FOOD!

Bun cha (I think it’s pronounced boon kia)

• Grilled pork patties and sliced pork. Served with rice noodles, a heaped platter of herbs/greens and some kind of sliced cucumber/squash-like vegetable. Of the greens, we could only recognise mint,Thai basil and eryngo leaves (which really are green blades that taste like wan swee).
• The meat is grilled over a charcoal fire. When you order, some apple-juice-coloured liquid is poured over it. This liquid tastes like diluted fish sauce. You can add some cut chillies into the soup-sauce but beware! Those chillies are powerful!
• We asked (gestured, rather) for one portion. What we did was to put some noodles in a bowl and add some soup-sauce (it helps to loosen the noodles). Take the meat and eat it with a generous helping of greens. My favourite is the one that looks like mint but has jagged edges (see photo, somewhere bottom right). Yummy!
• The rice noodles aren't the same as bee hoon or mee sua but , rather, closer to putu mayam.
• We tried 3 stalls – 1 Hang Manh, 20 Ta Hien and 90 Hang Truong
• Cost : an amazing 10K or 15K dong (SGD 1-1.50)for a portion that's pretty much big enough for 2 small eaters like sister and myself.
• Be prepared to walk away full, satisfied and smelly!
  

Banh cuon (I think it’s pronounced baan kwon)

• Vietnamese chee cheong fun!
• I was dying to try this with the beetle juice - ca cuong ("kah kwong"). We got the hotel receptionist to write the name of the dish and the beetle juice. A little article below from VietnamNet.
  
  VietNamNet – When there’s a fly in your soup, you send it back, but in downtown Hanoi you can pay a pretty penny for something a whole lot bigger: ca cuong.
  
  Nestled between shops retailing hair products and stationary, one of Hanoi’s more unique eating establishments serves up it wares. While far from being the only purveyor of culinary favourite banh cuon, as the owner proclaims, it’s the only place to get ca cuong.
  
  Banh cuon is a simple dish, rice paper wraps of pork and mushroom on a nest of herbs and sautéed onions. Its a tasty snack, most often eaten by Vietnamese people for breakfast, it certainly doesn’t sound worthy of penning an article over. But on Cha Ca Street, downtown Hanoi, it’s served with the musk of a ca cuong water beetle.
  
  A dab of the beetle’s musky juices adds a curious flavour to the dish. Served along side the banh cuon come a small bowl of fish sauce with pressed pork sausage floaters.
  
  A young man steps up to the table, jabs a chopstick into a jar and deposits the smallest amount of ca cuong goodness into the mix. A quick swirl, and the heady insect aroma wafts up.
  
  Yet, while the serving of the dish maybe simple, its preparation is a closely guarded secret that causes the restaurant owner to give sideways, “who’s asking?” kind of looks. It’s a matter of pride for him that he is not only the sole purveyor in town, but that nobody really knows how he does it.
  
  Long a delicacy served to kings, ca cuong is said to hail back to around 270 BC, its potent powers withstanding the test of time. This unlikely additive is touted with the usual “good for men” lines, meaning it’ll give some prowess in the sack.
  
  It is also said to be good for women, helping regulate their monthly cycle. Its powers are attributed to cleansing of the kidneys, a common benefit among medicinal herbs found in Vietnamese food and liquors.
  
  There’s no such thing as a free lunch though, and the little beasts are worth their weight. While a female bug goes for VND20k a pop, the male of the species fetches a sterling VND50k.
  
  So the bug juice isn’t cheap. As the local saying goes, it’ll cost you a ring, at about VND800k (a little shy of US$50) for just one cc. You wouldn’t have thought a bug would fetch such a pretty penny, but sadly the bug is feeling the pressures of progress, as expanding city limits gobble up the ponds they were once found living in.
  
