If you want something a bit more than sight seeing and sunbathing from a trip then Karma Waters is definitely the place to be. The home page of the website opens with the statement, “At some point we understood and accepted that life is Karma and this is our place”, from there follows an explanation of their “Busi-ness” (that activity that keeps you busy) model of Karma Investment,

“Karma Investment is to consciously invest in improving your own life and that of all others (people, environment, animals, etc.) by consciously making the focus of all “investments” (time, energy, knowledge, etc.) to improve personal & collective karma”

Regular readers may recall we came here on one of our first days and ended up in a conversation with the owner, Paul, which somehow convinced us Hoi An should be our home for the month. We’ve since been back many times and enjoyed inspirational conversations covering, as you can probably imagine, life, the universe and everything.

Aside from the spiritual guidance we received here, another draw, if you need one, is that this place has perhaps one of the best views of any Hoi An cafe – a quiet spot looking out across a beautiful tropical river. The food is very tasty too, it comes in generous portions and is intentionally healthy with no MSG and all fresh ingredients.

We had a lovely night there on Friday when we enjoyed sharing an enormous Chinese style Hotpot with Paul, his wife Duyen, their kids and some of the people who work there. I fear we may be a bad influence on him though in encouraging him to stay up late chatting when he had to be up early. We seem to have this effect on people. But you know, if the time is right, you’ve just got to go with it.

Duyen is responsible for the creation of most of the meals on their menu and kindly agreed to some unofficial cooking lessons, so over the last few days I’ve been taught how to make one of their soups, a spicy salad and a vegan pancake roll. Amazing. Here is the first of those recipes, Curried Vegetable Noodle Soup. Thanks again for sharing it with me! There are more videos on the Karma Waters website showing how to create other dishes from their menu.

Curried Vegetable Soup with Noodles

Recipe for 1 LARGE bowl, enough for 2 people.

• 1 carrot peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 medium sized potato peeled and cut into chunks
• 2″ of taro root peeled and cut into chunks
• 1/8 of an onion finely chopped
• 3 mushrooms (they used something similar to jelly ear) chopped small
• 3 or 4 pieces of crispy tofu sliced
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• glass noodles (not sure on measurement, say about a 1.5cm diameter bundle?!)
• 2 tbsp peas
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• Veggie fish sauce (or soy sauce)

1. Put the carrot, potato and taro root into a pan with just enough boiling water to cover and simmer until tender then drain (keep the cooking liquid).
2. Place the glass noodles in a bowl of cold water to be used later.
3. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan, add the garlic and onion, cook for one minute, then add the curry powder, cook for a further minute before adding in this order and stirring between each new addition the drained veg, tofu, peas, and mushrooms.
4. Add a good splash of veg. fish sauce (or soy sauce) and then add the reserved cooking liquid from the vegetables.
5. Cover and heat for a couple of minutes, add salt, pepper and a tsp of paprika, heat for 2 minutes more then remove the glass noodles from their water and add them to the pan. The soup is ready when the noodles are cooked.