Where did I leave you last time? Oh yes, we had just had our wonderful Christmas beach bar-b-que. The next day we headed home to do not much of anything for the next few days. Robert went to the gym, I went to Vietnamese class. Excitedly, we had some friends come and visit us in Ho Chi Minh City for New Year’s, Kellee and Jim, who I have talked about before. They came in New Year’s Eve and stayed for a few days.
Before they arrived, we feverously prepared for dinner that night. The menu included gougeres, oysters, caramelized onion soup (Robert likes to serve soup for NYE), a shrimp salad with homemade aioli and olives, twice baked ribs with caramel sauce, and some salad (I forgot which one). We ended with lemon curd and shortbread with olives for desert. You can see our table before it got crazy and the oysters, which I shucked myself (I am very proud of myself for that. It turns out it isn’t too hard).
We had a small group of people over, which was nice. People seemed to like the food. I had some stomach issues in the middle of dinner and didn’t taste the ribs at all. But then I recovered. And finally, Robert got a little sleepy.
1) Me and mira, our lebanese friend who lives in Hanoi. 2) The group: Me, Mira, Robert, Matt, Jim, Kellee, Chris, Miriam. 3) Me and sleepyhead
The next day we did nothing, as you can imagine. However on Jan. 2, we took a boat ride into the Mekong Delta region. We didn’t make it as far as the Mekong river itself, but we did get to see a lot of that river’s distributaries. And it was the first time I had actually been on the Saigon river, which is less than a mile from our house.
We did a little sightseeing on the way. We stopped at a pagoda (see Buddha below left), and then we went to a Cao Dai temple (the two pictures below on the right). Cao Dai is a relatively recent (1920s) religion that originated here in Vietnam, with as many as 6 million followers in Vietnam. It is similar to the Bahai faith, in that religious figures from the major religions are venerated as all being prophets of God. If you look at the picture on the far right, you will see three saints of the Cao Dai religion: Sun Yat-sen (of China), Victor Hugo (of France) and Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, an important Vietnamese leader. Yes, that Victor Hugo, who wrote Les Miserables, among others.
The dress of the religion reminds me of Islam, and the religion venerates Mohammed, but it also worships Shakespeare and Joan of Arc. Alcohol is forbidden like Islam, but so is eating meat like in Buddhism. It’s an interesting religion, and the temple was very pretty. Our guide didn’t really explain anything, but now that I have done a little research on my own, I can help future visitors.
Back on the boat, the views from the river were amazing. The picture below (top) shows a portion of the river in the city. You can see how packed the streets are. The city would rather have a nice riverfront, rather than these houses backing onto the river, but it is expensive to buy these people out, and they really don’t want to leave. They are poor, and the money the government would give them is only enough to get a house way out in the suburbs. Right here they are in the middle of town.
The backs of these houses may not look fancy, but the fronts could be gorgeous. Just depends on what people spend money on. Plus, a lot of these houses have businesses in the front - cafes, coffee shops, stores, really anything.
The city is also trying to stop dumping into the river, because the trash problem is severe. We saw a few trash collection boats on the river, and our guide said they fill up every day with thousands of tons of trash. I would say the city’s success is a mixed bag. Hopefully it will get better. Right now, during high tide it doesn’t smell at all. However, low tide, on the way back, was…fragrant.
We visited some farms as well, and interestingly we got to pet the family python! Not everyone did it, but Kellee and I did. So fun! The python had been fed recently, so there wasn’t much of a risk.
Many families in the delta region keep pythons to sell the meat and the skin. Unfortunately, China is the main buyer, and there just aren’t sales right now. This family probably would have already sold the python for about $60 a kilo (if I remember correctly), but the price has fallen to less than half. They are waiting for the market to pick up, but that means they have to keep feeding the python, which isn’t cheap.
We also got to walk through the beautiful, technicolor rice fields. Look at the sky! Look at that green! It was amazing.
After our strenuous walk, we ended up at a very nice farmhouse for lunch. I liked the coconut planters - innovative use of the husks - in the picture at the top left. We had an amazing meal with pork, vegetables and a wonderfully fried whole fish, which you can see below left. And of course we made friends with the family pig.
Of course, nothing beats being on a boat. There were four people from the tour company to help us: 2 drivers, the guide, and a person who cut up fruit for us. Totally worth it. You can get a bit of a glimpse of Saigon from the river below. It is a big city with some big buildings. Vietnam may be poor, but Saigon is building up!
We had a few fun trips out while Kellee and Jim were in town. This included a visit to Quince, probably our favorite restaurant in Saigon. It recently opened a bar above the restaurant called Madame Kew. The name is a play on the most famous Vietnamese poem called the Tale of Kieu about a woman who sells herself into prostitution (unwittingly) to support her family. The bar is cool looking but a very weird vibe. There are pretty girls that walk on a runway overlooking the bar (below left). Below right, Jim appears to be unbothered by Kellee and Matt annoying him. And then there’s me in the middle - red.
Since that New Year’s Eve, we haven’t been too busy. We did have a very fun party for Alaskan seafood. The party even got on TV, which you can see here. We had a lot of roses left over from the party, which sadly now have died. But we had some pretty ones for a while.
And then we were invited to a one-month birthday party, which is kind of like a christening, in terms of importance. Everyone comes and sees the baby. This is our friend Michael’s baby. It was very interesting. Lots of local traditions, culture around the party. The food was pretty good too!
Next: Sa Pa. Hopefully I will take some good pictures.