Hanoi Food and Drink

One highlight of any trip should be the food. Hanoi has its fair share of wonderful things to choose from. Bun cha is a dish of what appears to be mini hamburgers and grilled chicken in a thin broth, combined with rice noodles and heaps of herbs like basil. 

Grilled meats and fresh noodles.

Just add a mound of herbs!

Finally, any hot day can be made a little easier with a cold beer. We ended this day on the 12th floor rooftop bar enjoying a cold Hanoi Beer. Great views of Hoah Kiem lake and the Red River from up on the roof, and you can hear the city pulsing below.

Halong Bay

One of our highlights in Vietnam was a daytrip to Halong Bay - http://www.halongbay-vietnam.com/ OR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halong_Bay - which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994. The ride from Hanoi took around four hours in a microbus, with a very international group of passengers - Russia, Cameroon, Israel, Australia, Korea, Japan, and the U.S. (only me).

One of the many boats taking tourists to Halong Bay.

Once we arrived at the docks we hopped onto a boat to eat lunch ...

Some of the salads and main dishes from lunch.

... en route to our goal - a large cave and a set of limestone islands rising precipitously from the ocean.

Our boat approaches the islands.

Beautiful, incredible, breathtaking landscape. If it had not been 100 degrees, it would have been nearly perfect. Many tourists stay one or more nights on these boats, eating multi-course meals, relaxing on deck chairs between swims in the bay, kayaking through limestone caves, sipping beer while watching the sun set over the water.

However, Halong Bay is not perfect. There are an incredible number of tourists and a large amount of garbage floating in the water. Many people argue that UNESCO World Heritage status had led to the kind of unregulated tourism that will eventually destroy the very object of tourism. This is certainly not the first time tourism has threatened a tourist landscape, nor will it be the last. In the meantime, we were glad to have seen Halong Bay and kayaked its waters.

Emerald water and vegetation-topped islands make a stunning landscape.

Museum of Ethnology

Saturday we walked through the streets, hitting some markets along the way. Terrific variety of shops selling silk, bowls, light fixtures, teas, plumbing supplies, and all kinds of food.

We soon tired of the intense heat of the city and hopped in a cab to visit the National Museum of Ethnology. It reminded me somewhat of the Museum of Ethnology in Osaka (Minpaku), given its collection of artifacts (clothing, musical instruments, household items, religious objects) from Vietnam's dozens of ethnic groups. The Viet group is the largest, representing over 80% of the population of around 90 million people. Some of groups are quite small, with only around 10,000 people remaining.

Next to the museum full of artifacts are a number of reconstructed homes of different ethnic groups, offering a unique opportunity to walk around and explore the architecture.

This home has an incredible interior with a sloped ceiling 30-40 feet high. With the raised floor and the high ceiling, it was a good 10 degrees cooler inside than out.



The most interesting thing at the museum was the many couples taking wedding photos in and around the old homes. They provide a traditional background for couples, among many locations used by couples for their memories.

Pho dinner!

We just got home from one week in northern Vietnam. I'm going to try to catch up on the blog before we forget everything that happened. I tried to blog while in Hanoi, but every time I did, the software opened in Vietnamese and I couldn't figure out a way to switch it back to English.

We flew from Singapore to Hanoi last Friday afternoon. It's only a 3-hour flight, so it was an easy trip. (If you move to SE Asia on this map you will see some labels of places we went.)


View Vietnam trip in a larger map

After checking into the hotel we took care of the most important thing - dinner. A student from the National University in Hanoi took us to eat pho at a nearby shop.

It was amazing - broth delicately flavored, noodles cooked to perfection, and beef thinly sliced and medium rare. And of course we washed it down with a cold beer. You gotta love Vietnam.

After dinner we walked around Hoah Kiem lake, in the center of the Old Quarter. We watched the young people zooming past in their packs of scooters, riding 2 and 3 per bike. We saw couples young and old making a circuit of the lake or sitting on benches, enjoying the show. The lake is lit at night in a colorful display of lights. With this being the 1000th anniversary of Hanoi's founding, they say the city is extra-exciting this year.

