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The Flood Gates of Hoi An
The Flood Gates of Hoi An
Throughout all our time so far we have refrained from buying anything, at the markets we have visited, despite the aggressive sales tactics of some of the owners. We kept telling ourselves “we are traveling light, everything fits in our carryon. We will not check any luggage.” Until today. The markets of Hoi An have won.
The crack in the dam came yesterday when we visited an art gallery full of beautifully embroidered works of art. Today, during our free time, we went back. There were three pieces that we really liked. We narrowed the field down to my second and third choices. From there we nearly flipped a coin to decide. We thought about shipping the entire thing, frame and all, since the frame prices were so reasonable, but in the end we decided to just take the cloth. The cloth is easy to transport and takes up very little space, and can be ironed when we get back home before we frame the piece.
After that little purchase we were hungry and decided to have lunch. One of the places our tour company recommended in Hoi An is called Streets. We had a fantastic lunch, and learned a bit about this interesting organization for helping street kids by giving them 18 months of housing, food, and training in hospitality and the culinary arts. A delicious meal from a great organization. So I bought their cookbook.
I love buying cookbooks. I love reading cookbooks. I am a cookbook collector. There is no better way to remember the culture of a place than to be recreate the food you ate while visiting. And besides, what could be easier to transport and lighter to add to your luggage than a full color cookbook?
There was only one problem. I DON’T HAVE ROOM FOR A COOKBOOK. So we did what any sane travelers would do. We bought some chopsticks, and little wooden things to rest your chopsticks on, and a box to hold all of our new chopsticks. In fairness, I have to say that the chopsticks are made from the wood of a Jackfruit tree. Jane’s new favorite fruit. Then Jane bought some Genie Jammy pants, and a scarf, and I bought a couple of leather bracelets. Accessorize, accessorize!
In an effort to stop the flow of new goods into our possession, we fled back to the shopping free zone that is our hotel. Sadly, we didn’t make it past the leather bag store, Tu Chi, that we were “just browsing” in yesterday.
The young lady that runs the shop recognized us, and probably had us pegged as easy marks. She had some help from a guy who I imagine is her distributor in Russia. He did a nice sales job on the size, and construction quality of the bags. The one I really liked was a bit too large to make it past persnickety airline gate agents, so they said they would make me one that conforms to all the rules. Out comes the leather, in great big bolts. Which leather would I like, how would I like the top to zip open? How would I like the straps to be constructed. There was some discussion, from our new Russian friend, of carrying 20 kilos of potatoes. Sounds good in theory, but that would be over the weight limit of most airlines. Nevertheless this custom bag thing is all very cool. I’ll update this post with the finished product tomorrow evening.
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I guess we will be checking a bag for the flight to Hanoi after all.
Update: Here is a picture of the bag in progress, and the bag packed and ready for the airport in our hotel room in Hue.
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To Market to Market
To Market to Market
It all started with motorbike parts. Our first day on the motorbikes, we went into the market. The first street we turned down was nothing but bits and pieces of motorbikes. After all, it takes a lot of parts to keep the millions of 20 year old motorbikes running. From there we saw everything from television remote controls, to hand wound springs, to big pieces of metal being cut with very hot torch-like things.
It progressed to the food market. A vast array of over 1000 stalls carrying everything from dried sea cucumber to sea monkeys to wood ear mushrooms to live eels to every imaginable spice to picked, well, everything.
Two days ago in the smaller neighborhood market in the Mekong delta, we witnessed women buying fresh frogs. They were alive, until the seller whipped out their kitchen shears and took care of the head and their horny little toes. How do you top fresh frog in the morning? Hmmm, how about a stop at the rat market? Rats not your thing? How about fresh snake? I asked Long if the rats were cheap thinking thats what the poorer folk ate. No, “very expensive” They are a delicacy. These are “good rats from the fields, not the rats from the market.” OK, I don’t think I really wanted to hear that.
We visited the floating markets of Cai Be, where you can buy sweet potatoes, bananas, fish, and crabs in massive quantities off of boats from all around Southeast Asia.
We have ridden our bikes past countless tiny markets, sandwiched between two houses in the countryside, selling soda, cigarettes, Pho, and Pringles. Yes, Pringles are surprisingly popular in the small neighborhood markets.
It is easy to resist buying food items from the markets because you know there is no chance that it is going to make it through customs at the next stop. So we look, we smell, we marvel at the variety. One Australian dude we overheard as we wandered through the food market yesterday pretty much summed it up: “F#ck I wish I could cook!”
