Magnificent Sapa

Leaving the toxic motorcycle fumes of Hanoi behind, I hopped on the night train to Loa Cai at the Chinese border, the gateway to the hill station of Sapa. I brought only a small day bag and left my backpack at my hotel in Hanoi. For 35.00 USD I got a berth in the new "deluxe" Sapaly train, which featured with soft comforters and atmospheric lighting. At 6:00 in the morning, the train pulled in to Loa Cai station and I caught a minibus up the winding mountain pass to Sapa.

Sapa is nicely positioned on top of a mountain, with amazing views of the rice terraces and villages below. Because it's in the highlands, it's much cooler than Hanoi--rumor has it that just last week, there was snow in Sapa. Because of the cooler climate, things like plums and peaches and strawberries grow in abundance. The climate is like Baguio City, in the Philippines, while the view of the rice terraces is more like Banaue.There are lots of ethnic minorities who come to town for the market and to sell trinkets, including H'mong and Red Dzao. You can see groups of H'mong following the trekkers, selling their wares .I found a guide, a 17 year old H'mong girl named Sa. Sa took me on a long, muddy trek down into the valley to her village. She brought me to her house and cooked a delicious lunch of cabbage salad, morning glory, choi, fried tofu in a tomato sauce served over rice. Then, I helped Ha and her sister grind corn into corn meal using a pulley attached to two millstones, which is a kind of precursor to the food processor.

It was such a wonderful day--the views, the fresh air, the delicious lunch, and the agreeable company.

Join me for lunch?

I don't know what kind of pho this is, but it's spicy and tastes like crab. The best part is that it only costs 95 cents!

Street eats in Hanoi

Here I am in Hanoi. My little boutique hotel has provided me with a netbook in my room, so you will be hearing from me more frequently in the next few days!

I feel that I have gotten too cossetted with sumptuous Western breakfast buffets and the like, a little too set in my ways, so I decided to sample street eats in Hanoi. Vietnam is a great destination for adventurous eating, after all.

This is my very first steaming bowl of pho, bought from a street vendor and eaten while sitting on plastic chairs on the sidewalk. Delicious! With a nice tang from the calamansi juice. Why did I wait so long to try it? Cost: 1.19 USD.


This is dau phu--tofu fried with lemon grass and chilli and served with vermicelli noodles and fresh mint and dipped in fish sauce. The fermented fish sauce took some getting used to--it's really pungent--but it lends a nice savory flavor to the dish. Cost: 71 cents.
And now I'm off to the water puppet theater and perhaps more street eating. Bon appetit!

Scenes from Saigon

Chris returned to Bangkok and I stayed Saigon. It was a first for me to travel with my little brother and we had a wonderful time. It's hard to find someone who is a compatible traveler--who is adventurous, self sufficient and a pleasure to be around--but now I know that I have a travel partner for life, well, at least until he falls into the clutches of another woman!

I fell sick on our last night in Phu Quoc. We had dinner at a proper restaurant with white tablecloths, a bread selection that you can choose from a little basket, and an extensive wine list. It was a step up from our usual grilled seafood dinner, eaten in plastic chairs on the beach, but I suffered mightily. The next day in Saigon, I treated my malady with coconut juice and Evian water. And fresh sugar cane juice.
Back in Saigon, I'm staying at the fanciest joint in town--the cold, formal Park Hyatt Saigon, with cocktails and torch singers in the lobby, right behind the famous opera house--and I miss the small, friendly budget hotel, 1/10 the price, where Chris and I stayed on our first day in the city. Ah well, I'll meet up with the Bich Duyen hotel on my last run through the city in several weeks. At least I'm getting better at crossing the street: you really just have to dive right in! Dive in, and the motorbikes will stop for you...most likely.


Here are a few more Saigon scenes. On a Sunday morning, motorcyclists gather around the steps of the opera house for a Spanish guitar concert.
And this is how young Vietnamese spend their Sunday morning, with their motos, iced coffee and newspapers in the park.

And here is a sidewalk stand where you can enjoy a Banh Mi, French bread stuffed with pickled vegetables, a fried egg, pate and fresh herbs .

Goodbye Phu Quoc, Hello Saigon

It was hard to leave Phu Quoc, but I'm ready for the more adventurous bit of my trip. I'll have a bit more lounging on the beach in a few weeks in Thailand, and now it's time to explore!

Blissful Idleness in Phu Quoc

Phu Quoc is a tropical island par excellence, with golden beaches and palm trees. The warm water is so translucent that you can see every sea creature below, which can be a little disconcerting when you discover that you are surrounded by a school of jellyfish, as I did on my first day here. I leaped out of the water, much to the amusement of a group of French tourists.

Really, the only question on an island such as Phu Quoc is whether to resist the lovely feeling of total idleness or to embrace it. Characteristically, I succumbed to its embrace, while Chris hired a motorcycle for the day and set off to explore the island.