Boxes arrived

Our boxes finally arrived from the U.S., a full seven weeks from the day we dropped them off in Boulder. They went via truck to LA, then on the massive OOCL Tokyo from LA to Singapore. Twelve boxes packed into part of one of these huge containers, packed side-by-side on this gigantic ship.

Once the ship arrived at the port of Singapore, the containers bound for Singapore were offloaded and sent to a warehouse, where another company used a forklift to remove the boxes from inside the container.

Then, a local transport agent took our goods through customs by using our claim for tax exemption and our passport information. Finally, the transport agent trucked the boxes to our apartment on Wednesday night.

We received the boxes around 7:00, and we had nearly everything unpacked by 9:00.

We went out for a drink at that point and have only a few things to finish up, like getting rid of the empty boxes. It takes so much less time to unpack than to pack. It helps that we have lived in this space for about a month and have found places for everything. So when the new stuff arrived, we could fill the remaining cupboard and closet space and not have long discussions about where stuff should go, which are more likely with an empty space and a move involving all of one's belongings at once. Only two things broke along the way: a wine glass given as a wedding present (nine years ago) and a serving bowl that we hadn't used for five years.

I still have to assemble my bike, which requires a wrench. Since I have no tools, I'll put it mostly together and walk it to a nearby bike shop. There is a surprising number of recreational cyclists here. Nothing compared to Colorado, but with the traffic, I didn't expect to see any. I have also spoken with a few bicycle commuters who work at NUS. They say it's doable, although a bit dangerous. I may give it a shot.

Daily life

We are beginning to enjoy the small pleasures of daily life in Singapore.

Neither of us has much experience living in a huge tower of apartments, but we are both quickly feeling at home here. Our building has 22 floors. We're on the third. We speculate about the people living on the upper floors - how much more is the rent? What kind of jobs do they have? How much stronger are the breezes? Do they hear the buses? Can they watch people at the 24-hour Hands Cafe like we can?

We look forward to meeting the stray cat that lives in the common garden, it's tail cut short and bent, it's left ear notched from an imagined turf war. With boundless curiosity we walk at night in the neighborhoods of the super-wealthy. Homes the size of museums, with gates, multiple Jaguars and Benzes, and armed guards. We imagine how we could possibly get invited to their parties or use their pools. Do we need to rent a cute pet and get noticed along the street? Should we advertise in-house cooking classes? Although, since they employ multiple domestic staff, they would have no use of a cooking class. These are among the .001% richest people in the world. The people whose money earns them money. We walk past and realize we will never be them.

We enjoy the wet markets, with stalls selling fresh meat and seafood, fruit and vegetables, flowers, and eggs, carried home with plastic twine.

And on the weekends we like to buy the Sunday paper (only $1) and have kaya toast and egg.

We are getting into some comfortable routines, while also doing spontaneous activities. And, of course, we miss some things from Boulder - cool evenings, game nights, friends, Illegal Pete's big fish burritos, cheap pints. But so far, we're happy.

Inception

On Sunday we watched Inception. Dream within a dream within a dream; how many layers before one gets lost and cannot return? We were especially impressed with Watanabe Ken. But the premise was the real star. I have some questions about how the architecture is made in the dream, and how each dreamer's subconscious alters that architecture. Fascinating film that I need to see again and again... Hisako wants to wait for the DVD and Japanese subtitles. The movie theater was so cold. Since it's constantly hot in Singapore, we've decided to see a movie whenever we want to wear our winter clothes.

Later on, we went to Arab Street and walked around the mosque. We didn't have enough time to do much beyond walk a bit and look at the variety of cafes and restaurants. We will have to explore later with our taste buds.

We ended the evening at dinner at Long Beach and had more incredible seafood. We joined our friend Bev and her family (and her brother's roommates) at East Coast Park. Bev returns to her home in New Zealand soon, and we'll miss her.

There seems to be no end to this awesome food. However, tonight we tried ice kachan, which we will avoid from here on.