  But what’s it like? A wide variety of comparisons have been made on its flavour, ranging from pleasant bouquets to cheap perfumes. The proof is in the tasting, and ca cuong is surprisingly delicate, definitely erring towards the bouquet. It sits romantically hand in hand with the banh cuon, although their torrid affair can leave an undesirable aftertaste. There’s something definitely buggy about the taste, but all over a very pleasant dining experience, so long as you don’t ask to examine the merchandise.
  
  The pork sausage floating in the buggy brew picks up a lot of flavour, but if used as a dipping sauce for the banh cuon, it is subtle and sweet, oddly reminiscent of a summer’s day.
  
  A simple meal to flush out bia (beer) tortured kidneys, it’ll do a number on your wallet too, but it’s well worth that little extra. Later in the day the test subject experienced some mild dizziness, although it was later attributed to excessive caffeine intake. Please be aware of any allergies you may have before munching on entirely new food groups, such as water beetles or scorpions (don’t eat the tippy tail bit).

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belostomatidae
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca_cuong
• We tried this stall on 14 Hang Ga (if i remember correctly, there's a Giordano (!) just opposite it)

• A lady sits in front of 2 steamers and scoops batter onto her steaming contraption. After a while she uncovers it and deftly lifts it off with a long stick. Passes it to her partner who sprinkles some cooked minced meat, gives the whole thing a little roll and cuts it into manageable pieces. Another person sprinkles what we think are fried shallots and hay bee & a couple of mint sprigs then serves it to us.

• A girl scoops the dipping sauce (which really is pretty much diluted fish sauce) and sets it in front of us. She serves the other customers something that looks like meat. And when she started to unwrap some small leaf parcels – I got a little worried – told sister that I’d freak out if that was the beetle!
• Just when I thought I wasn’t gonna get what I really came for,the girl comes by with a teensy vial and a chopstick and gestures to our dipping sauce. I point to my bowl – sister declined. Girl dips chopstick into vial and swirls it in my sauce. Then I notice a chemical smell – rather similar to the solvents we encounter in a chemistry lab, a bit like nail polish…then I realize that it’s coming from my sauce. O, so THAT'S ca cuong! I was expecting something more musky, more like…B.O. Tasted ok lah, nothing really fantastic. See this person’s blog – I think they may have actually gotten the REAL thing http://eatzybitzy.blogspot.com/2006/01/hanoi-better-late-than-never.html
• Cost : 10K dong per person, an additional 1000 dong for the essence de bug
• Our neighbours had some grilled meat but we didn’t know what kind of meat it was. (I refuse to try dog meat!)

Cha ca ("chah kah")

• at 14 Cha Ca St, the famous Cha Ca La Vong
• Cha ca simply means grilled fish; it's s'posed to be a Hanoian specialty
• You can get cha ca at other stalls but CCLV is s'posed to be a Hanoian "institution" - well, so are my callused feet!
• When you reach the restaurant, there's nobody downstairs. Don't bother looking for a doorbell or searching for life-forms there. We climbed up a staircase so narrow & steep it may as well have been a ladder to find some bored looking people.
• Anyway, they sorta precook the fish with something we presum to be turmeric, and then bring the charcoal brazier with the frying pan to your table and stir in heaps of herbs/garnish (this time we had a lot more spring onion and dill) and give it a couple of obligatory tosses that are s'posed to pass for "we cook it right at your table!".
• Present again are the diluted fish sauce and bun, as well as peanuts.
• You're s'posed to take some fish, herbs, peanuts and fish sauce and mix it with some bun and chow down.
• Well, we found it too oily and too tasteless and waaay waay OVERHYPED. This must be The Most Over-Rated & Over-Priced thing in Hanoi. Plus, the floorboards were incredibly creaky - you really ahve to wonder if the place is holding up!
• 70K dong (SGD7!!) per person!!!
• Interesting that you can have 3 restaurants but no branches...hmmmm...
• And the strangest thing : the palce got really crowded real fast and we noticed that the crowd was mainly locals!
• GIVE THIS A MISS!

