Vietnam

Preface Vietnam was fantastic. Christa agrees that it was even better than our Japan trip, and that was pretty damn great, too. We spent the first day in Hanoi, then rode the overnight train west to Sapa, where we stayed an all-too-short couple of days, then back to Hanoi, before going all the way to Halong Bay on the East Coast. The week before we left, I bought a brand new 2 gigabyte memory card at Yongsan electronics market in Seoul. On Wednesday evening, shortly after taking my 750th photo, the card froze up. The son of a bitch wouldn't let me take any more pictures, or review any that I had already taken. Naming Error. Naming Error. Naming Error. I'm still semi-hopeful that I'll be able to recover them (while Christa is in flat-out denial at the idea that they may be lost) but need a bit of technical wizardry which I've not been able to lay my hands on yet. Christa took some photos, of course, but not that many, as generally she relies on me, seeing as my camera is better, and she knows that whatever she takes a picture of, I'm just gonna take 5 more of from different angles anyway. With all this in mind, I'm gonna start from the end and work backwards, with the hope that I'll have had some luck with the photos by the time I get back to Wednesday. So, without further ado. Sunday We arrived back at the Village at about 8:30am yesterday morning. There's only a 2 hour time difference between here and Vietnam, but our flight had left at 0:45am, and I can never really get comfortable another to sleep for long in the tiny aeroplane seats, so I was pretty shattered. I was actually getting a little giddy from exhaustion when we did arrive home, and didn't think I'd need to sleep for long. Planning to get up again for lunch, I went to bed at 9am. I woke up again at 8:08pm feeling refreshed and slightly confused. Saturday After lunch we left the tranquillity of Halong Bay for the chaos of Hanoi once more. The traffic around the Old Quarter where most of the tourism is based is crazy. Everybody and their Grandmother travels by motorcycle, and it's not at all unusual to see three or four people on one bike. Our guidebook testifies to somebody witnessing seven passengers on one bike, and I totally believe it. Traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are rare, so crossing the street requires a definite strategy. Ours was to walk slowly enough that any oncoming traffic could avoid us, rather than the other way around. Panic and try to run across and you're toast. We had five hours to kill before we were due to leave for the airport, and since this was to be our third stint in the city, there wasn't all that much left that we wanted to do, so after a final bit of souvenir shopping, we decided to partake in our favourite pastime, that which we were doing, oh, about 97% of the time last week: we went for something to eat. Hanh (almost pronounced 'Hi') - our guide,at Halong Bay - had recommended two dishes that we were not to leave Hanoi without trying. Indeed, if we didn't try them, then we hadn't really been to Vietnam at all (at least so says the New York Times Hanh was quoting). The restaurant gave us the menu: We decided to go with the fish. With only the one dish on the menu, I expected they'd make a good job of it, and they certainly did. I'd love to defend Korean food, and there many dishes I love and will miss when I leave, but it can't really hold a candle to that of its neighbours. Vietnamese food is so fresh and varied, whereas Korean is usually pickled or fermented, and tends to rely on the same few core ingredients (pepper paste, soybean paste, pork, kimchi). I don't think I've seen a fresh herb since coming to Korea. Also, not that I'm endorsing French Colonialism, but it did leave the Vietnamese with a sound understanding of how to bake, unlike the Koreans, whose best efforts at bread and cakes mostly come out of the oven already tasting two weeks old. Anyway, the fish, with peanuts, fish oil, butter, and a handful of different herbs, was delicious. The place was so popular that we were practically being ushered out of the door to make room for the next guests while I was still drinking my beer. Stuffed as we were, we still had one item left on our list: Bún Chả. Hanh had said it was untranslatable into English, while our waitress' best attempt to describe it was 'green pork'. Put in such seductive terms, how could we say no? It was plainly just meatballs with dill (those people really love their dill), and we actually had eaten it a few days before, only we hadn't learned the Vietnamese name for it. And it was good, though far from the best we ate that week. I may write to the NY Times and tell them to get out more. The banana smoothie I drank with the meal was far more memorable! And sadly, with that final meal inside us, we waddled back to the hotel to await our taxi, and homeward bound we were.