Above - Shrimp and Black Pepper Crab

Chunkfest

What a terrible name for a festival involving food. Anyway, Ben and Jerry's held Chunkfest yesterday, Sept 4, and we decided to attend. http://www.chunkfest.com/  We thought it would involve lots of free ice cream and ... well, what other possible reason could one need for attending an event?

We arrived at Marina Bay, near the new huge casino, to find a live music stage surrounded by stalls with B&J merchandise (t-shirts, etc.) and ice cream. Unfortunately, the ice cream was not free. 5.50 SGD (US $4.10) for a single scoop.

We figured out we were part of a market research survey. B&J is about to launch a new flavor in Singapore. So the company flew in 12 flavors for the event, where workers handed out sample sticks upon request. The flavor ordered most will be in all of B&J's shops starting next week.

Thankfully, the music was alright (covers mostly), the views were fantastic, and the ice cream was delicious. I had Chowcolate Chip (Fair Trade Certified Vanilla ice cream with fudge cows), and Hisako already forgot her flavor.

We ended up walking along the Singapore River. We stopped by the Merlion, where I got a quick drink of water.

We continued all the way to Robertson Quay. Along the way, I stopped to watch the radio control night fliers at Clarke Quay (watch this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX9RTPwIkG8), which I totally want to join now.

The lowlight was a bar called the Clinic, which I could never imagine, but which someone obviously did. The outdoor seating all resembled a hospital waiting room, and some seating was provided by gold wheelchairs. Cocktails are served in IV bags, and the staff all dresses as interns, nurses, and doctors. I thought the wheelchairs were particularly tasteless, but some might argue that this bar helps remove some of the stigma from the hospital, instead making playful what otherwise is considered cold and, well, clinical. This guy's blog has better photos than mine: http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/unusual-place-of-the-month-the-clinic-bar/

We ended the night watching the river, with me thinking about kayaking on it at night. The view must be incredible. If you put in past the cruise boats, it seems it would be safe. I just don't know if it's legal.

Homemade chicken rice

Singapore's signature dish is chicken rice. One of my students worked in Tokyo at a Singaporean restaurant, and chicken rice was the biggest seller.

The dish seems simple - boiled chicken on a bed of rice, with some veggies (usually cucumber) and chili sauce on the side. But making it at home is not simple.

Hisako and our friend Bev made chicken rice the other day. It was a complicated process of boiling and icing the chicken multiple times, as well as adding special ingredients to the rice while cooking it. And the chili sauce was made more difficult by our lack of a blender or food processor. They chopped it all.

The result was fantastic! I was happy to have enough leftovers to show off at school, too. (the first three photos were taken by Beverley Tai - thanks Bev!)

Forest Adventure

Last Sunday we explored our wild side. We strapped ourselves into zip line gear and did the Forest Adventure at Bedok Reservoir (here's the website http://www.forestadventure.com.sg/).

Because we had to leave behind any objects that might be lost (dropped), we couldn't take any photos, so you'll have to trust us when we say we did it. It mostly involved climbing a series of obstacles from the forest floor to the tree canopy, then zip lining down to the ground. Some of the obstacle courses were pretty tricky. One involved walking on suspended logs that swung freely under our feet. But we were harnessed in the entire time, so falling would not have been a problem. Luckily, we didn't fall, except when we did the "Tarzan" leap, which they said feels like falling several stories before swinging into a huge cargo net that you have to climb. Fun stuff.

The company has a video on its website. Hisako and I both really liked it, even though she is typically hesitant when it comes to heights.

This image is from the Forest Adventure website.

Hawker food

A hawker center reminds me of a food court, with a number of food stalls around the edges of a large seating area. There is always a wide range of food - Chinese, Malay, Indian, all kinds of seafood - depending on where you are. You can drink a beer or milk coffee, or eat a bowl of rice porridge with shredded chicken and dried onions (another new favorite). One of the hawker centers near us has this terrific steamed bun. (these photos were taken by Beverley Tai - thanks Bev!)