair sprouting from my little appendages, but I do have a callous or two from playing football which she wanted to shave the dead skin from. Persuaded and intrigued, we headed over to her beauty salon where, thanks to my sexual security I’m not afraid to say, I received a bit of a foot wash and pedicure followed by the eerily pleasing dead-skin shaving. The old lady who did it joked afterwards that the dead skin she’s shed into a bowl of water looked like chao or rice soup/gruel…erm.

5) Food, glorious food!

Needless to say, my girlfriend and I both having an insatiable penchant for eating and drinking, thus we gluttonised our way through Hoi An. First we called on Morning Glory Restaurant, run by a local celebrity chef called Ms Vy who runs three other eateries of note in the ancient town; White Lantern, Mermaid and the Cargo Club across the road. Fantastic and affordable specialties and traditional fare like the prawn curry that would definitely have had us coming back if we had another day or two in town.

Instead, the bestowed our humble patronage upon Mango Rooms the following night. Fusion at its finest, this place is worth its reputation (and price). We had a nice bottle of the house white with the Tropical Lush Salad to start: seared tuna with orange/ginger/soy dressing, greens and herbs, mustard sprouts, orange slices and watermelon cubes. As a main, I had the pan-seared chicken breast marinated in lemongrass, garlic and curry with a yummy pineapple/tomato/ginger sauce with garlic asparagus. Sarah had the pan-seared tofu cubes seasoned with other yummy local ingredients and both were pretty awesome. Go there. Go there now.

We also tried the local specialties of banh vac (white rose), hoanh thanh (fried wontons with a sweet and sour sauce) and cao lau (a kind of fried pork-ish noodle soup with crouton-like thingies) a few times. The banh vac was similar to southern nem, glutinous rice shaped like a rose encasing a tiny shrimp – kind of bland not bad with nuoc cham (dipping sauce). The hoanh thanh was great as was the cao lau, except for occasionally finding a leafy herb that we unaffectionately refer to as “feet” – a broad, dark green leaf taxi drivers in Vietnam like to put bushes of in the back of their taxis for some inexplicable reason, causing their cars to smell like old, mouldy feet. Unfortunately it also finds its way into some dishes and requires a diligent eye to fish them out before consumption.

A tasty bowl of cao lau

Fried wontons with sweet and sour sauce

6) Learn to cook

We also went to Sakura Restaurant one night and were impressed by their mix ‘n match cooking class they offered and the friendly, personal service of their manager. We tailored a menu of five dishes Sarah wanted to learn to cook (and secretly so did I) and were invited to come learn from their chef Duc the next day. You’ll have to wait for the next post on the results, which were spectacular.

Cooking course in action at Sakura

7) Beach living

We took the bike out to Cua Dai Beach, about 5 kms from the centre, hired a beach chair, ordered some food and a drink, whipped out our books and dozed for a couple of hours. Perfect – except for the food which made both of us pretty sick for days!

8) All-marbled out

We rented a bike early on our last day and headed out to the fabled Marble Mountains – five marble peaks jutting out of the flat surrounding countryside half way between Danang and Hoi An. A difficult climb is rewarded with some beautiful caves, Buddha statues, shrines, caves, views and some quirky and disturbing Hindu statues. Sadly enough, the marble from the area has been exploited to such an extent that the local producers have to order marble from China to sell to buyers!

Inside Marble Mountain

Yes, it was truly three days and nights of Ancient Hedonism. Highly recommended!