Everyday life in Thanh Tien

As my time in Vietnam quickly approaches it's end, I've started to look at and appreciate the little things. The parts of my day that are unremarkable to me now as they have become part of my everyday life. Those things that are paradoxically the most unique and special moments for their simplicity. It is rare to get a real, "authentic" look into another culture -- I hesitate to even use the word "authentic" because I usually steer clear of any restaurant or tour that claim to provide an "authentic experience". All that aside, I believe that my daily visits to Thanh Tien have become routine for the locals and as such I've been invited and have gotten to see a different Vietnam, one that is at times foreign even to Vietnamese people living in the city!

Here are a few everyday sights in Thanh Tien village. It's funny for me to think now with a little perspective that these things no longer make me pause.

These little shrines are everywhere, as a way to remember one's ancestors

Paper flower making has become part of my daily routine

Though I've become accustomed to seeing copious amount of meat,
I still cringe whenever I see the live ducks, chickens, and even dogs
at local markets.

Now here's a sight you can never tire of! The kids were shy with me at
first but have since realized that I am a complete pushover and always
ask me to carry them around!

Mr. Dan's pillow factory, always busy, always full to the brim with pillows!

When in doubt, try to communicate with music! This is my friend Yen's
little brother. At first he was too shy to eat in the same room as me, but
he has since warmed but considerably and had me doing advanced
calculus with him over the weekend.... yikes!

This one is for you mom: a part of getting your haircut here is getting
your ears cleaned! Long tweezers and cotton ball things that make you
shiver. Quite the experience!

Rice, rice, and more rice! And apparently insecticide that you can
handle with your bare hands and toss out on your crops to keep them healthy?

Mr. Loan's got style.

Day of the Dead celebrations: Catholic or Buddhist, no matter, you still
celebrate with some praying, lots of food, and copious amounts of beer.
The men and women sit at different tables and you eat and drink until you
fall asleep -- all before 1pm!

Before arriving here I truly thought that the the conical traditional
Vietnamese hats weren't worn anymore by everyday people. Wrong! Here's
a normal day, at a regular local market. When I wear one of these, everyone
speaks Vietnamese to me!

This tree was planted next to the shrine dedicated to the harvest gods for
luck. It's over 150 years old!

HEAT.

Today in Hue it's HOT. I mean like really, really hot. In the forties hot. I had to rent a motorbike to go to Thanh Tien today, the idea of going there by bicycle was too daunting. I felt a little wimpy about this until the following happened:

• Locals complained that it was hot out
• The water in my water bottle was warmer than my mouth: i.e. not refreshing.
• When I got back from the village and entered by hotel room, I was hit by cool air (to the point where I shivered!), when I looked at my alarm-clock-turned-thermometer it read 36 degrees!!

 

My strategy consisted of a light colored thin white long sleeved shirt, a lot of water, and getting what needed to be done as fast as possible so that I could escape to my "cool" hotel room. On the other hand, my friend Yen's strategy was vastly different, layer up and protect yourself from the sun:

Spicy!

Before arriving in Hue, I was told that the food here was delicious but spicy. I'm no stranger to spicy food (though in my family I'm known as the wimp, among my friends I can hold my own), so I wasn't too worried. I had survived in spicy Malaysia after all! Plus, so far my experience with Vietnamese food never approached the too spicy range. However, upon my arrival, Mr. Phuoc (my boss) brought me to breakfast and taught my first Vietnamese words in Hue: không cay, meaning not spicy... which made me a little more nervous. When our breakfast arrived, the famous bún bò hue (spicy beef noodle soup), I realized that there was no exaggeration in the description of Hue food: the broth was rich, tasty, and even this "non spicy" version that Mr. Phuoc had ordered for me made my eyes water and my lips tingle. 

After almost two months of living here and sampling the local cuisine everyday, I never forget those two precious words: không cay! The locals find me hilarious, my friends tease me and say that I have the mouth of a baby, and I can't argue with that. This week I was invited by Mr. Loan's wife to eat bánh canh cá lóc (fish noodle soup), which has recently taken up the spot of my favorite Vietnamese soup (that's right, it's beaten out phở which I've loved forever!).  Also usual, I politely tried to explain that I couldn't deal with spice and asked for the kid's non-spicy version. She accommodated me with a smile and I received one of the best bowls of fish soup I'd ever had:

Despite being the kids' version, when I drank the broth carelessly I was still attacked by spice-induced coughing and teary eyes. The pain is completely worth it though, the fish is incredibly tender, the noodles are some kind of extra-chewy rice noodle perfection and the broth is crazy rich tasting. Then I glanced at my friend Yen's bowl:

She obviously didn't get the kids version! She then added even more chilli to her soup! I don't think it would even be physically possible for me to eat that... Though the extra color does look good!

