A Rooster Ruckus

Driving along on an article assignment I came across Rocky and his feathered friend not seeing beady eye to eye. The cockerel had obviously insulted Rocky when he offered to scramble his hen’s eggs for him. Rocky wouldn’t have any of it and asked him to step outside the coop for a minute.

As the waltz began, insults flew like roosters can’t, from the quality of their crows to the colour of their combs. Authorities were called in but were so entranced all they could do was stand and watch as the cockfight began.

Next, followed a game of ‘see who blinks first’. Rocky was first with a flurry of thinly feathered slurs like “Grow some eggs, chicken”. “We’ll see who’s a chicken, you cocky bastard.”

Then it began. Having been raised in a nearby monastery, Rocky was well-trained in the art of shaolin fowlin’.

“What did you say about my mother?” “She a fine bird, Rocky, just fine!”

Submission was never an option, but unfortunately the cockatrice was turned into a capon by Rocky, the far superior poultry specimen.

It was over, as fast as it began. Chums again, Rocky and the cockerel strolled off to the nearest coop, wing in wing, to see which hens they could impress with their battle scars.

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.

Vietnam views

Just some random shots from around the southern part of the country. These are the kind of pics you don't really know what to do with so they just lie around in a random folder until you have about five or six of them and then you're like *ahaa, let's make a little blog post out of them".

My football team the Saigon Raiders were out for a tournament on Phu Quoc Island about 6 weeks ago and these kids watched all the matches from their high perch. They couldn't have been more than fourteen, but they already had all the makings of football hooligans; jeering and cursing every missed shot or mistake, smoking cigarettes and pulling faces. Sure they'll grow up supporting Millwall.

One of the first, but by now not the last, "safe sex" shops around town. I doubt they have these up in Hanoi (any of you Northerners seen them?). No whips, chains or spiked rubber gear, just condoms, which is a great start. The little sign in the bottom right-hand corner asks explicitly for a male shop assistant as "we don't want to offend and tarnish the pure minds of our delicate females". Okay I made up that little quote.

This is one of the queerest things I've seen around anywhere. It seems to be a monument to capitalism in Socialist Vietnam. A family, with the kid in a trolly, out shopping, forever etched in stone outside Maximark Cong Hoa Hypermarket. The number one quirkiest bit of architecture I've ever seen was also at Maximark, now sadly removed. It was a Ferris Wheel, built right through the inside of this gigantic shopping centre, running from the basement, through the cosmetics and toiletries aisle and out through the roof!


An interesting and innovative bit of artwork in the "Year of the Buffalo", as the Chinese zodiac "Year of the Ox" is called in Vietnam. Actually, there's quite a bit of quirky art and decor out at Van Thanh Park in Binh Thanh District. Nice restaurants and a patch of grass for a pick-up game of cricket (and not so nice managers when you want to skateboard and ollie down the steps or chase each other around in their little pedal buggies).

Just off Pham Ngu Lao, near the Saigon Central Bus Station, stands this old bust up tjorra. I wonder if one of those green buses behind it had anything to do with it. Knowing the way those black-smoke belching behemoths take over the road I wouldn't be suprised.

And on the other side of the spectrum, this procession of beautiful Beetles out in Vung Tau for the International Kite Festival in March. They're from the Saigon VW Club who are based in Thu Duc District I think.

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.

Rubies in the Dust

There are quite a few hidden little areas around the usually humming and swarming District One, if you know where to look. Just behind the Saigon Bus Station wedged behind the thoroughfares of Pham Ngu Lao and Ham Nghi Streets, is a group of tree-lined roads that seem a mile out of the busy city centre. Look around Le Cong Kieu, better known as “antique street”, Pho Duc Chinh and Le Thi Hong Gam where there are a number of little street-side cafés, vendors and other bric-a-brac shops to explore. There’s also the stained, dirty yellow façade of the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts Museum, which has fallen into some disrepair of late, beckoning a quick perusal and nothing more. Rather head into the courtyard to the Blue Space Contemporary Arts Gallery for a much more impressive example of Vietnamese art. For some more original and highly sought-after art, head to Mantra where the artists' stylish creations range from rare-gemmed jewellery to good-karma inducing yoga mats and leather laptop bags. Stroll down “antique street” and bargain with the shop owners over trinkets or treasures and then stuff yourself at the massive 500-seat Din Ky buffet restaurant.

"Antique" coins from "antique street"

Lost music: Old instruments for sale

Street-side shoes 'n helmets

not all that glitters is gold...

Security guards playing some kickball in fron of the HCMC Fine Arts Musuem

PS: I'm on holiday for the week in Hoi An, Nha Trang and Mui Ne, so I'm not sure any more posts will be forthcoming this week, but look forward to some photos and stories next week, including the awesome Vietnamese cooking course we had today.