Here are some photos that illustrate our trips through the market places of Saigon, the Mekong Delta, and now Hoi An.
Hoi An Nighttime
Hoi An Nighttime
After four days of non-stop activity, we took a short flight North to Hoi An. Hoi An, is a very much a vacation area for Vietnamese and foreigners alike. It is a World Heritage site and will provide us with some very welcome down time. Maybe more down time than we planned on since it is supposed to rain the next two days, and I don’t think we will do our bike ride if it is raining.
Long took us to the airport and escorted us through the checkin process and all the way to security where we bid him goodbye. It is really comforting traveling with a well trained guide in a country where you can barely say, hello and thank you. They make everything go smoothly. After a short flight to Danang, we were met by our guide Binh who will be with us for our time in Hoi An.
After checking in to the beautiful Ananantara Resort Hotel we went with Binh for some lunch and a walking tour of the old city. This is definitely a shopping destination, and I have a feeling we will be buying (and shipping home) some embroidered artwork. It is so finely done it is nearly photo realistic quality.
After resting up in our room we went out for a walk through the markets and shops at night. It is really beautiful here at night. The gallery below gives you a good idea of the colors here at night.
We totally enjoyed a long walk through the old town. After a while we stopped at a restaurant called the Seafood Garden. It didn’t look particularly great as a place to eat, and without a data plan we couldn’t just pop up trip advisor. Well we do have a data plan but it is ridiculously expensive (thanks Verizon), and it seemed obvious just by looking. (Update: TripAdvisor confirms our suspicions) But they had an upstairs balcony that we could sit at and have a drink and look out over the river. The drinks were cheap, and it was entertaining to watch the old gentleman who was waiting tables hustle tours from all of the other people around us for the next day.
We wanted to go back to the restaurant where we had lunch, as I think we spend a few days just happily working our way through the menu, however they were booked for the night. Who knew you needed reservations in this place. We ended up eating at the Hai Cafe where we had some nice Vietnamese barbecue. This is the restaurant where we will meet for our cooking class tomorrow.
The Meekong Delta
The Meekong Delta
The Meekong Delta
The picture pretty much sums up our experience here the last two days. We have both pushed ourselves outside our comfort zone, we have tried many new foods, and even took a sip of rice wine that had been marinating with cobra! Where do you go after a day like that?
Yesterday we left our hotel in the city and headed out to the Meekong Delta. This is an extremely fertile area where the Meekong river flows into the Sea. We started our day loading our bikes onto a boat and we headed up the river into the delta.
We made a stop along the way at a brick factory. It is such a step back in time, to visit a factory like this in Vietnam. We simply got off the boat and wandered around talking to a few of the workers. No badges required, no hard helmets, no insurance waivers. Its a pretty simple process, clay comes out of the river, and goes into a little hand operated machine that mikes the clay and extrudes the bricks. After drying on their own for a few weeks they eventually make it into a big kiln which is fired by rice husks.
We got off the boat, along with our bikes at another small factory, this time they were making all kinds of things out of coconuts. Coconut water, candy, coconut milk, shaved coconut. If it was possible to squeeze another product out of coconut they would find a way to do it. Before we set off on our bikes we had a whole plate of fruit to try. Including dipping your fresh pineapple into a mixture of salt and chile peppers -- delicious. I ate more fruit yesterday than I have in a year. Which isn’t saying much good about my diet, I know.
After an hour or so of biking through the tiny backroads of the delta we stopped for lunch. A great outdoor restaurant that basically appeared out of nowhere. One minute we were biking through the trees and the next we were pulling into a “neighborhood restaurant.” Our first course was fried spring rolls. Love em. Our second consisted of a whole Elephant Ear fish, fried and presented standup style for us. For you aquarium keepers this is also known as a Giant Gourami. I’ve had gouramis in my aquarium before, but I never thought I’d eat one. Anyway, we learned how to eat this by rolling the fish, along with some rice noodles and some pineapple and cucumber and mint, and basil in rice paper. The third course was a noodle soup which also had two giant prawns for us to try. Then came a course which consisted of a bowl of rice and some chicken curry. Of course by this time we were totally stuffed, and leaving all kinds of food on the table. So of course they have to bring dessert. Well, more fruit at least.
I honestly do not know how all of the vietnamese people stay so healthy and slim. From what I have observed in the last three days they eat insane quantities of food.