Banh chung (bahn choong)

• "Bahn" is Vietnamese for either cake or rice cake (I can't remember!)
• Banh chung is sticky rice stuffed with mung beans and pork, then wrapped in banana leaves. Sounds and tastes pretty much like ba chang.
• We bought this from one from one of those ladies walking around with a bamboo yoke & 2 baskets hanging at the ends.
• She tried to sell it to us for US$1 but the hotel receptionist had already told us not to pay more than VND 5000 so...
• Disappointing : it was incredibly bland

Pho (say "fur", not "foeh")

• So much for getting excited at the chance to taste authentic pho.
• Maybe we didn't try the right stalls. Oh well!!
• We had pho twice : once at what appears to be a branch of the Hoa Sua School on Van Mieu Road (just parallel to the Temple of Literature) and again somewhere near the northern tip of Hoan Kiem Lake (near the part of the Old Quarter that has lotsa shoe stores).
• Verdict : BLAND. Both times, the stuff didn't come with the veg and herbs that we usually see with the Singaporean version. The bee tai mak I eat when I'm sick was more tasty than this! It looks and tastes just like a bland version of kway teow tng. (But I guess it is still pretty good for sick people)

Com vong (com is pronounced "kom" with less accent on the "k" and intoned like "boing", yes, the sound of something bouncing)

• Well, "com" means rice, and "com vong" means young rice, which is green.
• It isn't actually on the "must eat" list of the travel guides but it was something I came across on the Net. Apparently there's a village near Hanoi that produces really good com vong and the name of the village is "Vong" so.... It's supposed to be a seasonal thing and just so happens that now was the season so...
• See this page for more details on com vong http://english.vietnamnet.vn/lifevn/2005/06/448271/
• Needless to say it was tough hunting it down.
• I saw a lady in a shop eating it and she told me to get it from one of those baskets-on-bamboo-poles ladies.
• That's easy enough - just try to ask each and every one of the zillions of such ladies who don't speak English if they're selling green rice!
• We spotted a dried goods stall in the Hang Be Market selling uncooked com vong so we bought some (haven't got the foggiest idea how to cook it though)
• Well, the hotel receptionist was nice enough to buy us a packet the morning we left. How sweet of him! He did say that there's a lady who sells this and comes by the hotel at 5am almost everyday. He also told us that it should be eaten with bananas and sugar
• Well, finally!
• The lady will scoop the rice onto some lotus leaves, wrap it and tie it with a stalk of the rice plant (how quaint!)
• The lotus leaves give the rice a nice fragrance.
• We finally tried it at home. It's green and has a toasted, nutty taste and is chewy.
• Must look for a recipe!

Coffee or ca phe (KAre Fay)

• I'm not a coffee person - it usually leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
• But it's be quite a travesty to leave Vietnam without at least trying one cup of their famed kopi.
• We went to Trung Ngyuen, Vietnam's answer to Starbucks. It was a wide but narrow, 3-4 storey establishment; not air-conditioned so you can enjoy your kopi and the pollution (noise and dust) all at once.
• Well, me being me, die-die must try weasel coffee. So that's what I ordered, noting also that while a cup of ca phe chon sua da cost only 13K dong, the regular ca phe cost only 8000 dong. hmmm.
• Ca phe sua da is coffee with condensed milk and ice.
• The coffee is dripped from the percolator into a cup with some condensed milk. A cup of ice is served with it.
• The coffee was so thick the consistency was just like tee chneo!!
• So here's my cup of poison (the ice looks murky cos I'd already used my spoon to stir the kopi and then dunked it into the ice)
• It was rather nice but me being totally clueless about coffee wouldn't really know any better.
• In any case, Trung Ngyuen's weasel coffee is supposed to be a synthetic version.
• Did find some stalls selling the coffee powder in the Old Quarter - bought some for friends but doubt the authenticity. Each 100g packet only cost 12K VND yet ca phe chon is supposed to be "rare" and "expensive"......