April Photoblog

Here's a pic of my neighbours eating outside my house during one of our weekly power-outs. I wonder if HCM City's electricity authorities have been taking tips from Eskom?

PS: This is my 200th blog post so thanks to all of you who have managed to read this far, I couldn't have done it without you!

Weigh me a Nordic bum tea

My girlfriend and I live in a little alleyway just off fourteen-laned Dien Bien Phu Street, one of the main west-to-eat thoroughfares of the city. Every day we open our balcony doors to let in some fresh air as it’s just plain nicer than a stuffy house. But what inevitably also drifts in, are the sounds and calls of the hawkers and recycling ladies plying their trade down our alley. This doesn’t sound like much, until you take into consideration that they come around at a rate of about one every ten minutes in the morning, shouting indeterminable things or making strange noises. It’s always great fun when we have friends or family visiting from abroad who aren’t use to the randomness of it all. Let me break it down for you:

I’m sitting in the living room when suddenly I hear, from a distance, and in an impossibly high and fragile voice: “Weigh a bum me Nordic teaaa!” and then a little closer and a little louder…“Weigh a bum me Nordic teaaa!” Fret not, as it isn’t Thor or Odin asking for the dimensions on your anal excretions, it is but an old conical-hatted lady trollying her mobile bakery of fresh breads, buns and cakes down our alley. This morning I was lucky enough to witness two on the same turf, coming from opposite directions. I thought there might be a showdown, there were tell-tale signs; a glint of a fresh croissant in the one’s pocket, an itchy-baguette finger on the other, a Swiss roll tumbling across the alley. Alas, they stopped for an amicable chat and a taste of each other’s wares.

As they depart, along comes another high-pitched wavering call: “Get ya-ya! Get ya-ya!” Ya-ya? Like the sisterhood with their divine secrets? Not for me thanks. Actually, it’s the recycling lady asking if anybody has any plastic bottles, cardboard or dirty secrets they would like recycled. We wash our own dirty secrets, thanks.

Some of them don’t even have to say anything. There’s the ubiquitous caramba man who comes along on a bicyle with a “sshka sshka sshka” of his shaker. He’s offering cup massages, which leave you looking like a leopard with leprosy, but also a business card with the directions to some other contraband services, or so I’ve heard.

Then, along cycles the Olé-type ice-cream man, who has a car battery hooked up to a looped player with speakers, all taped to his bike and busting out a trademark tune for the kiddies, with a massive cooler box on the back. Those are the modern ice-cream sellers. The old school ones still just pedal along and ring a bell, advertising their chin mau or nine colours of ice-cream with traditional flavours like young rice and green bean.

There’s also the spoon-banging soup lady, fruit-sellers, feather-duster purveyors, various bangers, clangers, shouters, ringers and the one who sounds like a tortured, electrocuted cat that just won’t confess. She's one of the people who walks around with nothing to sell , chanting random slogans or something, which is confusing and slightly unnerving. Maybe she works for the government

Most of the hawkers just sound like they are absolutely insane, that is, if what they said was actually in English.Our favourite is a man who comes along at least three times a day, again with a hooked up, homemade sound-system. “I’ve lost my car! Help me find my car! My Car!” On loop. Every five seconds. Thrice daily. Without fail. Either he is really determined to find his missing automobile or he has the memory of a goldfish. It must mean a lot to him. A lot… We have a chuckle every time he comes along. “Have you seen his car yet, honey?” “No, not yet, I hope he finds it soon.” "Yes, I do hope so." He’s actually selling Banh Chung, a traditional Vietnamese snack of peppered pork and green bean wrapped in leaves, very popular in the period leading up to Tet (Lunar New Year).

According to our friends Dave and Nat, they had a daily hawker come round their alley where they used to live with the creed of “Vagaaaaaiiina! Vagaaaaaiiina!” Wonder what she was selling.

Got goat?

When it comes to blogging, the adage of “no-one gives a shit what you had for lunch” is very relevant, but I’d thought I’d share this one time to make up for all those other times I didn’t.

My co-teacher Jason and I were roped into having lunch with the class we share this afternoon. First we thought we were heading to the bede (sic) hotpot, a joint on the infamously stinky Nhieu Loc Canal where transsexual waiters serve you, but unfortunately they only open at night. I guess it’s a kind of “from dusk til dawn” experience. Anyway, we ended up heading around the corner from our school to Lau De Truong Dinh – a goat hotpot establishment, specialising in all sorts of goat goodies, as we were soon to find out.