After lunch we do a bunch more biking, and then end up at our “homestay” house. This was the part of the trip that had me the most nervous. Honestly, I like my nice hotels, I’m really more of an introvert when it comes to meeting new people, so showing up at someone’s house in the middle of the delta, knowing in advance that the house did not have air conditioning, internet, or hot water seemed like a bad idea. But it all worked out.
One of the great highlights of the evening was our spring roll lesson. Yep, in a real Vietnamese kitchen I got to learn first hand how to make one of my all time favorite foods.
It was a pretty early night, and as it turned out pretty sleepless as well. We were hot, and our mattress was pretty hard, “softer than cement” according to Jane. So it was early to bed early to rise. We had a quick breakfast, and then biked to the local market. In the delta, locally grown is not a “movement,” it is a way of life, and has been for years. The pork that is sold fresh at the market was butchered just hours ago, and it will all be consumed before the day is out. Fish, eel, frogs, etc. are all still alive and swimming when you get there, when you pick out what you want they will fillet them for you. It was all caught today, and it will all be eaten today. The produce is a similar story with more kinds of fruits and vegetables available than I can even think about.
After the local market we meet up with our driver again, and we head somewhere else on the delta to visit the Cai Be floating market. This is similar to the local market but here things come, by boat, from further away. Each boat sells its specialty, and you can tell what they are selling because they have it flying from a flagpole on the boat!
Here is where things take a turn for the weird. It seems that Long has decided we need to be challenged. So after we get off the boat and bike for a few feet, he stops and says he wants to show us “how they make honey” OK, fine we get to see a beehive, but thats not enough, as he wants me to hold it. There must be a thousand bees on this thing and he wants me to just stay calm and hold the thing.
That turned out to be easy compared to the next lesson: a big jar, whats in the jar? Looks like snakes to me. Gross. Have I mentioned my lifelong fear of snakes? OK, so its a jar full of rice wine and snakes. Lets see what kind of snake? Oooooh a Cobra, glad its dead and pickled. Glad he didn’t tell me they were lurking around on the delta until now. Lets have a toast shall we? Um, really? you want me to drink rice wine that has been marinating a dead cobra? Fine. Well, it mostly tasted like strong rice wine, but apparently I’m going to be stronger tomorrow. Yes, just in case you were wondering, they do have a similar variety featuring a scorpion.
Which brings us to the giant Python. After pulling it out of its cage, and informing us that it is not poisonous, but does bite. He says, ok Brad, your turn. Really! I can assure you that holding a giant Python has never been on my list of things I want to try. I can also assure you that I had not consumed enough rice wine and cobra to give me the courage to do this. But, something deep inside me said, if you are going to teach Python you ought to have a picture of yourself holding a giant one. So there you have it. More on the Meekong Delta later.
My Life as a Tunnel Rat
My Life as a Tunnel Rat
For Sale: Spacious multi-bedroom dwelling, Over 150,000 square kilometers. three levels, the lowest will withstand even the heaviest B-52 bombing. Includes meeting rooms and hospitals. Miles of short narrow corridors, ideal for hobbits. Secret underwater entrance.
How would you like to live for nine years in an underground house? Yesterday we met Mr. Nam, who did just that. Mr. Nam fought for the Viet Cong. First against the French, then against the Americans. The Cu Chi area is now a park where you can learn about the Viet Cong, including a very one-sided video produced in 1967.
Then you can actually tour the tunnels. In the gallery below you can see me entering the tunnel through one of the many hidden entrances. I emerge again a few minutes later at another hidden entrance about 20 feet away from the first. At 6 feet tall I am definitely not built for climbing around in these tunnels.
The whole Cu Chi area really gave you a good sense for what the jungle was like. Bamboo trees, vines, paths through the trees, lots of overgrown bomb craters. The only thing missing from the war movies (thankfully!) was pounding rain.
Here are links to a couple of videos Jane took of me getting into and leaving the tunnel.
Ten Thousand Things you can Haul on a Motorbike
Ten Thousand Things you can Haul on a Motorbike
To say that there is a motorbike culture here in Saigon is a bit of an understatement. The population of Saigon is around seven million people and there are about four million motorbikes. Today we got to be a part of it all.
I’ll spare you the details of our journey to get here, suffice to say that we started by leaving our hotel in Bloomington, MN at 5AM on New Years Day, and we arrived at our hotel in Saigon at 1:05AM on January 3rd. All of the first and second were a spent in airports on or on planes. I’m just going to say one time how happy we were to use our American frequent flier miles to upgrade to business class. Although we may be spoiled for life, and never travel any other way again.