Baguettes

• Yes, no Delifrances round the corners but it's not difficult to find one of these hawkers selling warm baguettes.
• A legacy from their French past. The baguettes we had in various places beat Delifrance's hands down - the crust was, well, crusty, without being hard and the inside was rather fluffy - good even without butter.
• We bought these on our way to the water puppet show.

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

• http://www.vme.org.vn/index.asp
• This place is dedicated to the 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam.
• About 20 minutes out of the city by taxi. Each way should cost about 60-63K dong.
• Admission is a “whopping” 20K dong per person (compared to the 5000 dong for the other places). Get your tickets at the gates. At the entrance of the building, present your ticket to the counter staff to the left and you’ll receive a brochure in whatever language (English is available)
• We went there on a Sunday – there were LOTSA kids running around.
• Here we are!
• I’ve seen some photos of a man on a bicycle laden with rattan fish traps. Here it is in the “flesh”. Never mind how he cycled with the fish traps – how on earth did they get the fish traps on it?!

• Conical hats! They’re everywhere!
• A little write-up on water puppets. Water puppetry is supposed to be a Northern Vietnamese thing. See section on water puppet show later.
• Musical instruments. I bought 2 flutes from a shop on Hang Manh- one to be played transversely SAO NGANG (they have both the plain bamboo types; I bought the dark,rosewood-ish type with mother-of-pearl inlays), the other to be played vertically (the mouth piece is attached to a small gourd) SAO BAU.
• A whole section was devoted to “bao cap” -the period of the “Subsidy Economy”. Strangely enough, this was the only section that was air-conditioned. See the excerpt below (from VietnamNetBridge)

An exhibition on Life in Hanoi in Subsidy Period (1975 – 1986) was launched on June 16 at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Nguyen Van Huyen street, Cau Giay district, Hanoi, reflecting the community’s voice through stories and people’s thinking about life before the renovation process.
The exhibition presents objects and documentation of Hanoi from 1975 to 1990, when the Renovation policy started to come to life. The exhibition, not only reflects people’s life under the subsidy economy, its
historical context and mechanism, but also creativity, self-motivation and dynamism of ordinary people to overcome difficulties and manage their lives. It is, in part, their motivation and creativity that have contributed to the successes of the Renovation today.
The exhibition displays original objects donated by common people and collected by the two museums, together with recreations of daily life under the subsidy economy. The objective of the exhibition is to raise the voices of communities through their own stories, memories, thoughts, and assessments of their life on the eve of Doi moi. All these aspects are vividly illustrated through a number of topics, such as The
Distribution System (coupon system, food shops, stalls selling Tet’s goods), The Social and Cultural Management (films, arts, radios, bicycles, etc.), and A Family’s Space in a cramped apartment, especially Creativity and Activeness and Dreams of Hanoi people at the time. The exhibition ends with images of the
country under the Renovation and integrating into the world. The two films, "Hanoi – A Time in Difficulty" and "A Time to Remember," made by incorporating communities’ participation, have portrayed diverse views of different social classes on the subsidy period.
Associate Professor and Dr Nguyen Van Huy, director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, said that the exhibition was aimed at sharing the thinkings and memories about a difficult time before the renovation period and helping younger generations learn about the country's past. As the Doi moi (Renovation) has been carried out for the last 20 years, Vietnam has experienced many important changes and people’s life has been constantly improved. However, for the elder generations, different memories of the subsidy
economy, be it happy or sad, are always visible in their minds. Meanwhile, it can be difficult for younger generations born in the 1980s and later to reconstruct the images of that time and understand what the elder had experienced.
Meanwhile, Professor and Dr Do Hoai Nam, chairman of the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that the subsidy period was a significant historical period, leaving many valuable lessons for the present
time and the future.

The exhibition is held with support from the UNDP (United Nations Development Program), the SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency), the Ford Foundation, and the Project of “Reviewing 20 Years of Doi Moi” led by the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences.