Things started out innocently enough, with barbequed goat meat and goat’s breast - this place's specialty - cooked on little clay tripods at your table. Now, the distinction between meat and breast may sound trivial to you, but I mention it because the textures are quite distinct. Despite being marinated in the same sauce and tasting similar, the meat has a, well, meaty texture and the breast is more…chewy, so the experience was more like munching away on a fake silicon tit. Served with grilled bitter gourd and ladyfingers this went down quite well. When new bowls were brought for the next course and our students shouted at the waiters to bring out four plates of pig’s brains, Jason (who was already on antibiotics thanks to a stomach infection) and I just shot each other a knowing look across the table.

Again cooked at the table, the big clay hotpot consisted of some distinguishable and mostly indistinguishable ingredients. As the broth heated up to boiling point, various leafy greens were continuously added along with button mushrooms and some bigger varieties, two kinds of noodles (pho and mi), lotus root, big chunks of taro, a big, yellow, wobbling block of tofu as well as sheets of tofu, and various floating, bobbing pieces of goat.

As the hotpot started steaming and boiling, the pig’s brain – which has the consistency of crème brule and the annoying habit of falling through between your chopsticks (try eating custard with chopsticks) – was added. Mmmm, I can still smell it. Hearty and nutritious, thick pieces of goat’s tripe, muscle and bone would surface from the murky depths of your broth, while eager students’ gazes silently urged you to have more. Chunks of cartilage, layers of what looked like the hide of the goat (minus the hair) and other unchewables secretly found their way under the table and on to the floor, well at least from my part. Sated and content, we rolled out of Lau De Truong Dinh, muttering fervent hopes that the establishment will accidentally become the victim of arson and burn to the ground to save the next naïve teachers from its wicked clutches. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, but just not what I had in mind for a Friday lunch.

Weekly Randomness

Seeing as I've decided to entertain, well, probably nobody but myself and start blogging again, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce a weekly pic or two that I've snapped with my trusty, rusty Samsung mobile phone - don't ask me what brand it is: it's an E-something. Just a little taste of everyday life here in the big Ho Chi.

Please respect the effort made to bring you these Pulitzer-winning beauts as they were often taken at the greatest risk of bodily harm. In other words, I was driving my motorbike with one hand and trying to focus, zoom, hold still and snap some absurd scene with my other hand, mostly at speeds between 10 and 25 kms an hour.

These wonderful mobile photos will continue to be presented weekly until I drop my phone or myself from my motorbike for the last time. Either way, enjoy them while they last!

Tunnel Vision: Behold the xich lo (cyclo) driver delivering rolled-up sheets of randomness

The long-awaited guest post

Well, where to begin…

I guess an introduction would do, I’m Alan, aka mullet, Henno’s friend. I decided to come and visit him and Christoff at their crib in the Tan Binh District. The past two weeks here in Vietnam have been an adventure unlike any I’ve had before.

The chaos of being on Ho Chi Minh City’s streets in peak traffic or the tranquility of the beaches with it’s palm trees and peanut fishing boats. The peace and luxury of a massage and facial or the thrill and rugged beauty of travelling the countryside on a scooter, seeing parts of the Vietnamese countryside in ways that many westerners will never experience and shooting targets with an AK47 assault rifle or haggling with a shopkeeper in the market over the price of water. Eating amazing meals in a restaurant with 5 star service or chowing down on a durian fruit or a pigeon’s head. The graphic, disturbing and mostly justified hatred of America for the Vietnam War from the local perspective depicted in all of the museums and other war-related tourist attractions or the selfless attitude of locals who would like nothing better than to help a person to get the most from their visit regardless of the reward.

These are but a few of the crazy, amazing, unexpected, annoying, shocking (and many more adjectives that I cant be bothered to mention) experiences that I’ve had in Vietnam.

When I first arrived at the airport to see Henno and Christoff calmly leaning against their scooters anxiously waiting to see my initial reaction, I was completely overwhelmed by the city and all that it had to offer but after a few days, even initially strange things like the upbeat music, drawling bleat or decidedly midi tune of a passing merchant selling some or other product or service became a familiar sound that formed part of the day to day hum of HCMC and just faded into the background.

One of the highlights of the trip would have to be taking a scooter out into the countryside to go and see the Cu Chi tunnels, getting lost on the way there, lost on the way back, getting caught in a tropical thunderstorm and soaked to the bone before being flagged of the road and into a tiny roadside “café” for a Coke and bombarded by questions in both Vietnamese and broken English. Another, playing footie with the Saigon Raiders and kicking some ass before retiring from heat exhaustion and blistered feet.

I won’t even begin to mention embarrassing karaoke jaunts, throwing up after memorable (?!) nights on the town and sampling some of the more exotic fruits and delicacies.

I could hardly begin to summarise everything that I have seen, done and experienced in the two weeks I’ve been here but I can say that it has been an amazing experience and a shitload of fun. It has also been awesome to see two of my good friends and the friends that they have made along the way enjoying life and being so at ease and content.

