May certainly is a character. First off for the day, in full traditional Thai dress, she took us for a walk round the back streets of Bangkok to visit her local shops where we gathered some ingredients for the day’s class.

A small street side stall provided most of the main key ingredients – galangal (Thai ginger), lemon grass, Thai basil (more aniseedy tasting than the usual Italian type flavour we tend to have at home), chili and kaffir limes leaves.

The lime leaves were fresh. It’s unbelievable how much of a difference it makes to use fresh leaves. I looked into the possibility of buying/growing kaffir fresh at home. To buy the fresh leaves are £5 for 10 leaves! , although possibly worth it, definitely out of my budget. Or a 18″ tall plant could cost you £30 then of knowing my luck it would die as soon as the winter came. Hmmm. Ah well.

Next stop was the rice paper lady where we bought some fresh rice paper to make spring rolls. As a real treat we arrived just in time to watch her make some.

The woman was like a machine! A scoop of batter from one hand slapped onto a hot pan where it formed a perfect circle, cooked in just a few seconds and was then skillfully whipped off the pan with a cut off end of a aluminium food can which had been folded in half to create the perfect scooping tool with which it was tossed onto the pile of rice paper at her side. I have a video of it. At some point I’ll get a fast enough connection to upload it. It really was amazing to watch.

So the cookery class, what did we learn? Well to be honest it was quite a whirlwind cooking marathon! In less than 4 hours we prepared and ate over 10 different dishes!

First of she showed us how to make the essential red and green curry pastes, then it was onto Tom Yam Soup, Isaan, Fried Veg and Cashew Nuts, Pad Thai, Peanut Sauce, Spring Rolls, Massaman Curry, Penang Curry, Green curry, Pumpkin Hummous and Green Papaya Salad! Phew! We were all stuffed! PLUS – at the end of it all May brought us a dessert of sticky rice, mango and coconut milk, very tasty, but we were all just so full. Luckily just at this moment Andy walked through the door to pick me up. Strange coincidence? I think he’d been secretly watching, ready to pounce. Well ok, so maybe we’d arranged that he should come meet me when the class finished, but I’m sure he wasn’t disappointed to arrive to a free banquet of delicious Thai food.

It really was a great day. May was so happy and enthusiastic I spent half the morning just smiling to myself at her funny ways “…mmm… more spicy…more tasty…”. She ended the day with a Traditional Thai dance, which she got incredibly excited about showing us. She donned a set of long brass curly fingers and danced around the shop to the music from her cd player with a huge grin on her face. If you ever happen to be in Bangkok I’d highly recommend doing her cookery course, it was great!

A Recipe for you! Not had one of them for a long time…

Thai Green Curry

Serving for one person

Fry one teaspoon of green chilli paste (google how to make, or you can buy ready made jars) in a tablespoon of hot oil until fragrant.

Put 2 slices of galangal, 2 lime leaves and 2 inches of lemon grass in a pestle and mortar and bash slightly to bruise. Add this to the pan with one tablespoon of coconut milk.

Add veg (a small bowl full) – you can include whatever is in season, but good things to use are pumpkin, squash, green beans, carrot and onion. Anything that would take more than 5 minutes to cook through (eg pumpkin) can be cooked before.

Add half a cup of coconut milk and cook until the mixture is thick.

Slacken with a little water then add one tablespoon of light, half a tbsp of dark soy sauce and a tsp of sugar, cook until veg are soft.

Add about a tbsp of coconut milk (or coconut cream) before serving, serve with brown rice and garnish with chopped Thai basil.

This is a very special place. There is very little to do other than sit in relaxed cafes and bars, read books, be inspired, have a massage, do some Tai Chi  or maybe go for a trek in the hills. It is great. We’ve already stayed here twice the amount of time we planned to (lets hope the guy we left our big bags with in Bangkok hasn’t sold all our stuff!).

We’re staying over the river from the main part of town, it’s very peaceful. We have only the noise of the geckos,birds and the occasional downpour of early monsoon rain on the roof of our little bamboo hut to listen to.

Bridge to our hut

We’ve discovered a few things while we’ve been here, the first of these discoveries is that we both have an amazing ability to sit in a cafe for over 5 hours without really realising an hour has passed. Something strange has happened to time. Or perhaps it’s just that our cafe of choice has an atmosphere and menu that appears to lead to a meditative state that removes you from the usual worries of time and the urge to “do” things.

The cafe, aptly named “Good Life”, specialises in tea, the must have over 50 different types on their menu, many of which have been used as remedies for various ailments in traditional medicine. Today we sampled the ‘Jiaogulan’- tea of immortality!

From their leaflet,

“Jiagulan has grown wild for millenia in the Guizho province of Southern China. Here the people were mot much unlike any others. They woke up with the sun fed the animals and tended the fields… In 1972 after completing the first ever nationwide census … the Chinese government found that the Guizho province had a remarkable number of people who lived to be well over one hundred years old “

“Researchers were sent from Beijing university to investigate. They considered diet, lifestyle, genetics and nearly every possible factor, their conclusion? Jiaogulan”

Personally I’m not quite sure how to feel about these kind of  “healing” teas, I’m definitely interested though and along with sampling more teas I shall be doing a bit of research . Either way for now at least I know it tastes good and I reckon with this tea and my trip up Tai Shan I’m set up. Ooo,I’ll get a letter from the Queen, or rather Prince Charles, or whoever. How very exciting!

