revision

mid-way through week three in sai gon, and i must break a moment from my study of plastic surgery related vocab (could not be more unrelated to my research interests, but oh well) to revise an earlier entry regarding the food in sai gon.

let me be clear: ha noi is still better. BUT, i have made some important discoveries that have made me a little less of a hater and that i will share with you here.

1) thit kho - you'll be happy to know that i have stopped eating mud bunch for lunch. last week i discovered that on the sidewalk just next to my hotel is a cluster of little plastic tables run by a toothless and totally incomprehensible old man who serves up the most fabulous braised pork i've ever eaten. for 19.000 dong ($1 something), you get a great big plate of rice, some sliced cucumbers, cabbage, an omelet (random, but whatever - it's gooood), the pork, and a small bowl of soup. i'm not exaggerating here: i touch the pork with my fork - just tap it really - and it falls apart on my plate. and there is gravy, but not the heavy southern kind i grew up on. the lighter, tangier, i don't know, more fabulous-er asian kind. and fish sauce with chiles. really, these days, i don't go anywhere without the fish sauce.

2) banh tet - this may also be available in ha noi, but since i discovered it down here... well, one point for sai gon. this little treat falls into the "gummy, wrapped in banana leaves, and thus utterly unidentifiable" category. when i was here before, i steered clear of all things wrapped in banana leaves for fear of biting into pork fat, boiled egg, and/or green bean paste - bleh. but i was so stupid! banh tet is essentially a little, asian banana rolled up in a layer of sticky rice flavored with coconut milk and pineapple stalks (or leaves, or whatever the are), wrapped tightly in banana leaves, and boiled. when you unwrap it and cut into the "cake," the banana has turned pink and the rice has... i don't know... sort of fused together to form this thick gelatinous outer layer. it's sweet and chewy but so subtle. i could eat these all day!

3) the most important discovery of all - having a vietnamese grandmother cook for you!! my roomie here is viet kieu (both her parents were away studying in france when the war with the US got nasty... they never returned, and eventually landed in riverside), and since this is her first time in viet nam (and we suspect, because both her grandmother and her mother are the eldest in their families), she is getting royal treatment over here! and the other night, she let me tag along to her aunt van's house for dinner. after hearing a lesson on world tennis in vietnamese and learning what may very well have been the slang term for masturbation (!) with her uncle, we sat down to a meal of grilled pork with pickled vegetables, sticky rice with potatoes and little fried onions, and the most savory rice gruel chock full of squid, shrimp, and clams... then she peeled a grapefruit for us (vina-grapefruit, though very dangerous to say, is one of my absolute favorite fruits EVER) and served up some homemade yogurt. obviously, i thought i was going to die after eating all that... but it was worth it.

so there you go - sai gon is not as bad as i thought!

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ha noi, soft


and grey

sleepwalking through the mekong

the mekong sky

4 hours in a bus + swarming mosquitoes + constant swamp-@ss = weekend fun in the mekong! though i truly was a sloppy, sleepy mess the whole time, the title of this post is also a tribute to another new band in my life: dengue fever (listen to 'sleepwalking' as you drift through this post).

floating market

a smaller branch of the mekong

the brick factory

i was meant to learn something here, something about labor and craft if i understood the handout correctly... and i'm sure i would have been totally into it had i understood a word that was said. to give you an idea of what i'm dealing with down here: imagine you're an intermediate speaker of english and you're speaking to... say, a mechanic in lovelady, texas or ellaville, georgia! the drawl!! it was pretty depressing. i did, however, thoroughly enjoy photographing the bricks...