Today was our first day of touring with Long, our Saigon guide. Our tour itinerary said that we were going to have a cultural and culinary experience by motorbike. For some reason I had a vision in my head of Jane and I sitting side by side in some kind of three wheel arrangement with the driver in front of us. This was not the case.
When we met Long this morning in the hotel lobby, he immediately brought us outside and introduced us to his assistant! Now there are four of us, my vision for the day was changing rapidly. In the end, we each got a helmet, and hopped on the motor cycle behind them. Off we went.
Our first stops of the day were the post office, the Catholic cathedral, the Reunification Palace, and the war museum. I’m still trying to process the war museum, so a post about that will have to wait. Then lunch at a traditional family Pho restaurant. Beef noodle soup and spring rolls. Yum.
For me the day really got fun when we just toured through the markets on the motorbikes. We drove down hundreds of narrow streets that no car or tour bus would ever venture down, and we noticed that there is almost nothing you can not carry on the back of a motorbike. The first thing that caused me to do a double take was a motorbike carrying 50 bags of goldfish! Then I noticed the man with five 20 liter water bottles balanced. Next was big plastic tub full of live lobster. The gallery below has some of our favorites.
Now I know some of you are wondering about our sanity. Arriving in a big city and jumping on the back of a motorbike for a day of touring. I have to say that I felt like I was not totally safe the entire time. There is something very interesting about sitting knee to knee with a stranger at a stoplight in a new city that makes you feel like you are getting to know the people.
Turning left at a busy intersection is a somewhat intricate dance. The first thing you do is get in the left lane and drive straight at the oncoming traffic, which magically veers around you as if you were not even there. Then when you turn left you can do it at almost any time. My preferred time is when the bus in front of you also turns left and acts as a giant shield. But it turns out that oncoming traffic slows, and traffic coming from the right also makes way and suddenly you are just going left. Its kind of like they can all read each others minds and just know when to slow down, when to speed up, and when to merge. I have some suspicion that this is accomplished by a secret code that is communicated by honking your horn, but I have yet to break the code.
I keep thinking to myself how this would never work in America. Someone would surely run into someone else just to prove the point that they had the right of way. A day on one corner of riding like this in America would surely beget a thousand lawsuits.
Here’s an inadvertent selfie I got as I was taking a photo as we were driving down the street.
The marketplaces we visited are just mind boggling. Street after street of motorbike parts, electronics, cookware, you name it. At one stall there were hundreds and hundreds of television remotes. If you need a replacement, and can find this stall I’m sure they would have just what you need. I’m not sure how this economy works. It seems like total chaos to me, but it was clear that people were doing business. Orders were taken, things were being welded or cut, and things were delivered.
In the food marketplace there were thousands of stalls. Everything was jammed so close together you could hardly walk down the aisles. The merchants must show about about 5am every morning to lay out their wares, and then put everything away again at the end of the night. Some stalls are so specialized you can’t imagine that they could possibly make it, but there they are, taking orders on their phones, doing their books, and scooping out things to deliver.
At the end of the day we sent off two more loaded down motorbikes. Our guides took off carrying our large suitcases. We had planned to travel light for the rest of our time in Vietnam, and so we will catch up with our bags in Cambodia.
The Gang's all here
The Gang’s all here
All of our students arrived safely by 11:00 last night. We got them up early this morning for a bit of sightseeing and wandering around Valletta. We all did The Malta Experience, which gave us an amazing overview of the history of this island dating back to 4000 BC. It is really incredible, Malta has been ruled by: Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Swabian, Aragonese, The Knights of St. John, French, and British! I’m sure I left out a few! A lot of it has to do with the fact that Malta is right on the trade route from the eastern to the western Mediterranean and beyond. I am really looking forward to our history class which starts this week.
In the meantime, we are enjoying the sunshine, and the Amazing views that are everywhere!
Advent, Anticipation, Adventure
Advent, Anticipation, Adventure
In the Christian church, Advent is a season of waiting, a season of anticipation. Normally, we are waiting and anticipating the celebration of the birth of Christ. Christmas! This year is no different, but it is a bit hard to not look just past Christmas at what awaits us in the new year. Adventure. I never thought about the fact that adventure begins with advent.
On January first, we will board a plane for Vietnam. We’ll spend three weeks in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and then head to our home for the Spring semester on the Island of Malta. We’ve been telling people that Vietnam is right on the way to Malta. On January 30th our 12 Luther students will join us and move in to one of the three flats in Sliema, just two blocks from this amazing view. I have to pinch myself just thinking that I’m going to be living on an island in the Mediterranean for five months.