Two other very interesting things have been tried in this place, Kombucha and Wheatgrass. Now these two I am convinced of.

Kombuca

Kombucha is a tea that has been fermented by a kind of mushroom which is a culture of yeast and acetobacter. What this really means is it turns the tea into a very slightly alcoholic drink which tastes, in my opinion, a bit like cider.

Good Life sells loads of this stuff,  and I’m not surprised, I’m completely hooked – it’s amazing. It’s subtle, but it produces a kind of mild euphoria and keeps you alert in a happy kind of a way. We’ve been having it just after breakfast. What a way to start the day!

Here’s a few photos of the culture they have. They have loads! Jars and jars all growing in the back of the restaurant. Amazing stuff.

bottling the kombucha

Again, there’s all kind of health claims, from Seeds of Health,

“There is a lot of experiential evidence from people who have been using kombucha over many years. Many of the benefits reported include improvements in energy levels, metabolic disorders, allergies, cancer, digestive problems, candidiasis, hypertension, HIV, chronic fatigue and arthritis. It ‘s also used externally for skin problems and as a hair wash among other things.”

As with a lot of these kind of natural health products, the kind of  “proper” scientific research seems to be somewhat lacking, but from the experience  of it  I’ve had I’m definitely willing to give it a go and look forward to starting my own culture as soon as possible. I like it too that it’s one of these things you kind of pass on, like a gift. Once you have some of the culture, it keeps growing, you can have enough for yourself and pass it on to other people. I would love to hear from anyone in the UK who makes it!

Wheatgrass

Wheatgrass shot

This is another new one on me courtesy of Good Life. Wheatgrass. This too seems to have an incredible energising effect. Down in one, a shot sized glass in the morning is enough for me, but some people are hooked on this stuff, I’ve heard people saying they’d have up to 8 a day!

The health claims, mostly based on the high chlorophyll and vitamin content  include a wide range of benefits including increasing hemoglobin production, detoxifying, helping skin problems such as eczema and psoriasis, keeping hair from greying (!), prevention and cure of colon and other cancers and boosting energy. Bodykind has a good “is it all just hype” article which details some scientific evidence supporting the benefits of drinking wheatgrass.

Again, it’s hard to know, all I can tell you is that after a tour of Pai’s bars finishing at four followed by only 3 hours sleep I had a shot of this with my breakfast and was certainly more perky than I was before and have made it through the day with much more energy than I usually would after such a night. I do not however know if my hemoglobin production has increased!

Wheatgrass can be grown easily at home in trays, there’s lots of information and instructions here. If/when I start my own I’ll let you know how it goes! Would be great to hear from any other fans or growers too!

Finally, here’s a few photos from the lovely trek we did while we weren’t getting high on grass. We had an amazing time and were very lucky to have the company of two lovely Dutch girls Juul and Eliza. Lots of good chats plus perhaps more than a few beers to celebrate their last night in Pai, sob:-( Celebrate is not quite the right word, sad to see them go, we had a good time together. Keep in touch you two!

After nearly a month in Hoi An sadly the amazing contract on our flat stating that we should resolve any conflicts with the “spirit of comradeship” had come to an end and it was time to move on. We packed up our bags, said our goodbyes, hopped on a train and waved farewell to this friendly place that had been our home for the last few weeks.

Spending a little more time there allowed us to get to know people just that bit better. The lady down the road who did our laundry, the smiley lady and her daughter on the market who made our breakfast fruit shakes and all the other people from places we frequently cycled past who always had a smile and a wave for us, we’ll miss them all.

But most of all we will miss the people from Karma Waters who were so good to us while we were there. It really was a treat to meet them and to spend so much time chatting, sharing stories and ideas.

Karma Waters

We did so much during our time there. Kayaking, cooking lessons, speed boat trips and an exciting, though unsuccessful trip out on a life boat across the sea to an island. Six foot waves and a tilting boat. Andy and I were soaked head to foot. I was enjoying the ride, popped on a life jacket, clung on to the rails. Woohooo! I only became worried when the people driving the boat said it was too rough, we had to head back. I can’t really describe how amazing it all was.

But amongst the many things we did while we were there the highlights for me must have been Uma’s birthday and the boat race.

Leanne and Uma

Uma is Paul and Duyan’s beautiful daughter and it was her 1st birthday. The 1st birthday is a big deal in Vietnam. Families place a real importance on this day and throw a party to celebrate. Andy and I were really honoured to be invited to this special day.

The head of the district came over to say some prayers and perform a special ceremony. He was a very friendly chap with an Ian Brown haircut and a flat cap, you could tell he was a bit of a dude. Although our lack of Vietnamese meant we couldn’t really speak to him we just got a really good vibe from him. The night we left he came chasing after us to shake our hands and say goodbye.

