nakji

I think it might depend on what you order and the size of the group you're with. In Korea, when we would go out to galbi-jibs (barbecue rib houses), we would order a first round; cook it, eat it, drink some beer; then order a second round; cook it, eat it, drink some soju; order some rice and eat it with the soup - you could keep the meat coming as long as you liked, and the bottles of soju as well, the staff didn't seem to mind. In Vietnam, for example, if we go to a beer hoi or a lau (hotpot) house, we'll order some fried corn first, with maybe some fried nem and some roll-your-own spring rolls. We'll eat those, and then order a hotpot. We order more tofu; meat; or noodles as required...it goes on for quite a long time. Is it possible to order (what we would consider) appetizers first, and then add to your order later on? I think maybe if I went into a restaurant here and ordered some nem and the lemongrass chicken, it would be over fairly quickly as well. Since they probably speak English (a luxury I rarely enjoy) why don't you just be direct, and let them know you're going to order in courses? And bring lots of friends and family along with? I really enjoy this manner of dining at length, as it's how I was brought up, but my husband finds it a little freaky. Even when we lived in Canada, he viewed having a meal as something you do quickly, and then leave. At home, his whole family would eat as quickly as possible, and then immediately desert the table to go watch tv. In my family, we're known for staying at the table for several hours at a stretch, chatting, eating and drinking wine. The only problem with doing this here in Asia is that my legs still cramp up from sitting on the floor. I should take up yoga.....

Day three, after our 2km hike back to our bikes, we were going to Phu Yen. Although we would stay this night in a hotel, we were having dinner with Black Thai people. Our distance to cover was 230 km, but mostly on highways. Nevertheless, we were forecasting 7 hours of driving. The day started inauspiciously, when we saw a terrible crash. Three Honda Waves (small scooters used to transport almost everything in Vietnam - including families of four or more) collided dramatically in front of us, taking the front wheels off of two of the bikes. Women and children were in the ditch, men were limping across the road - blood was everywhere. Sadly, there was nothing we could do. Before we could help, bodies were dragged off the road, irrespective of head or spinal injuries. In Vietnam, it's not the accident that kills you - it's the medical care (or lack of) that you get after. It seemed to be serious, but not fatal, and surprisingly, an ambulance screamed by later as we were gassing up several km down the road. If there was anything I could change about Vietnam, it would be to have the government enforce existing helmet laws, educate people on the necessity of wearing them; and subsidise helmet purchase for poorer families. Shaken, we continued on. We passed through some glorious mountain passes and stopped for lunch in Yen Bai. From the bottom, clockwise: Lake fish fried with spices; pickled onions; barbecued pork ribs; steamed veg; and stir-fried pork with onions. Chili-lime dip and shrimp sauce in the middle. Serv ed later and not photographed was fried preserved pork (nem chua ran) which we devoured - nothing like deep-fried pork fat! We got a break from rice wine at lunch for once. We passed through some beautiful territory, with many ethnic minorities - I snapped a pic of this Hmong woman as we drove by. We had one dramatic mountain pass to conquer before finishing - we got to the top, only to find the road down washed away. Rains had destroyed it three months previously. We descended instead on a dirt track that locals had worn through. I clung to the back of Minh, who switched me off my husband's bike, as he was worried about going down on the dirt roads. We made it safe! Yay Minh! That night, we dined with Black Thai people. We were now in Son La province, which according to Vancouver Dan's students (upper management from the Ministry of Customs and Excise) was "famous for its heroin." How can you not be excited about that? Fredo told us that the family we would be having dinner with was a lot poorer than previous families we had met, as it was harder to make a living in Son La without growing opium. Although their stilt house was very worn, and clearly shabbier than many of the others, they put on a magnificent feast. They very smoothest of rice wine was offered, and they had roasted several whole goats in anticipation of our arrival. All parts of the goat were laid out for consumption, but I must admit, my favourite was the marinated kebabs. We also got parcels of sticky rice to go along with it, which I love. We drank a lot here, so much so that Minh couldn't drive back. Fortunately the supply bus driver that followed us drank coca-cola the whole night. When we were chatting with the family, I asked Vancouver Dan to ask them how they met Fredo (I don't speak Vietnamese). He began to translate, "It all started when one of Fredo's students met him in Hanoi and asked him to come here and eat a 80 kilo pig..." I never got the end of the story, as we were called away to do more toasting. You must drink at least three shots for hospitality's sake, but anything drunk after that is an indication you plan to drink yourself into a stupor. Curiously, the three shots rule coincides with the number you need to drink before you can get over the taste of it. Coincidence? A tribute to the grain.