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Our students begin classes February second. We will join in the fun, becoming students ourselves for the history of Malta class. But, after one short week of class we will take them to Rome for four days. At the end of March we will take them to Morocco for a week, and then the students will have another week to travel on their own. While they are off enjoying the wonders of Europe Jane and I will be biking through the Andalusia region of Spain. In May our adventure takes us to Istanbul for a long weekend. We are hoping to fit in a short trip to Sicily or maybe Tunisia.
The students leave after the first week of June, and then Jane and I will treat ourselves to a cruise beginning in Venice and through the greek isles. We will end in Istanbul, but quickly join up with a Luther alumni tour hosted by our friends for a few days in Prague. We may even see our old foreign exchange student Cenek! From Prague we fly home, exhausted, no doubt.
Here is a look at our preparatory piles as we begin to organize and pack for the big odyssey.
Christmas gifts are travel-related this year, versatile clothes, shoes, and camera gadgets, as we anticipate the experiences of the next six months. Most of them are going directly into the suitcase rather than under the tree. We are really looking forward to this opportunity to immerse ourselves in a new culture in a way that you cannot do by being a tourist for a few weeks. Watch this blog, as I will be writing about our journey here.
Many may say, ooh! you shouldn’t be writing about this people will read this and break in. Well, I can’t not document this incredible journey. And I have six words for the would-be breaker inners. Home Security, Web Cams, House Sitter. We are covered.
The Sous Vide Adventure Begins
When we were in Las Vegas last fall, I had the most delicious steak I’ve ever eaten. It was at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill. This blew me away. Although I love a good steak at a restaurant, usually I can do just as well at home. But this steak was amazing. This was a two inch think tenderloin that was perfectly medium rare from edge to edge! The very outside edge was seared perfectly too. Whoa, I thought at the time, how did they do that? How can you have a steak so uniformly done? The answer of course is Sous-vide.
Since then, I’ve been reading the books, like Modernist Cuisine at Home, and lots of articles on “Serious Eats”, I’ve seen it done on Chopped and Iron Chef. Then the other day I got a Kickstarter notice about the new Anova Precision Cooker. Its an immersion circulator that lets you do sous-vide cooking without one of the big fancy sous-vide appliances. This just clips on the edge of one of your big pots, and away you go. Alton Brown would love it. Unfortunately this new fancy one that even connects to your iPhone will not be available until later this year, so I decided to give the Nomiku a try. It was the highest rated of three options on Amazon, and was Prime Eligible. If I really like it I figure I can always upgrade to the Anova later. So here's my setup for an afternoon of high-tech cooking:
The idea behind sous-vide cooking is that you can cook at a lower temperature for a longer period of time. bringing the water and your food into equilibrium. Whats cool about that is that you can cook a steak to exactly 132 degrees, and you can leave it go for an extra hour or two and it will remain at the perfect medium rare done-ness. You can also cook chicken. without heating it to 165 degrees!
What!? I thought? this cannot be. But then I started to do some reading and once again science rocks. <www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/s…> It turns out that you can kill all the nasty bacteria at 135 degrees, it just takes longer! Like 90 minutes! Heating chicken to 165 kills the bacteria too, instantly. But it also gives you dry chicken.
One other aspect of sous vide is that you use a vacuum sealer to seal your food in plastic before you immerse it in the water. This allows you to season the food and add aromatics to your bag. Yum.
Of course this also precipitated a quick trip to the hardware store to get a FoodSaver vacuum sealer. Yay more kitchen toys.
Right now, I’m trying a steak. I sealed it up and dropped it in. In a couple of hours I’ll get out the cast iron skillet and heat it up good and hot, so that I can sear the meat when it comes out. A glass of Rombaur and a baked potato and I’m all set.
iowa startup accelerator
It has been an exciting day! I just got back from Cedar Rapids where I attended a mixer of mentors and teams at the Iowa Startup Accelerator. The accelerator officially launched yesterday with 10 new teams. There was some good local news coverage and lots of excitement by the teams. Some of them are from Iowa and one team is from as far away as Australia.
My role, as a mentor, will be to work with one or more teams over the next few months, giving them advice and feedback, and trying to connect them with the right people to help them grow their company. Over the next few weeks I’ll be spending some time meeting with each of the ten teams to get to know them better, and then we will see if there is a particular team that I can really help. I hope so, tonight was fun, and the enthusiasm is infectious.