In other news, I've planned the rest of my itinerary. My last five days in New York--when I realized that this could be a longer trip than I anticipated, if I played my cards right--were so crazy that I had no time to think of what to do with my 5 weeks of freedom in Southeast Asia. Now that I've had time to ponder it, I've decided to take some time to explore northern Vietnam--Hanoi and hiking in Sapa and a cruise on a Chinese junk on Halong Bay. Then, I'll fly to Siem Reap to explore Angkor Wat and see some birds. After this, I'll mosey on down to Bangkok to see Chris, and catch the train from Bangkok to Singapore via Kuala Lumpar and Penang a la Paul Theroux. The great thing about Singapore is that there is a Mandarin Oriental that I've wanted to visit for years. My life goal is to visit all Mandarin Orientals. I'm way behind--I've only checked New York, Washington DC, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Chiang Mai off my list--and they keep building more! I've got to get cracking!

Bats in the Pagoda

It was a long, hot bus ride from Saigon to Can Tho, the bustling epicenter of the Mekong Delta. The bus was purportedly air conditioned, but in reality the cooling system merely stirred the hot air around. Finally, we arrived. Our hotel, a boutique high rise, was blissfully cool with huge rooms and river views and it was on the happy medium between "budget backpackers"--more to Chris' taste--and "colonial-era luxury"--more to my taste.

On our first day in Can Tho, we hired a boat to visit the floating market and the explore the back canals of the Delta. The water itself was a brackish gray and the rice paddies were emerald green--there is no color like the color of young rice. Later in the day, we hired a car to visit the "bat pagoda," a pagoda where hundreds of huge fruit bats live in the trees. They look like furry red foxes with pointy faces and hang upside down, wrapped in evil leathery wings. Occasionally, they awakened and squawked at each other. We arrived in the mid afternoon and waited for hours to see the bats fly off to the nearby farms at dusk, which, when it finally took place with the last possible minute of daylight, was quite a sight. Here you can just make them out slumbering in the trees.The next day, we booked a biking tour of the Delta called "Through the Lush Countryside," a little schmaltzy, I know, but a fun little ride. The route wasn't quite as rural as I had hoped but the section of the ride pictured below was lovely. It turns out that the Delta is very crowded with people, shops and motorcycles, as well as being the breadbasket of Vietnam and producing huge amounts of rice for export. Birds spotted: white stork, coral-billed scimitar babbler

Tofu Custard and other Treats in Saigon

It's great to be back in southeast Asia. It's 70 - 80 and humid in Saigon, and this is what I like to think of as perfect weather. To me, it just feels right--it feels like the Philippines, where I grew up. Ever since moving back to the US, I have wished I lived in a tropical climate but it's not in the cards for now.

The fact that the flight to get here is so miserably long--24 hours plus via Hong Kong--makes me very, very happy that I'm here for several weeks as opposed to only 9 days, which was the original plan and which would have been pathetic in a particularly American worker-bee sort of way. A flight that long requires a sufficiently lengthy visit.

I booked a no-frills hotel near the market on my brother Chris' insistence--I'm booked at the best hotel in town on my next swing through Saigon. The budget hotel, the Bich Duyen, only cost 13.00 USD and turned out to be perfect. Clean, with air conditioning, centrally located, with breakfast included and a super friendly staff. I met my brother there, just arrived from Bangkok, where he lives. Upon arrival, I had some appointments with tailors and haberdasheries to keep, so while Chris went to explore the town, I schlepped my fabric to the tailors. At a classic tailor shop, where the tailor is an elderly gentleman wearing a tape measure around his neck, I handed over navy blue wool pinstripe for an interview suit and gray wool for trousers as well as cream corduroy, which I've had forever, for an autumn blazer. At a chi-chi dress shop, I dropped off red striped linen, apple green linen and blue striped cotton for summer dresses as well as turquoise blue linen for a beach tunic.

Then, I met up with Chris for a North Vietnamese dinner of grilled carp in a white wine sauce with green onions. On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped by a street vendor to purchase soft tofu custard served in little cups with ice. Foods stalls are absolutely everywhere here--I think that we will eat very well. It's going to be a delicious trip!

And today, we're off to the Mekong Delta.

Good Night New York, Good Morning Vietnam (and Cambodia)!

So I'm off again, on another little trip and not a moment too soon! It's been a brutal winter--we've had incapacitating snowstorms and ice storms and the snow has melted to become black ice almost nightly. I wore my snow boots, which I generally only wear once or twice a year, for two months straight. I combated the chill with visits to Russian banyas, fondue parties and hot chocolate festivals (pictured here, City Bakery's famous hot chocolate, which is really more like a pudding)


but I'm ready for a little heat and sun!

I planned this trip to be a pitifully short 9 day excursion--the classic American worker bee trip--to southern Vietnam, meeting my brother Chris, who lives in Bangkok...and then I lost my job, 5 days before departure! I was pleased. I work for a small, poorly managed company with severe cash flow problems and the last several weeks have been very Glengarry Glen Ross--read, incredibly stressful! Suffice it to say that no tears were shed when I learned I would be laid off. "Wonderful!" I thought, "I can extend my trip indefinitely, or, at least, I can extend it until our next opera." J and I have a subscription at the Met and the next opera, Le Comte Ory, is in late April. As a result, I can extend my trip from 9 days to 5 weeks! Clearly, the gods are conspiring on my behalf!

So I paid a hefty fee to airfare.com to change my ticket, filed our taxes, submitted our summer CSA application and now I'm just about out of here! Only thing left to do is buy the new iPad!