So the next day, we loaded everybody up, including one of the Dzao ladies, who wanted to see the world outside her village, and drove 80km to lunch. We were aiming to do more than 100 km per day, but as it was the main Tet day, we took it easy. We saw many beautiful sceneries (as my students would say). This girl was herding ducks. We stopped for lunch at the house of some Tay ethnic people (whom I unforgivably forgot to take a photo of - sorry Kerry!). I think this was the most delicious food of the trip. Fredo told us that this family was fairly wealthy, because it was easy for families to make a living in this area. From the bottom right hand corner, clockwise: Shredded pickled bamboo shoots; spring rolls (nem); boiled chicken; crunchy cucumber and carrot salad; fried chicken drumlets; banh trung; chayote soup in the back; bacon wrapped quail's eggs (genius!); spiced lake fish, shredded pork and mushrooms wrapped in cabbage leaves. That Tiger Beer bottle is filled with rice wine. In the upper left-hand corner, you can see Minh wiping his bowl a napkin, something all Vietnamese people seem to do whenever they encounter dishes in restaurants or public eating venues. They also scrub at their chopsticks with them. I think they're trying to clean them. I'm not sure what good paper towel will do in the fight against germs, but it's a pre-eating ritual I've adopted. We lingered there for a few hours, napping and drinking warm beer. Then Fredo announced that we would be staying with a Red Dzao family in the mountain behind us. The road to their house was too steep, so we would have to walk it instead of ride the 2 km. What a way to earn your dinner! These girls seemed skeptical that I would make it. But I did! I didn't snap a picture of dinner - I think it was roast pork and cabbage with garlic, as I was too busy dodging the drinking. I was ill, as they had lead us through the pitch-black rice paddies by the light of flaming torches to another stilt house, where they performed a tri-annual blessing ceremony for the fields - we drank a lot of rice wine here - rice bowls full - as toasts, which I couldn't refuse. But all that moonshine on an empty stomach, coupled with the 2km hike up the side of the mountain made me more interested in sleep than in food. The Red Dzao people are matriarchal, so the women led the drinking. The rice wine here had me seriously worried I would go blind. The next morning, we had instant noodles with a fried egg on top for breakfast. If you've never tried this as a hangover cure, I strongly recommend it. Walking back down the mountain in the morning air was restorative, as well.

Thanks for the replies! Hey, you're from Maine, I'm from Nova Scotia - how the heck did I end up traipsing around the Lao/Viet border? Life is funny! We were only about 130 km out, but that's seven hours driving on these roads. If you look at the picture, you'll see there's tin roofing underneath. I'm not sure why they still live in these houses - this set we stayed in was new, and well looked-after. It could be a combination of tradition, and government support. We saw them all over the provinces we travelled through, so its not like they're disappearing, at least up north. One thing is for sure, though, you don't have to get very far out of Hanoi to meet people who live on very little a day. But these are ethnic minority people, not Viet people, and they maintain a very traditional lifestyle - I'm not informed enough to tell you whether that's by choice or not, though.

