Category: travel
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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.
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!
Winter Skiing in the Spring
Winter Skiing in the Spring
Two days of skiing at Tahoe are in the bag, but what a difference between the two days. Yesterday we got the true spring skiing experience. It was cool and crusty in the morning and a bit slushy in the afternoon. Its been a pretty bad winter here in Tahoe so a lot of the runs were not accessible. In the morning we went up the Stagecoach express and turned left, to try the Stagecoach run. It was the worst skiing I have ever experienced in my life. Thankfully, we learned the trick. Stay on the groomed runs! Once we figured that out the day was a blast, if a bit repetitive. One thing you can’t beat is the views. Bright sunny day, clear blue sky, good friends to ski with. What could be better?
I also love this photo for all of the layers. High clouds, low clouds, shadows of clouds on the brown/green valley floor below.
Overnight, the winds kicked in, and the snow came down. Up to eight inches in the higher elevations. This made for a second day of mid-winter like skiing. Suddenly, all the runs that were not good yesterday were very ski-able with a fresh layer of snow. The only downside was that the winds and snow continued. We were told in the morning that all the lifts might have to shut down, at some point because thunder (and lightning) were in the forecast for the day. I’ve never thought about being up on a ski lift in a thunderstorm before but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be there.
In any case, if they do shut down certain of the lifts, then you are in trouble anyway...
Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe
A Rare Day
Lake Tahoe is beautiful. We arrived last night from Napa and got to our VRBO home, it is great and we had a beautiful view of the lake out our windows. The sun was just going down and I captured this picture of the Sequoia outside our window.
<a href="http://flic.kr/p/mouxs6" title="Camera Roll-482 by -bnmnetp-"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2840/13381667205_c6d0cc90bf_z.jpg" width="478" height="640" alt="Camera Roll-482"></a>
Today we drove the east side of the lake and met Jim and Karen for lunch, then we went to Emerald bay in the afternoon after Pete and Kim joined us. Its really hard to describe or write too much about this, so I will just add a few photos here.
the word of the day is malolactic
Brought to You by the Letter ‘C’
I must confess, after all of the Chardonnay I’ve consumed, and I have consumed my share over the years, I have never really got the “buttery oaky Chardonnay” thing. Butter is just not something I’ve ever tasted in my Chardonnay, despite the fact that one of my all time favorites is Rombaur, which according to more than one person in Napa, is the “poster child” for buttery oaky Chardonnays. Really, who wants their Chardonnay to taste like butter? The whole describing wine thing is another thing I find really interesting. One of the tasting room hosts, recommended the movie Somm to us as we were chatting. I see you can get/rent it on iTunes, so I’m adding that to my list. Its about a group of guys preparing for the master sommelier exam, which may sound a bit dull, but the reviews for it are fantastic.
But after two days of tastings in Napa its all clear to me now. The key that helped me understand the difference, and I’m confident I’m now an expert, is Malolactic Fermentation. The science of it all, unsurprisingly, has stuck in my brain. Here’s a quick summary of more than you ever probably wanted to know.
Malolactic Fermentation is the process of converting Malic Acid (which tastes tart,and citrussy to my mouth) to Lactic Acid which is a much more mellow flavor. Malolactic fermentation occurs after fermentation and is the result of injecting a particular bacteria into the process.
Now, to each his own, but I can say that I am a fan of Malolactic Fermentation. Here are some of my favorites:
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Rombaur
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William Hill
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Carpe Deim
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Poseidon’s Vineyard
Conquering the Tannins
I’ve never been able to drink red wine much due to my allergies. What am I allergic to in red wine? Tannin is a chemical that comes from the skins, seeds, and stems of the wine. They are much more prevalent in red wine than in white. Now according to our host at Chateau Montelena (see also the movie Bottle Shock) I need to develop a resistance to Tannins in order to drink red wine. The way to do this, according to this would be allergist, is to begin with Pinot Noir, and work my way up from there. Well it sounds like a project, and I do enjoy a nice glass of Pinot. So, something to work on. All in the name of self improvement of course.
reflections on january 2014
I left home on December 27 2013. When I left I had 3 bags packed. One for our trip to Mazatlan to celebrate the new year with our friends the Vermace’s. One for my January term class on the west coast, and finally a bag full of ski gear for the rest and relaxation trip to Breckenridge. Since leaving home I have travelled a bit over 10,000 miles. My means of travel has included several flights, two long train trips on Amtrak, some time in a car, and lots of time on public transportation.
In the last 35 days I’ve had more experiences than many people would have in a lifetime. I say this out of a sense of gratitude, and to remind myself how lucky I am.
- I’ve body surfed in the Pacific Ocean on the beach in front of our rented house in Mazatlan called the Sand Castle. Calling the Sand Castle a house is a bit of an understatement.
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I’ve been deep sea fishing, and reeled in a large Dorado (Mahi Mahi), which was cleaned dockside, and prepared on the grill at the Sand Castle just hours later.
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I’ve toasted the New Year watching fireworks over the beach from the fourth floor of the Sand Castle.
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I’ve gotten to know a group of 11 Luther Students well, and watched as they talked with and learned from some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country.
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I’ve had four days in Seattle to visit Pike Place Market, eat seafood, visit Pioneer Square. During the same period we visited Amazon, Microsoft, VMWare, and Percognate.
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The Amtrak from Seattle to San Francisco promised spectacular views and a comfortable ride. While the ride was comfortable, if I did it again, I would definitely spring for sleeper cars for the group.
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I’ve had four days on Fisherman’s Wharf, led a bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond Suasalito. While in San Francisco we visited Strava, Pinterest, Moovweb, Bizo, Sqwiggle, Schwartz MSL, and Hummer Winblad.
