*Kuba finally installed captions plugin on the blog. Yay!
All the buildings in Hoi An are painted yellow as this is the color of prosperity and happiness. It makes for a wonderfully sunny streetscape of sunshine. The shades of yellow differ so there is a surprising richness in this monotone color scheme. Silk lanterns everywhere. One can easily get drunk on color in Hoi An.Dare to cross? Vietnamese are CRAZY drivers!At night Hoi An is like a colorful wonderland.Small house shrines are ever present. They have incense, fruits, flowers and small cups with drinks.
The market.
All the Vietnamese boats have eyes painted on their fronts, so the boats can see the way back home, scare away sea monsters and tell which way is the tail and which way is the front. All eyes are painted in the exact same style.Family temples are run by the whole family which is responsible for their upkeep and maintenance. The family graves are on the temple compound. If the family is poor and they don’t have a family temple they bury the family members on the family land. We saw graves in the middle of rice paddies, gardens or house front yards. On the island of Phu Quoc we saw graves on little pieces of land sandwiched between bungalow resorts.The caretakers of a family temple on Kim Bong island and his dog.Lots of elderly people keep active by selling vegetables, fruits, lottery tickets.
Vietnamese have a playful nature, enjoying games of cards or backgammon during the hot siesta part of the day. Coffee with sweet milk and tea is a must companion.
Motorbikes everywhere, even parked in the lobbies of hotels.We are still not used to the messy motorbike frenzy of the Vietnamese roads and sidewalks. Yes, sidewalks are not exempt.We spent an hour in this bookstore chatting with the kind owner who treated us to tea and banana ginger coconut roll ups. Yum! We liked the treats so much that he packed us a whole bag of them as a gift. I spent all of our time after Hoi An searching for those roll ups. Finally found them in the Mekong Delta on the island of Ben Tre. I can write a whole post on those divine sweets.
Water Buffalo grazing the grass in the median.The ferry to Kim Bong. For $1 you can visit the island and escape the tourists. This is the place where we learnt about local boat building, rice noodle making, wood carving and mat weaving traditions of the region. All the photos below are from Kim Bong island.
Monkey bridge.Cuteness in yellow!
The rice flower is mixed with tapioka starch and water to make rice pancakes that are dried in the sun for 4 hours and then cut into rice noodles.Don’t mess it up!Hand cutting of rice noodles. This lady was as fast as a machine.Machine cutting of rice noodles. You have to be fast to catch the rice noodles as they fall from the machine all at once.Cracking cake! So good yet so simple. Two layers of sun dried rice pancake and a fresh one in the middle. Don’t forget the hot sauce!
The lady would make 2-3 mats a day depending on the width and length. I was surprised as to how fast she was weaving! and also taken by the fresh grass smell of the mat.Boat making. The tradition is still alive in Hoi An. The red trees would be cut and transported from the North of VN and then soaked in the water for a whole year. It will take a crew of 10 to finish this boat in 2 months. The sale price – $20.000. As the cost of a small boat is equal to a motorcycle many people opt for the motorcycle thus changing the market traditions of VN. Floating markets will probably slowly disappear with time.Cutting redwood logs into boards to be bent and used for the boat skin.We visited the studio of a wood carver on the island of Kim Bong who was making fantastic wood sculptures. Here is a photo of Buddha with thousand hands.
Second stop on our Vietnam itinerary was Hoi An.
This city plagued by tourists started us on a slow but steady infatuation with the country of ‘crazy motorcries’, the name we gave VN on our first day here. It all began with the food.Hesitantly at first and then voraciously.
Lured in by the smell of freshly baked bread at a local Cafe we got tricked into a Banh Mi addiction. Bahn Mi is a Vietnamese sandwich created to make you forget that other foods exist. At first we got just bread for home. The next day we bought a veggie Banh Mi to try. Afer the first bite we quadrupled our order. By the end of our stay in Hoi An we were stopping by Phuong Cafe as often as we could and were leaving with bags of sandwiches, for later.
This didn’t prevent us though from trying every street food that called our name on the way to Phuong Cafe. Prices were rarely over $1-$2, so we could afford to experiment. We were never disappointed. The street soups (fresh and cooked ingredients mixed in yummy broth) were our next love. We would stop by the soup stalls right there on the street and start peeking into the big pots and people’s bowls as the names on the signs meant nothing to us. Before we knew it we would be sitting on tiny plastic chairs slurping the delicious soups just like the locals do.
Then followed the perfect donuts rolled in sugar (OMG! So addictive that we had to have a family discussion on how we need to be buying two and sharing rather than splurging on one/person). Next was the cracking cakes (a layer of fresh rice pancake sandwiched between two dry ones, cut in pieces and served with hot sauce). The ever present tropical fruits were a daily part of the food celebration. As if to finish us off, Hoi An has one of the best open markets I have seen, boasting so many amazing fruits and fresh vegetables that every time we approached the place we would get in a trance like state.
I will stop here because writing about all this food makes me crave being in Hoi An. But eat is not the only thing we did there, I can assure you! We explored. And we didn’t care that the place was full of tourists. We found our bliss by veering into the small alleys, by taking the ferry to the island of Kim Bong where there were no foreigners and by joining the locals at the beach of Cua Dai on the weekend. On our walks we stumbled upon unconditional friendliness often and enjoyed every bit of it. Vietnamese are very open, smart, sweet and funny. Whole families would get out of their houses to greet us as we pass, holding doll like babies and waiving. Like the Lao people they would point at R then at B and then show two fingers. Slowly they would say: “Boy and girl. You very lucky”.
Yes, indeed, I am very lucky. More than lucky, I feel privileged to have the luxury of sharing every single day with my children and hubby. Today I feel beyond lucky that I am living this dream. I am also lucky that you are reading this because what is life without friends to share the highs and the lows with.
– M
P.S. For the record: Bahn Mi is delicious only at Phuong Cafe. All the other sandwiches we tried here were mediocre at best. If you are in Hoi An do stop by Phuong Cafe. You will thank me later!