The first day, we drove up to meet the rest of the group, which had been travelling near the Chinese border for the three previous days. We had taken a short trip to Singapore for shopping, exposure to public transit; and good Indian food. We shared the trip up with a junior guide, Minh, and a young British lady, who was, like every other young British lady I meet in Hanoi, vegetarian. "You do know where we're going?" I asked "Well, yes of course. I'm sure they'll have something for me to eat" she replied, "I'll just eat the vegetables, if I need to. Or there'll be tofu" I quelled the urge to roll my eyes. Tofu? Where we're going, there won't be any tofu. Farm ladies in rice planting season don't have time to sit around making tofu. Or rice noodles, for that matter. Those are city foods. I also sighed for the inevitable squalling that would come when all the vegetable came fried with pork bits and fish sauce. Who are these people? Why do they ship themselves to rural Vietnam and turn their nose up at food? Where is Anthony Bourdain when I need him? We ended up missing our first assigned lunch spot, and had to tool around a small village looking for a restaurant that would cook for us on Tet eve, at the ungodly hour of 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when Vietnamese people don't think about cooking, not even for money. Minh managed to talk a small place into cooking for us. "Is chicken okay?" asked Minh. Chicken sounded fine, but the vegetarian requested vegetables. "Erm, yes." said Minh. What we got were twelve whole quails fried with heads intact, brain cracked open for easy access, and water spinach fried with pork liver- the "vegetables'. It was too dark for a photo, my regrets. That night, we stayed in a stilt house with Dzao Quan Trang people, with whom we were to share "Tet Eve". A big party was planned. We ate on the floor, as we would in all stilt houses. From the bottom, clockwise, fried pork with wood-ear mushroom; pork kebab pieces, marinated in lime, chili, sesame and black pepper; more pork and mushroom; stir fried vegetables with garlic and fish sauce; more pork; fried potatoes; in the centre - nuoc cham dipping sauce. Rice is on the side, and served at the end of each meal with broth and chayote, "for those who do not like their rice dry," as was translated for me by Minh. The mysterious looking bottle in the back is homemade rice wine, which displayed its own terroir as we travelled from region to region. This one had light notes of gasoline, with a finish of kerosene. The ladies checked out my wrist girth, which, according to them, compared favourably with their legs. Happy New Year! The photo is blurry due to massive consumption aforementioned rice wine. The next morning, the stilt house looked cheerful, despite the previous night's depredations. Chickens here are fresh and free-range. Breakfast was prepared over the hearth, a very sacred place in the Vietnamese home. I forget the story exactly, but three "ghosts" live in the hearth, a woman, and her two husbands. It's a long story. Anyway, the woman prepare all of the meals here, which boggled my mind - no mod cons like fuzzy logic rice cookers here. We brought frying pans for them as part of our Tet gifts, which were received gratefully. Breakfast is served! Since it was Tet, we were served the traditional Banh Trung, rice cakes stuffed with green beans, then pan fried. Dipped in fish sauce, the perfect thing for a rice-wine hangover. There was also pork with onions, and fried potatoes. Banana leaves were steamed with a sticky rice paste.

We knew it was going to be a good trip. When anyone asked us what we were doing for Tet (Lunar New Year), we told them we were going on a motorcycle trip with the Compagnie Bourlingue, through some of the northern provinces of Vietnam. Reactions varied - but always started - "With Fredo?" (the name of the company owner). This was immediately followed by (choose one): an incredulous eye-pop; sucked-in breath and a head shake; a long sigh. Our French teacher summoned a "Fredo...oui, je lui connais...." followed by a long blank stare that I assume was accompanied by a flashback in his head. We drove Minsks; the infamous Belo-russian motorcyles which are nick-named "the Mules of the Mountains" for their ability to get up just about anywhere. No Vietnamese person in the city would be caught dead on one; considered the ne plus ultra of peasant rides. Only foreigners are mad enough to ride them in Hanoi, where their belchy smoke is an early warning system for incoming foreigners. They're invaluable in the country, able to go down any road, climb any rutted mountain, and fixable with any material at hand - a claim proved on day 3 when our friend, Vancouver Dan, replaced his broken clutch pin with a twig. I called ours "the wasp" for the high whining noise it made as my husband tried to slam it into gear. I didn't drive: rather; I clung to the back pillion and spent a lot of time thinking about upcoming meals. I didn't take exhaustive photos, spending most of the time careening through sheer terror to sodden drunkeness (the hospitality of our hosts not allowing me to refuse their many cups of rice wine - even at lunch!). The stunning hospitality of the people we stayed with humbled me and renewed my desire to explore this country more. Our itinerary called for 6 days in the mountains 150 km west of Hanoi, near the Laotian border. The places we stayed are barely on the map, and don't grace the pages of the Lonely Planet. The people we stayed with were various friends and ex-students of our guide, Fredo. In many instances, they offered us all they had, materially. The food was amazing, and made invariably in small kitchen over open fires. I hope I can present a little of what we saw.

I'm coming in late, having just gotten back from my "Tet" holiday. What a great read this has been. It's interesting to see what parallels there are here in Vietnam. Blossoming trees have been for sale here for the last two weeks, as well as the mandarin trees (transported maniacally around town on the back of Honda scooters, strapped and wobbling precariously at every red light), although they were translated to me as peach blossoms, not plum. Red watermelon seed carnage is all over the streets as well, and red envelopes litter the desks at my office. So I say, "Chuc Mung Nam Moi!" to you, and I lift a glass of rice wine!

OMG yes, there was a vendor next to Incheon Station who would make a sandwich from three pieces of bread, and on the first layer put ham and American cheese, and on the second layer spread potato salad about a half inch thick. The whole thing was fried monte-cristo style. With a can of Pocari Sweat, that was some fine hangover recovery food there.