And now, a completely frivolous addition: a picture of our cook with the best vintage glasses I've ever seen (this is an authentic Vietnamese hipster ladies and gents):

The making of the Tết flowers

Ok, so let's start with showing you all my goal:

It's call hoa cây, which translates quite aptly to flower tree. Each branch is made up of ten flowers just so:

 

Seem a little daunting? Well, I now certainly think so! However, I have to admit that when I first decided upon this challenge, I didn't think it was going to be quite as challenging as it's turning out to be. The only experience I had of paper flower making at the time was of the final step which is to tie up the ready made flowers to the small bamboo branch using ribbon. That in and of itself is no easy feat, but I definitely under-estimated the effort necessary to reach said final step.

The craft of making these worship flowers in Thanh Tien village is over 400 years old. The techniques and tools have been passed down over the generations and is in danger of dying off, which is where Rose Vietnam and my volunteer work comes into play. I will write soon about the project as a whole, today I want to focus on the techniques of making these particular flowers. Here are the tools: (much to my surprise and delight, Mr. Loan said he was in the process of making my very own tool kit to bring home, so I can show you all how to make these flowers back in Canada!)

The first steps (that I have not yet learned) are to dye the paper and cut up bamboo into the right size pieces and dye these as well. Mr. Loan promised he would show me these steps before I left. I think he's just waiting to see me become comfortable with the hammer before he hands me the machete, or whatever it is one uses to slice up bamboo!

The next step is cutting. I never thought of using a hammer and a weirdly, but perfectly, shaped nail (I call it a nail for lack of better word, please let me know if this told has a name!) to cut paper, but that is how it is done. The execution itself looks quite simple, not so. Just today, I was getting comfortable with this step, thinking I had mastered it, think again! My most recent cutting were rejected as không đẹp, meaning not beautiful as they weren't perfect circles. Hum. The weird nail thing has to go down perfectly straight for this not to happen. Better luck tomorrow!

After the cutting comes the wrinkling or folding. For far I've learned to do this in two ways. Either with a bamboo stick and foamy thingny or with a rope and differently shaped bamboo stick. I think I've mastered the foamy technique to Mr. Loan's wife's satisfaction (I call her the "quality control") but my technique with the rope is most definitely not yet up to snuff!

 

Next is gluing, using the same starch as when making Bánh Lọc! Yum! Very sticky though... I learned quickly to keep it to only one finger at a time otherwise you end up with quite the mess. Most of the gluing is quite straightforward, but not so for the rose (Minh and Hao can attest to that).

Ah finished! Well except for making the stems, gluing on the "pollen" on the end of stems, assembling, oh and learning (and mastering!) the cutting, wrinkling, and gluing parts of each individual flower... Now the question is, what is such a flower branch worth? Any guesses? Well, in the markets in preparation for the New Year these go for about 2000 vnd a branch, less than 50 cents. Flabbergasting. 40 branches takes an expert 12 hours to make, which is less than two dollars for an hour's work. Really makes you think. Meanwhile, I've completed four branches in a week, with a bunch of spare flowers lying around. I need at least 150 branches to make a tree, and I've got 2 months to finish. A fine challenge!

Bánh anyone?

This one is for all the foodies out there! Since most of you are my friends and family, that means there's a lot of you!! Here is my Bánh saga. First off, I just wanted to put out there that I first had the idea for this post at least a month ago and my over-ambitious idea was to take a picture of every single type of bánh available in Hue to share with you... it quickly became clear that this would never happen, so here are the ones that I did get a picture of, really the tip of the iceberg.

Bánh Mì

My next comment is my personal journey to translate the word bánh. Literally meaning "cake" when used alone, it means a whole lot of other things when combined with other words. The first bánh I discovered was on my first morning in Saigon when I learned that my favorite cheap lunch -- Vietnamese sandwiches -- are called Bánh Mì.

Nothing is ever simple in Vietnamese, so Bánh Mi also means baguette, and if you add "op la" to it you get a omelet sandwich (which is very tasty!). So ordering one from a bakery is never completely straight-forward. So my first definition of Bánh was "some type of cake/bread/whatever made from wheat". Makes sense no? Supporting this theory, in Saigon I got familiar with Bánh Bao (steamed bun with a surprise mix of eggs/veggies/meat inside that resembles Chinese steam buns), Bánh Xèo (a fried pancake type deal that you wrap in rice paper), Bánh Bò (small little spongy cakes that taste vaguely like coconut), Bánh Tien (deep fried dough pockets with lots of sesame seeds on them and surprisingly nothing inside)... and I'm sure I'm missing some. I lived on in blissful unawareness of the other dozens of types of Bánh that have nothing to do with wheat. And then one morning at Thuc's mom's restaurant I came face to face with Bánh Bèo, made from rice flour! Oh no... I then remembered that my favorite breakfast ever was in Dalat, and it was called Bánh Cuốn, definitely no wheat going on here:

Ok new definition! Bánh means dumpling! My mom has a theory that every single culinary culture has a type of dumpling, with the definition of carbs wrapped around some type of protein being our working definition of dumpling. In a stretch I could even include Bánh Mì in this category because after all the bread is the outside carbs and the ham (or egg, in the case of Bánh mì ốp la) the inside yummy-ness. This new definition worked very well during my discovery of many, many, rice-flour and tapioca-flour based Bánh in Hue:

Bánh ít, that's a deep fried dough with a chewy tapioca type boiled dough
on top, garnished with a mix of shredded fish and shrimps. Minh's favorite!

Bánh Nậm, my personal favorite among Hue's offerings!
Sticky, gooey, wrapped in a palm leaf, what's not to love!?

Bánh Sắn, tapioca starch with yummyred beans inside which makes it nice and sweet!

Bánh Lọc with palm leave wrapper

Bánh Lọc without the wrapper, the ones on
the left are boiled and the right ones are fried.

Bánh Ép, tiny tapioca-flour pancakes that you wrap around yummy
veggies and herbs, dunked in peanut sauce.

Bánh Khoai, very similar to Saigon's Bánh Xèo. This time no rice paper wrapper
and instead of fish sauce more peanut sauce that seems very popular in Hue.
Garnished with young mango and the ever present herbs.

Bánh Ram, a specialty from the city where Hao's older sister lives.
During Tết holiday I learned to make these and was then
promptly recruited to make a couple hundred!

Another version of Bánh Ram

So after another few months of blissful unawareness, thinking that bánh referred to a general dumpling type of food, I discovered Bánh Can, which for all intents and purposes is noodle soup! Oh well, I've given up!

Bánh Canh, made with Hao.

Good thing I gave up because I have since discovered that this huge chip thingny is also part of the bánh family. Forgot it's whole name though...

My conclusion? Bánh = yummy!

Chúc mừng năm mới!

Happy Year of the Snake! In Vietnam this is known as Tết holiday, the most important holiday of the year. For many Vietnamese, these three days are the only time they get to go back to visit their home town. The whirlwind of energy in the city in anticipation of the holiday was an amazing thing to experience. Shops were full of people and shelves were looking quite bare. I spent my time trying to figure out all the customs so that I didn't overly embarrass myself -- which was all for naught since I spent the morning of the second day of Tết in the worse state of embarrassment possible (yes more on that in a few). Anyways, I acquired some red envelopes for lucky money, given to young people (like in Japan!), bought gifts for Hao's family and other friends and got myself new clothing for the occasion!


My first day of Tết was spent in Thanh Tien village with Hao and her family. Her three sisters came home for the occasion, two from the pagoda where they live and the other with her husband and baby. Unsurprisingly, as with any good holiday, a lot of the day was spent preparing and eating food! We also went to the village cemetery to visit the graves of Hao's family in the morning. The afternoon was spent touring the village, visiting different family members. At each house we were offered tea and a multi-compartement box filled with candies, ginger sweets, and roasted watermelon seeds (what a discovery! These things are actually really yummy!).

Hao and her younger sister lighting incense as an offering

Thanh Tien cemetery

Hao and her grandmother, she was a cheeky one!

My second day of Tết started with my doing a favor for my friend Minh. He had asked me a couple days previously if I was interested in doing a quick interview for a friend of his doing a documentary about foreigner's view of Tết holiday. He said that they were also very interested in visiting Thanh Tien and seeing the work that Rose was doing there to promote paper flowers. I imagined this to be a low-key interview followed by a paper flower making demonstration, which would be good exposure for Rose and the work of Thanh Tien village. The whole thing was scary but manageable so I agreed. The day before the shoot, I learned that this had turned into a national program and that they wanted me to dress in traditional Vietnamese attire, which would be provided by the TV station. Ok, a bit more scary, but it's too late to back out now.