...and the birds. the one in the middle cage speaks vietnamese and english!

adeline and oliver (also known as dan anh and bao) on the saturday morning "death ride"

after a restful sleep in a guest house eerily similar to the camp val verde girls' cabins in waco, texas (the only thing missing were the daddy longlegs) and a quick breakfast of egg sammies eaten on the boat, our friendly tour guide loaded us onto bicycles and ran us through the countryside: roads no bigger than sidewalks but shared with motorbikes, children, chickens, bananas... and there were bridges, tons and tons of tiny bridges crossing the little mekong fingers... i discovered, crossing one of those bridges, that these conical hats, though amazing for the sun protection they provide, tend to slide a bit. for a few terrifying seconds, i saw nothing but straw. and in that moment, i'm not kidding, i was luke skywalker.

at one point, our guide stopped and got off her bike in front of a tiny cafe. "yes," i thought, "time for coffee!" but instead she points to the monkey bridge. i've got no picture of my own - didn't dare bring my camera along - so i borrowed one from some dude named andyllama, who has posted his vina-pics online (thanks andyllama!). and i am happy to report that i made it over and back... looking only slightly like a gi-normous, ridiculous westerner. hooray!

in the name of all that is good and holy...

toa thanh tay ninh, the largest cao dai temple in viet nam, established december 1926

i spent a week learning about caodaism before our day trip to the tay ninh holy see... and i still can't really tell you what this religion is all about. an unusual mélange of buddhism, confucianism, and taoism - with a healthy dose of cultish saint worship - cao dai is undoubtedly the most creative faith you'll ever not quite get. the construction of the holy see, pictured above, was said to have been ordered by god via what i can only understand to be a ouija board. (oh, the countless slumber parties spent waiting for such divine inspiration - after pizza and strawberry milk (or tequila shots, depending on who's house we were at... what!? did i just say that!) and before freezing the training bra of the poor gal who's lot it was to fall asleep first and then trying to make her pee in her sleeping bag with a cup of cold water and a cup of warm... why a supreme deity never chose us to build a place of worship is beyond my comprehension. we were so ready for that!).

women believers entering the see for an afternoon ceremony

women and men must enter through different doors and remain separated throughout the ceremony. and from what i understand, woman may never achieve high positions in the faith because too much yin is dangerous for the universe. oh... well at least it's not just because they're weak or hysterical or meant to be in the kitchen (although based on my male teacher's explanation of confucianism and gender equality, i suspect that this is understood. you'll be pleased to know that i endeavored to explain to him that yes, my husband does the dishes regularly and cleans the bathroom, and no, i do not think it right to concede in order to appease his ego and thus preserve the harmony of the couple. (okay, so i don't know the actual word for "appease"... or "harmony" or "ego" for that matter... but he got the gist!)).

mat troi, or "the eye of god." the eye and the ouija board are the two most venerated objects of worship

in addition to god's eye and the ouija board, there are a number of saints in caodaism, chief among them sun yat-sen (co-founder of the kuomintang, often referred to as the father of modern china), victor hugo (author of les misérables, and thus super attuned to the needs of the poor - a real plus for the followers of cao dai), and nguyen binh khiem (16th-century vina-mandarin and wise man, in many ways responsible for the long-standing division between north and south here).

inside the holy see, just before the ceremony begins

as you can see, it's like a vina-disneyland in here. it's so colorful, it hurts. if there is a tone of sarcasm in this post, blame it on the cotton-candy themed holy see. i don't have any problem with divine guidance or hybrid faiths, but it's hard to take it all very seriously when the most venerated site of worship is giving you a spiritual tooth ache.

i should add, though, that there is a very interesting history to explore here, about which i know almost nothing, namely the role of caodaism in anti-imperialist activities. it is and has been a very rich and powerful sect in the south (no sees up north to my knowledge), and has shown itself to be a skillful political chameleon, at once appeasing the oppressors (french or american) and providing shelter and support for their adversaries.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

today my dear old pops turns 60! happy birthday dad - i love you!!

my new jam

trinh cong son, photo courtesy of saigonline.com

though i've heard the name many times, i've only recently discovered the music of trinh cong son (1939-2001), musician, pacifist, and vina-star second only to uncle hô. a fellow VASI student is a big fan, and she played some for me on her computer the other night... now i'm hooked. calling him the vina-dylan, as many have after joan baez, is misleading i think. his music aches more than dylan's does, but this could be khanh ly's doing - she sang trinh cong son's songs for years, beginning in the 60s, and helped make his music the national treasure it is today.