I saw a sliding scale for (what I and my friends called) "creamy salad" in Korean restaurant banchan. Top-end quality meat places had both sweet potato and regular potato salad - often served with attractive garnishes, such as on a perilla leaf, with chopped gochu on top. (I adore sweet potato salad) Slightly cheaper places had either regular or sweet potato salad. Slightly cheaper places still, like all-you-can-eat meat buffets, served apple salad - essentially chopped apples in mayonnaise. Which was weird, because generally apples were more expensive than potatoes in Korea. Despite the rather abhorrent sound of it - apples coated in mayonnaise - I developed quite the taste for this. It really cut the heat of all the chilis. Cheap, college student type places, like the ddalk galbi places with self-serve banchan, usually had macaroni with chopped cucumber and corn, dressed with the ubiquitous mayonnaise-ketchup dressing that I christened "mayochup". The cheapest of cheap served shredded cabbage with mayo-chup. This was often a side dish for tonkatsu or cheapest of the cheap - we're talking $3 a head - all-you-can-eat ddalk galbi joints. I went through a LOT of creamy salad in Korea.

What about a cherry-blossom viewing party, like they have in Japan and Korea? A picnic under the cherry blossoms, drinking soju/shochu...in Korea everyone ate gimbap and other picnic foods- maybe in Japan they have bento? Where's Torakris when you need her? Of course, you would need cherry blossoms....

[]Smacks head[/] D'uh. I totally forgot that thread! It's great to come back online (shakes fist furiously at ISP - NetNam) and see your kitchen. Mine really doesn't measure up! I remember my Dad cooked exclusively Southern Chinese and Indian food when I was growing up, (Mum hardly cooked) and snotty child that I was, I refused to eat any of it. How do your kids handle your experiments in Asian cuisine? With enthusiasm? Or do they fill up on cucumbers?

Wow, your chicken and lemongrass looked great. I've never had it with coconut milk and curry here in the North. It's worth noting I have THE EXACT SAME BRAND of coconut milk sitting on my kitchen counter right now. Is it a small world, or what? I'm travelling down the coast in April, and I'm going to take copious notes about the differences in North/South cuisine - for the edification of myself and all eGulleteers. Have we started a Vietnamese home cooking thread yet? We need to do that. I've made a date to do a cooking exchange with one of my co-workers - she wants to learn how to make banana bread, after I brought some into the staff room. It's such a healthy and great cuisine - and points-friendly, too! Thanks for letting us in to see your cooking and your life.

Yay! I look forward to it. As for Vietnamese coffee, I'm not sure if you have access to the same Trung Nguyen blends I do, but the "Passiona" blend is my favourite - it tastes like dark chocolate. The "Legendee" is pretty good as well, and bills itself as weasel coffee, but I doubt that, what with the volume of it that they sell. Their straight-up orange/brown bag simply marked arabica is fine as well. I don't find French Roast tastes anything like Vietnamese roasts - Vietnamese roasts taste sweet and buttery, especially when the roast is fresh. Currently I'm getting all my coffee from an independent roaster here in town who makes all of her coffee taste like dark chocolate. I keep meaning to take pictures. Some of the really hard-core old fashioned coffee shops roast their own coffee - in a wok on the street. And try as I may, I still can't hit the correct tone over the "sua" in cafe sua da. Those biscuits look like they're so light, they're about to float right off of the plate.

I've been dying to get my hands on "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen", especially after reading her description on how to make caramel. I'd like to hear from anyone who has bought it and used it.

[excited]ohboyohboyohboy[/excited] I see you have a copy of "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen". I'd love to get my grubby hands on one of those, but it's not available here (for obvious reasons, I guess - the people of Vietnam already know how to cook their own food.) I'm going to look for a copy when I go to Singapore for Lunar New Year, but I'm not holding my breath. What have you cooked from it? Are you planning to make any of the recipes this week? Pancakes were the one food I never allowed myself when following weightwatchers, as I can't stand to eat them without gobbing great heaps of syrup and butter.

I can't wait to see what you cook - Those flavours look Vietnamese, too! Have fun blogging!

Well, now, I'm certainly craving those foods. It all looks scrumptious. Especially the egg yolk porn!

After staring long and hard at the listings for "shrimp" in my Laos and Cambodia phrasebooks (the only Vietnamese word I could understand with clearly legible text below it), I'm going to definitively say Khmer. I'm so glad Vietnam uses a romanized script! I forgot how hard it is to first train your eye to see the script; then to sound out a meaning.

I love how your idea of fun activities on a trip involves going around to various supermarkets to see what kind of food they have on offer, because this exactly the sort of thing I enjoy. I think it shows a lot about a culture. For example, I've never even considered turning a strawberry into a goggle-eyed face, but people in Taiwan do, apparently. My friends usually think I'm nuts because I want to see how many cheeses are available at, say City Super, in Hong Kong, instead of shopping on Hollywood road, or whatever, but to me, it's the most fascinating thing. There are a lot of Marie Brizard products available in Hanoi, as well. They must have a good distributor.

