Viet Voyage

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Someone recently asked me why there is a picture of a rat eating fruit on a bag of coffee I purchased in Vietnam.

Well shoot! No one told me I was buying poop coffee. Turns out it's a civet, which isn't a rat at all, just the hardworking, slender-bodied, musky-odored cousin of the cat. Or mongoose. Civets are native to Southeast Asia. They eat robusta coffee cherries and their digestive enzymes ferment the fruit's stone and take away the bitter, harsh flavor and what comes out is an undigested stone/bean that is dried, roasted and turned into a smoky, smooth, bittersweet, chocolatey, very unique tasting (and high-prized) coffee.

Supposedly, the European colonists were prettty, prettty unmannerly and wouldn't share their coffee beans with natives, who proved to be very resourceful and eventually decided to just pick their own beans from civet dung and that's how this all got started but things have changed and civets are now caged and press-ganged into servicing consumers and well now crap coffee is very controversial.

The stuff smells amazing. 

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A tumblr tour of the boats and homes on Hạ Long Bay 

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Pictured: a two-year-old girl sewing an indigo dyed piece of fabric; a four-year-old girl mopping the floor of her family’s tailor shop; a seven-year-old girl stripping the outer fibrous layers of bamboo for pickling 

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Humans of Vietnam 

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Fruit is often eaten with breakfast and usually served for dessert. The local fruits are so juicy and yum. 

The sweet stuff: longan, langsat, lychee, durian, jackfruit, dragon fruit, purple magosteen, cherimoya, bananas, asian pears, star apple, rambutan

rambutan is called “chom chom,” or “messy hair”- it kind of does have really messy hair!

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Something I noticed throughout Vietnam was the strong presence of women and the absence of men at work. 

At the markets, women are the ones working, the ones butchering and selling the meat, the ones bagging fruit and negotiating prices. I noticed a similar trend in the shops- most, if not all, are run by women. Some of the women I came across were very pregnant or had small children with them, pulling long hours in their shops and asking passersby to come have a look inside.

I asked a local guide in Hoi An where all the men were. She laughed and said they were “off drinking coffee.”

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Mostly every meal I had in Vietnam was good and tasty. The meals in Hoi An were just WOW. On my last day in Hoi An, I woke up and immediately launched into a 5 hour culinary adventure. The country’s cuisine is a confluence of Chinese, Japanese, French and indigenous influences over many years.

Here are some of the “weird” and “wonderful” noms of Nam (found in Hoi An): 

steamed pig brain, duck egg embryo, pork-stuffed snail, braised offal (any internal animal organ), jelly fish salad, pig ear salad, silkworm salad, spicy frog, spicy tiny snails

Other food not considered “weird” and is pretty ubiquitous in Vietnamese cuisine (all found at central market in Hoi An): 

cassava, vietnamese mint, turmeric, ginger, pumpkin, shallots, tapioca, sticky rice, mung bean sprouts, crunchy roasted peanuts, shredded mango, shredded banana blossom, shredded papaya, lime wedges, cilantro, lemongrass, oodles of rice noodles, chile, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, fig sauce, beef shank, lobster, crab, eel, tuna, many more meats, fish and crustaceans 

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The yummiest breakfast: big ol' bowl o' homemade pho

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Arrived in Hoi An, central VN. Fruity deliciousness (and tailor shops) all around town!

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The Vinh Moc tunnels were built to shelter the North Vietnam army and protect civilians against American attacks during the war. The underground complex had no doors, no privacy, no lights. It did have washrooms, a drainage system and maternity wards. Here is one of the 17 children born in the tunnels. He is nonverbal, but has an emphatic expression of joy; he nods, jumps and claps, very much like a child. He shared a picture of his mother after she had just given birth to him. He has a sharp memory and a happy smile.

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A tumblr tour: Phong Nha

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This is Tri (pronounced “tree”). He showed us around Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. He calls me “Ma” because my full name is “too complicated.”

Tri was born in 1968, south of the 17th parallel, or the Ben Hai river, in Hoi An. In a short chat on a boat ride he tells me that Hoi An was the best place to grow up. It remained undamaged during the American war, it was a “perfect place of peace.” Tri says when the Americans came to the south they tried to “do good for the country.“ He talks about how many veterans come to Vietnam today to find closure, and how much he’d love an opportunity to visit America.

Tomorrow I am visiting Tri’s hometown.

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Bac Ha Market

At the market: Jewelry, clothes, shoes, bags, batiks, paintings, tapestries, rice wine being poured from large plastic jugs, cornflour, ginger, ginseng, peppers, fried dough, dried cassava, tangerines, tofu, turmeric, bamboo, bongs, forest-green mystery patties, cooked horse meat, raw pig meat, more pig meat, thick cuts of beef shanks and tendons, water buffalo anchored to the ground being sold for $2,000 each, family feasts, barefoot children, uncared-for dogs, a woman with a popcorn stand and a loud horn, ice cream, lots more

[11.8.15]>

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Sapa, Day 2. Post-trek sweaty selfie.

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Sapa, Day 2 cont. -

Today we trekked for three hours around cascading rice terraces and through a bamboo forest.

The paths were steep, narrow, tortuous, rocky, muddy, slippery, all the fun things. Thankfully, a group of Hmong guardian angels appeared and guided us through the more perilous half of the trek. They were wearing backless sandals and paid no mind to their exposed feet landing in pools of thick mud. They carried large woven baskets on their backs while keeping their balance and supporting mine.

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Sapa, Day 2-

A rooster outside my room reeeally wanted me to wake up at 3:30 am, so I did. By 6:30 am I had mustered up enough energy to go for a long morning walk which was really just a quick lazy stroll around the corner but hey I slept on a mattress made out of floor.

The sun was the perfect amount of strong and there were smells of firewood, coffee, cinnamon and manure in the air. I came across these faces.

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Mimi travels around on her mother’s back. She enjoys sticky rice. Sugarcane, too. [11.6.15]