- I’ve had four days in Menlo Park, including a 32 mile bike ride up Old La Honda road and along Skyline drive. I introduced the group to turkish food at Sultana restaurant. While in Menlo Park we spent a day at Google, a morning at SportVision, and learned about patent law at Fenwick West.
- The train ride from San Jose to Los Angeles lived up to its billing. The views were spectacular, and we got to see an amazing sunset over the Pacific.
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To cap off our trip we stayed in a house called Beethoven’s Trio in Santa Monica. Rather than eating out we were able to use the grill and the kitchen and prepare our own communal meals. It was fun to watch the students cook (and clean up) and eat in a very casual setting.
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We got to spend the weekend exploring Venice Beach and anything else in the LA area. Sunday morning I met a group of Chelsea fans at a local British pub. A fun way to get my soccer fix for the week.
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While in Santa Monica we visited with Capsule, Coloft, and Fullscreen. At Fullscreen we were hosted by three Luther alumni two of whom took the Entrepreneurship course and did the journey three four years ago. It is so gratifying to see your students succeed.
- Finally I’ve been able to spend six days “recuperating” in Breckenridge. Some might say that five days of skiing is hardly recuperating, and I would agree. However, we have had 30+ inches of fresh snow in the last three days, and the locals say this is one of the greatest storms ever. So to say that the skiing has been fantastic is a bit of an understatement.
After all of this, perhaps the best thing is that I get to go home tomorrow.
on 14 inches of powder
The weather report said we had 6 inches of snow overnight. From the moment we walked out the door it was clear that they had underestimated the snowfall by about 8 inches.
We were on the third chair up at 8:30 this morning. The steep parts of the hill were awesome, with powder over my knees, floating through the snow. On the gentle parts of the hill we all formed a single file line in order to get through it all.
By mid-day it was work. The powder had been packed in many places and it was work to get through it. The snow continued heavily throughout the day, and we are supposed to get another 14 inches overnight.
This has been the perfect few days of rest and relaxation to finish off January term. Its even better because we bought the Epic local passes this year, which means we don’t feel like we have to ski full time, but can actually just ski until we are ready to take a break, and then ski again later. Its been great.
final visits
My daughter Kaia is getting married next summer. This is not new news, the proposal was made an accepted last June. But planning is in full swing now, and I was kind of excited when secured a visit with Capsule, because capsule provides a service where all the guests at your wedding can download the capsule app and it will automatically upload all the photos to a special page for the wedding.
This company was founded by Cyrus, who set out to solve a simple problem, a problem we’ve been coping with on this course as well. When you travel, how do you share all your digital photos with the buddies you are traveling with. When you have a big party? When you have a wedding, bachelor party, bachelorette party? Capsule has solved this in a nice, elegant way. All the photos uploaded for a particular event, are shared with the participants in the event. Its that easy. No need to bore all of your Facebook followers with every photo from your trip. If you’re an Instagram user, its super easy to add a special hashtag to your photo and it will be automatically imported into Capsule as well as shared on Instagram.
What was incredibly interesting for me was to listen to Cyrus talk about business models, and monetizing the service. Cyrus is not a CS guy, he’s a business guy. Of course as an entrepreneur he can talk the tech talk but his home is on the business side. Here’s an example of how differently we tech people approach a problem than the business guys.
Problem: Each event needs to have a unique id, that can be given to the participants to use to join the event, and/or tag their Instagram photos.
Tech Solution: Ha, this is easy, we’ll just allow people to pick a unique identifier, lets say #TannerAndKaia No problem, this is easy just give them a text entry box, and a quick database lookup to make sure the hashtag hasn’t already been taken. No big deal, even an intern could code this up.
Business Guy Solution: Ok, just generate a random hashtag #JK286TJ. Now if the bride and the groom want to have a nice hashtag for their wedding, we can sell them that as a strategy to monetize the service.
Brilliant! We tech guys get so focused on the solution most of the time that we never stop to think about simple strategies to monetize.
Our second visit of the day was to Fullscreen. This is a Culver City company that employs three Luther Alumni! Two of which I am very proud to say are also alumni of this very course. Drew is employee number 3 of Fullscreen, and Aaron is number 15, Jacob is not far after Aaron. Fullscreen now numbers over 220 employees, and is a very fast growing new media company.
What do they do? What do you mean new media company? Well, this is where my age really starts to show. Apparently there are people in this world that spend a lot of time watching “shows” on youTube. Shows like that Marbles girl, or teenagegirl14, and thousands of others. As Aaron said, this is not your demographic Brad, this is targeted at a group of people that will probably never pay a cable bill. So Fullscreen is a Network in the sense that they aggregate all kinds of these new generation entertainers, and help them monetize their videos on youtube. Note that monetize is a euphemism for ad serving, but thats really only a small part of what Fullscreen is about. Its a great company and Drew, Aaron, and Jacob were excellent hosts. They even talked their CEO into spending about an hour with us answering questions.
Another interesting story around Fullscreen is that Drew and George (CEO of Fullscreen) met at Coloft Santa Monica. We were also lucky enough to meet with the founder of Coloft, Avesta, (@avestar). He gave the students a great no-nonsense talk on his views of entrepreneurship. The story of Drew meeting George is a great example of the synergies that can happen in a co-working facility. At the time, Drew and a partner were trying to start a little consulting company to do coding for hire. Avesta happened to be talking to George who was looking for someone with Drew’s skill set. So he introduced the two of them, and a successful company was launched.
I love this story on a couple of different levels. First, as a professor I take pride in the success and accomplishments of my students even after they leave the campus. As an alum and faculty member of a college that counts community as one of its defining characteristics, it is great to find other organizations that lift up community as a differentiator.