Thanks burgs for showing me how you roll, It was killer. Enough said.

What a suprissss...

And here I was thinking the weekend would be spent watching the FA Cup and chilling out at home. Susan and my girlfriend Sarah organised a surprise “belated birthday party” for me at this specialty snake restaurant in Go Vap Disrict (the address was 418 Nguyen Phan Tri or something like that). I thought Sarah was dragging me along to meet Bich and Minh, some of her friends from Hanoi, but instead I was met by some of our friends who supposedly all had other plans that evening, bloody scoundrels the lot of them, and madame Bich and monsieur Minh were nowhere to be found.

This place was a bit leftfield. They have these large aquariums filled with dead snakes being bitten by dead birds, being chowed by dead lice all submerged in a reddish, gooey rice wine. Another box displayed a wine-immersed dead seal surrounded by pickled seal’s penises and one with armadillos surrounded by giant lizards. It reminded me of my grade 10 Biology class excursion to Tygerberg Hospital where they took us on a tour of the pathology unit…shudder. Think hermaphrodites, cyclops babies, charred lungs and alcohol-swollen, grotesque livers, all wonderfully preserved in pungent formaldehyde-filled glass jars.

Back to the story. The snakeman chose a cobra, made it grovel and crawl around on the floor for a while, ritualistically washed it and peristaltically worked the heart up its body. Sweat dripping off his nose, he then whipped out his scalpel, cut open the cobra and removed the still-beating heart with surgical precision, severed the arteries and put it in a shot glass. He then drained the blood, as well as the bile, mixed it with some rice wine and voila! We had two bottles of instant snakeblood wine. Not for the tree-hugging type.

I sunk the cardiac shot, which had the consistency and texture of an oyster and, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t an aphrodisiac (boo!), didn't give me hallucinogenic visions or even endow me with super serpent-like senses. In fact, I couldn’t even remember what happened about an hour afterwards. I feared the worse though, thinking I’d flip out and die a horrible death like the Greek philosophers Aeschylus or Chrysippus (Aeschylus died when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on his head and Chrysippus supposedly died of laughter after watching his inebriated donkey try to munch on some figs). Actually, it might have had a strange effect as I ended up at a karaoke bar, something which I would never condone whilst in the motherly clutches of sobriety or even the slightly clawed talons of simple inebriation.

Nevertheless, I am happy I am still here and in one piece, not grown a sudden liking for mouse-meat, rolling my “s’s” and that my tongue hasn’t forked. I’m also eternally grateful to Suzie and Sarah for organising it. I still don't have a clue who the hell Bich or Minh are though...

"Uncle and we are still operating together"

Some randomness from Saturday night. About 20 friends and anonymous stragglers headed over to Com Nieu – the “Rice Throwing” restaurant on Tu Xuong Street, District 3. This is the more informal an popular “street” brother of the sophisticated one on Ho Xuan Huong Street which we went to two weeks ago. What makes this place unique is the circus-like antics the waiters get up to when you order com nieu: The rice is cooked on a charcoal grill in clay pots, which are then whirled in the air to cool down, smashed and the disk of rice inside is tossed across the restaurant and caught by another waiter on a plate which, more often than not is met by appreciative applause from the diners. It's not as hard as it seems, though; I tried it two weeks ago at the other restaurant and managed to keep the hard, ricy UFO on the plate, much to the suprise of my faithless friends and other diners.

By magical appearance, a bottle of Tequila had also hitched a ride with a xe om, scrambled up my leg and onto the table to ensure a memorable and unrememberable evening which passed in hazy green blurs and the faint, fresh, minty aroma of mojitos being drunk at Berlin and the more heady odour of a late night bun munchie behind Benh Thanh Market. Lets just say this morning I was very glad that they had razed our football fields where we usually play on Sunday mornings making practise a no-no. Chi also bought me the awesome and much desired Dogma book Morales from the Ministry which has fantastic and quirky propaganda murals and slogans. Enlighten you? Sure: “Nong Dan Co Dang Doi Doi Am No” or “The peasants and the Party – always warm and fed”. Brilliant stuff.

Little did the snuggly claypots know that soon they would meet their doom at the willing hands of the "riceman"

The infamous "riceman" tosses the charcoaled disk of rice high in the air to his brother in arms

"Check out my moves, fool!" 8/10 for execution, 10/10 for elegance

Oh, how the snuggly ones have fallen!

Tofu munchies

Brian Molko from Placebo popped round to Berlin for a quick pint or 10.

And so did Lemmy from Motörhead

This is funny because Wi-Fi is Vietnamese slang for gay, something which that little question-mark of a boy certainly doesn't seem to be