khanh ly and trinh cong son, photo courtesy of photobucket.com

unfortunately, you can hardly find the original recordings here in viet nam anymore. you can, however, find plenty of the re-released synthesizer-sax-chime-easy-listening versions, for which i blame doi moi, VN's period of economic renovation that took hold in the 80s (they opened the door a crack and the first thing they embraced from the western world was yanni??). it's awfully depressing, what bad vina-elevator music would sound like (if it existed - elevators here are still blissfully silent if only barely ventilated!).

i have managed to find an online source called the vietnam music database, where you can listen to every khanh ly recording of trinh cong son's music and put together a CD that they will burn and send to your house. so if all else fails here, i'll be putting my mega-collection together this fall (sign up now if you want one for christmas!)

this is not my favorite tune, but it's the best one i could find on youtube: ru ta ngam ngui.

enjoy.

bun cha

here are the actual tones, painted on the side of someone's home, i'm sure. i've decided to forgo the tones on all my posts, fully aware that for many of you, it will turn up as "b%4n ch23" or something equally as off-putting.

so here i am in sai gon, with my stomach still in ha noi. if i weren't headed back to my vina-que (hometown) with knox next month, i'd be seriously depressed right now. i've been told many times that sai gon is the culinary capital of the country, but i'm sorry... i just don't buy it.

this is it: bun cha. the gods outdid themselves when they thought this one up! though i've eaten more up north, you can get bun, or 'rice noodles,' all over the country (you may remember the noodles with tofu or as soup with beef - now also commonly referred to as 'mud bunch'!). here, it's the mass of white in the lower right corner. (sorry for the lack of definition, btw). directly above is the plate of mint, lettuce, cilantro and sprouts that are delicious and always good for a few rumbles in the tummy later (it's a sad reality - uncooked greens are a dicey game. but i'm braving the tummy rumble in the name of flavor! and a few unpleasant moments aside, it's totally worth it.) above that and to the left we have the bowl of diced garlic and red and orange chiles. i always get a little carried away here, particularly with the chiles, and end up sweating into my bowl... next we come to the heart of the dish: cha, which is ground pork, onions, pepper, and maybe a pinch of egg (?) fried into the most glorious little patties (my man knox is going to be in heaven!). the last bowl contains fish sauce and slivers of papaya. i usually choose this as my main bowl (though i've seen others opt to work out of the cha bowl): you start by adding chiles and garlic, working the broth up to your desired level of KICK, then you grab a patty, a small chunk of noodles, and some herbs... soak them all in the sauce for a sec, and bon appetit! this process is repeated till the pork is gone or until your tiny plastic stool collapses under you! i've done myself some serious damage at this restaurant - the "i have to go home and lie down now" kind of damage that only comes from irresistibly good food. friends, bun cha is it!

language gaffes, part trois

this one isn't too bad, really, and i only report it here because i like the ring of it. and because i don't want to do my homework.

i've mentioned before that i have good pronunciation. i really do. my vocab and sentence structure are at approximately the 3rd-grade level, but my pronunciation is solid. not native, but solid. the problem is that i don't really have any control over it. when i'm out and about, trying to improve my fluency or just trying to pay for my lunch - like today - i simply cannot control every rise, fall, and jiggle of my voice. if i spoke..... like..... this..... then maybe, but i've yet to meet anyone with the patience required to indulge that sort of obsessive perfectionism (believe me, i've looked)

anyway today, instead of telling my waiter that i wanted to pay for two bowls of bun (rising tone) bo (falling tone) or beef noodle soup, i handed him 100,000 dong for two bowls of bun (falling) bo (rising), otherwise known as "mud bunch."

"excuse me sir, i'd like to pay for two bowls of MUD BUNCH." i'm pretty sure it's a specialty of the mekong delta region.

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quan 2, ho chi minh city

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co chung taught us this expression: hien dai, hai dien, which can be roughly translated to "modernization is a waste of energy"

the artist and the entrepreneur

sai gon TV