Food & other necessities had to be "bought" with coupons

• See also this lady’s thoughts on bao cap (note what she used to do). There were many other plaques bearing people’s tales. Many of them are still alive since this period only ended 20 years ago.

• In one of the mini videos, a man was recounting how the family would be happy if the rice they got wasn’t rotten or smelly. Yet they were told that rotten, smelly rice was a sign that the food stores were plentiful and fresh, clean rice meant that stores were running out. Good grief!

• It was an interesting section. All the more so, actually, since it’s so recent.

• A little something on the Chinese in Vietnam.

  
• Outdoor exhibits : mainly the various types of houses that the various ethnic groups live in. Since it was a Sunday (I assume), there were many activities for the kids.
• We saw a couple using brightly coloured rice paste to create dragons and roses and pretty much whatever you wanted on a stick. The paste looked really soft. Am wondering if it’s meant to be eaten. Anyway, the man, in particular, was really deft with his fingers.
• Also saw 3-4 couples in their wedding garb around the exhibits. Didn’t faze the brides that their gowns were getting soiled or clambering up and down the houses could tear their frills.
• Giarai tomb - amusing.
  

Hoa Lo Prison Museum & St Joseph's Cathedral

Hoa Lo Prison Museum

• 1 Hoa Lo St, no website
• Admission : 10K dong per person gets you in and a glossy brochure in whatever language (English available)
• No website but see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_Lo
• ok, it's not quite Alcatraz but it's a pretty good show of the bad side of people & how you don't need sophistication in torture.
• Built & used by the French to hold Vietnamese prisoners (hence the French name at the entrance – “Maison Centrale” just means “prison”), then later used by the North Vietnamese to hold POWs of the Vietnam War.
• Nicknamed “Hanoi Hilton”.
• My educated guess : “Hoa Lo” = “huo(3) lu(2)” = stove.
• Interesting fact : Hoa Lo St is the only street in Hanoi to have one & only one address
• Interesting crest/logo – hmmm
• This sign is above many of the doors. Interesting – it refers to the atrocities by the French only.
• Guillotine – in the brochure it’s called a “head cutting machine”
• Scenes of torture

• An simple instrument of torture

• Mannequins – not quite lifesize. They’re in some of the cell exhibits to inject some realism in what you see.
  
  St Joseph’s Cathedral
• On Pho Nha Tho
• Bout 80% of Vietnam nominally practices Mahayana Buddhism. Bout 6-10% are Catholics (compare with S’pore’s 4%). Not surprisingly, there are less Catholics in the North than in Central & South Vietnam. There are 3 Catholic churches in the Hanoi area that is generally on most tourist maps. We didn’t visit the other 2.
• Surprise surprise : the government apparently allows Rome to ordain the bishops http://www.ishr.org/activities/religiousfreedom/christiansinvietnam.htm
  http://www.lavang.co.uk/raditruyengiao/Catholic%20Church%20in%20Vietnam-%20470%20years%20of%20Evangelization.htm
• If I remember correctly, the style of such churches is Gothic (the rose window is a hallmark of Gothic architecture)
• Looks very similar to the Notre Dame de Paris (even more so than the Notre Dame in HCMC)
• Could not find Mass times on the Net so here they are (obviously only correct as of Oct 2006!). I assume all masses are in Vietnamese. That sure is a lot of Masses!
• We entered by the “back door” (the altar end) and look at what greets us – I’m “professionally” amused.
• The sides are lines with stained glass portraits of various saints.

• We were there at around 3pm so the stained glass above the altar caught the sun very nicely. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for my photographic skills! Anyway, there were also some women to the right of the altar preparing lotsa flowers.
• Preparing for a saint-to-be or an incorrupt?
• Altar – the reddest altar I’ve ever seen – looks almost like they’re preparing for Chinese New Year.

When we walked past the church bout 2 hours later, some people had already hung these things – wonder what the occasion was. See the flag – we see it in a number of places (without the cross in the middle of course) but haven’t the foggiest idea what it means)