The day of: I try to fit into the clothing provided, nope, that zipper is not going to fit over my belly! I've got thighs after all! The TV woman insists and says that the front of the dress with hide the less than perfect look of the pants. Given no choice, I agree and then proceed out into the unknown. Completely unbeknownst to my friend Minh, he was now going to be on screen with me! Oh and we were no longer going to Thanh Tien at all! Instead we were brought to the biggest pagoda in Hue and were paraded around doing various tasks. The whole time I was simply praying that I wasn't going to burst out of the pants! After that we were brought to the Citadel, the main tourist attraction in Hue. Here our task became harder and even more embarrassing: find a tourist and ask them what they thought of Tết holiday! Not just any tourist either, the TV woman wanted them to be foreign looking, old, and in a group. (I think she was pretty disappointed when I turned up that morning looking way too Asian and young!) Minh and I tried to keep eachothers spirits up, and I tried to appreciate seeing the Citadel for the first time. Still, most my attention was on my pants and on not tripping over the long dress (the locals thought that my flip flops with the fancy clothing was hilarious). Let's just say that I was happy to change back into my "street clothing" and that it is not confirmed, show biz is definitely not my calling!

I spent the third day of Tết once more with Hao's family, and learned how to make bánh ram. I will post very soon about all the types of bánh that I've encountered here! And voilà my Tết experience! Chúc mừng năm mới!

Thanh Tan Hot Springs

This week I was invited by my friend Minh to go to the hot springs with her group of friends. Being half-Japanese, I have a fondness for hot springs or onsen, so I jumped at the change to soak in hot water surrounded by nature. Thanh Tan is less than an hour motorcycle ride away, but we still were going overnight since one of the girls coming with us was able to secure a 50% discount! The package included a massage, a yummy supper, a hotel room, and access to their many hot spring baths.

Without realizing it, I had expectations to find something resembling the hot springs that I've visited in Japan or Indonesia... and learned once again to drop all expectations! Vietnamese-style hot springs resembles more a water park than a relaxing bath! There were also baths just to soak in, but the bulk of the resort was made up of water slides, a giant wave pool (which was being cleaned and sadly unusable), and play parks. Needless to say I was very happy have had wrong expectations. The mix of decadent relaxation (i.e. the two massages I indulged in) with sheer excitement (one of the slides was so fast that you actually went airborne on it! Not up to Canadian-safety standards if I had to guess...) was unique and refreshing! What a way to spend hump day...

I think that I never dream of such a perfect playing spot as a child!

A little silliness after a mind-altering massage!

Our "morning exercise" walk up to the source of the cold springs.
You never get too far away from cellphones in Vietnam!

Cooking class with Hao!

Today I woke up excited: I was going to learn how to cook bún bò Huế (spicy beef noodle soup originating from Hue) and bánh loc, followed by a motorbike lesson through the deserted country roads of Thanh Tien village. My teacher: Hao, a local university student that's been involved with Rose Vietnam for a while. She picked me up at my hotel and together we went to a local market to buy our necessary ingredients. As with most families, Hao's family doesn't have a fridge at home, so most meals start with such a visit. The plus side is that you know that everything is fresh. In fact, the shrimps we bought were still alive and I was attacked by a jumping fish while making my way through the seafood section! To my surprise, meat, especially beef, is very expensive here. Seafood is cheaper, but not cheap. Vegetables and rice noodles on the other hand is almost given. A fun fact: at the veggie stand, Hao just told the lady that she was making bún bò Huế for 3 people and the lady just put an assortment of veggies, herbs, onions, and even a pineapple in a bag! Good system I thought!

We started with making the bánh loc, which to me seemed to be the Vietnamese style of Japanese gyoza, basically dumplings. However, bánh loc are made with rice paste which you form into small circles with your fingers. You then put in one small shrimp and a small piece of pork before sealing similarly to a gyoza. However, since the rice paste is sticky, you don't need anything to help it hold. The shrimp and pork were cooked previously in a sweet and spicy sauce consisting of oil, sugar, fish sauce, and chilli peppers. After making all the dumplings, half were boiled and the other half fried. The boiled ones had a slightly translucent appearance with a texture that reminded me of mochi. The fried ones were a yummy mix of a crunchy exterior and chewy interior! All were eaten with yet more fish sauce. In case I haven't mentioned it yet: don't come to Vietnam if you don't like fish sauce! It's everywhere.

Getting the right sized insides was a challenge for me,
so was finding the optimal thickness of the paste, but I had fun trying!

One guess which was one of my first attempts... I have to admit that I was happy with the flair I added to the last ones!

Making bún bò Huế was much easier. You basically cut up the onions and pineapple (surprise!) and boiled everything along with the pork. The broth consisted of oil, salt, fish sauce, and chili peppers. Near the end you added the beef and you were ready to eat! The thick rice vermicelli we bought were already cooked, and most of the vegetables you added raw. Presentation was important here: in the bottom of the bowl went the raw veggies, then the vermicelli, and then to top it off you add the beef and make sure there's enough broth to go around. Yum!

Hao sorting through the veggies and cleaning them.

Raw veggies soaking in salt water to make sure they are clean, no upset stomachs please!

The final results!