Yes, they Did. I was out of limes, and the veg lady didn't have any when I got home from work - she was kind of like, "Limes? At 7:30 in the evening? Don't waste my time, madame." So I thought, how am I going to get the sour note? And then I remembered the bamboo shoots. I make red curry two or three times a month, and this was one of the best I've made in ages. So Pink! So Bright! There really isn't any point in doing more to them, is there?

Here I've been feeling so healthy since I spent the whole last week eating rice noodles and vegetables, I come into this thread and see steak, macaroni and cheese, potato pancakes....I'm getting nostalgic for carbs covered in/fried in/dipped in fat. I humbly submit my contribution to the thread - I made a red curry with peanuts, some eggplant and pickled bamboo shoots that have been lurking in my fridge.

I can't imagine how this could have been a problem. No bars?! I think my plans to move to Taipei just came to a screeching halt. We used to drink at the convenience stores in Korea, too, though. It had a certain charm. Glad to hear the eats are so cheap, all of the food looks really delicious. Take care of yourself - there's a cold going around!

It's loaded up every night, and taken off to heaven knows where. Everything is washed in plastic tubs, right there on the street. Despite how that sounds, everything is very clean - at least to look at. People are always scrubbing, washing, or air-drying something out on the street. You should see the ladies that carry their whole kitchen in two baskets - in one basket, they have a brazier going, with their pot on it, boiling away, and in the other basket, all their condiments and small plastic stools. When they find an amenable doorstep (often mine, since my house is one of the few on the street that isn't a store-front), they stop, set up their stools, and wait for the customers to roll in. If they see the police coming, they can pack up quickly and be on their way. Hey, together we make, like, a full Inuit. My background is from Labrador, though - I think our other member is from the West coast? hrtz8w, thanks for sharing your picture. I haven't seen that around here, but it doesn't mean it isn't here. I'll keep my eyes out for it in the future - it looks delicious. Chufi, I remember way back, you did a killer bibimbap in the cook-off thread. Perhaps we should have a Vietnamese dish cook-off? Something simple, like Bun bo nam bo? Or Caramel Pork? If anyone would like to see more pictures of Vietnam, my husband is a Flickr member, and all his best stuff goes up there.

That is me in the picture. I'm half Inuit, which is a great excuse for being overweight. I can never complain about being cold, though! My Dad was raised in Hong Kong and Singapore, though, so I had a lot of Asian influence growing up...it's no surprise to my family that I ended up here. The water chestnut lady had a really old looking paring knife. I'm so sorry to hear that. I have a friend who's coming in April who's allergic to shellfish - I hope she'll be okay! I also had a friend who visited, who is also severely allergic to peanuts - he had no problem at all. But we did have to eat in tourist cafes all the time. The Geothe Institute - the German cultural Centre. I don't know why, though. I think it was just regular rice - but in Korea, they always use the short grain rice, like Japanese rice. Oh yeah, we're way more fun than Phnom Penh. And our DVDs are cheaper, too! I used to be a business consultant, and my husband a TV reporter. Then one day the urge hit us to travel, and we did. I really enjoy teaching, though, and I plan to take further training in it. Thank you all again for dropping by!

I guess due to time zones, I can share the rest of my Sunday with you! First, I want to thank everybody for stopping by and having a peek into my life. I hope that it was interesting for you. I've been battling a miserable cold this week, and today I was brought low, and spent most of the day curled up on a sofa with a girlfriend of mine, planning our Lunar New Year holiday, and trying to decide which country to move to next. I did manage to fit a couple of meals in between the sniffling and plotting, so I offer these as the "last meal", if you will. Earlier posts reminded me that I hadn't had Chao Tom (sugarcane shrimp) in Hanoi, so I sought some out. Luckily, KOTO offers a couple of non-northern specialties, and they had it there. After six or so cups of green tea and one banana smoothie from a different cafe, Peter came back from his Ultimate Frisbee game, and wanted something hearty. He wanted Korean hotpot, which was funny, as we were discussing hotpot over in the Taipei thread. It comes in several stages: first the soup, with mushrooms and minari - a kind of green. Kimchi on the side, of course. Then you add the beef, thinly sliced. When all the beef is gone, you add thick wheat noodles. After they're all gone, you fry some rice and egg in the pot. I felt well restored after all that. Thanks again, and if you're ever going to be in the neighborhood, do drop me a pm - I'll be happy to take you out on a bun cha crawl!