1st birthday ceremony

With our limited knowledge of Buddhist traditions a lot of what went on went completely over our heads, but it was all very interesting to watch.

The table offerings

Later Uma was sat on the floor with a tray of objects including a model tree, a pen, sweets, paper, a doll, a comb and other various bit and bobs. The belief is that whatever she chooses from the tray will say something about her future. People laughed and shook their heads as she went straight for an enormous lump of sugar, a jelly cup sweet and another wrapped sweet.

Predicting Uma's future

We enjoyed a lovely meal with family and friends and that evening yet more food including a never ending bowl of soup. There must be some invisible marker on the bowl below which if you continue eating you get refilled. Now I was brought up to finish what I had in front of me. You can imagine the cycle of soup this conflict of cultures created. Me politely trying to finish what I was given and he trying to be the good host and make sure I was well fed. Despite repeated attempts to say I really was full the soup kept coming. Andy and I both got caught in the same trap and must have had 10 serving each.

Uma Soup

They followed a similar rule with the beer.The neighbours had come round including an elderly Vietnamese man who seemed set to drink us under the table if we hadn’t have been saved by the lady from next door who insisted we stopped. Each time he took a drink we all cheered and had to do the same. But not only that, if I didn’t drink enough he’d shout at me to drink more. At one point I had to down nearly half my drink!

The next day with beery heads we all set out to watch a boat race to commemorate 50 years since Ho Chi Minh went to Cham Island. This was an incredible thing to see! Despite the fact that it was raining quite heavily and the boat race was taking place at 9am on a normal working day the entire town seemed to have decided not to bother going to work and had turned out to watch. Thousands of people lined the banks of the river, some sitting on the edge, some clinging from coconut trees, others, like us, lined up along the water edge in boats of all shapes and sizes.

Big boat with Uncle Ho

People went crazy shouting and screaming for their own local team. It all seemed very competitive. It was like the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race gone mad. A chaotic crowd of red flag flying locals edged out into the river throwing water at rival village’s boats. It all got a bit hairy at one point and a few empty bottles and melon rinds were also spotted flying through the air. Brilliant.

Hoi An boat race

After all this it was really sad to leave. I really hope one day to visit again. Many thanks to Paul, Duyen and all the staff for all the amazing times we had and everything you taught us.

I am almost reluctant to write this post as it seems we have uncovered a secret Veggie Com restaurant in Hoi An. This place is amazing and yet we’d not seen it on any of the usual listings. It’s a great place to get away from the crowded tourist streets and enjoy top-quality vegetarian Vietnamese  food with not a single person hassling you to buy a book, packet of peanuts, newspaper etc etc.

The restaurant was recommended to us by our landlord. We’d arrived home one afternoon shortly after moving in to our new house in Hoi An to find two monks sat at our dinner table having lunch with the landlord. It was a bit of an unexpected sight! We found out that the people we were renting from had fairly recently bought the house and so were having it blessed. By the front door there was also a table of food laid out as an offering.

I’d imagined that all the food was homemade, that they must have been slaving away all day to put together this impressive feast for the visiting monks. It turns out however it was a take-away! Ha.

Apparently the restaurant has quite a reputation amongst the locals as serving the best vegetarian food in town. It’s really quite well known and popular. Funny that it hasn’t been picked up by the guides.

The “restaurant” is a typical Vietnamese no-frills style place. The tin roof shed like building with water stained bare plaster walls is lit by bare bulbs and strip lights, furnished with plastic chairs, piles of fake meat boxes staked on rickety shelves, an out of date lunar calendar and the usual sea of discarded tissues on the concrete floor.

The food comes served on a prison style all in one metal tray with separate compartments for the rice, veg and soup.

Yet while to the western eye the presentation may be laking, to me it has a charm that lets you know this is the real deal. The food is definitely top notch. Each time we went we were served a slightly different selection from the buffet highlights of which included a spicy pumpkin puree, “tuna” steak in chili sauce, fragrant “chicken” drumsticks where the bone was a whole stick of lemon grass and a huge range of different vegetables, most of which I’d never seen before. So tasty.

They also do all the usual noodles dishes, pho, cau lau etc again very good, although I found them a bit heavy on the “meat” side. The cau lau especially is one fake pigs ear too far. It contains almost a whole pig, brains, crackling and all. The pork crackling in particular is scarily realistic.

The lady that runs the place is a dude! Really friendly. The last time we went she came running over and for some unknown reason started squeezing my arm, laughing and patting me like I was an old friend she’d not seen for years. She said something to me I didn’t understand, laughed again seemingly at how amusingly confused I was and squeezed my nose as you would a small child’s who’d just said something ridiculously cute. I have no idea where this sudden show of affection came from, but it was nice she seemed to like us anyway.

I’m going to really miss it, great value at 20,000 VND (about 80p) for the full monty rice dinner, including soup and free Vietnamese tea. If you know how to ask for it and want a smaller plate full it’s less depending on what you order.  Noodle dishes are 10-15,000.

So that’s it, the secret is out. Tam Quang Minh is just out of town at 144 Ly Thuong Kiet.

After some deliberation on what to do with our new found wealth we eventually decided to use it on a night out on the town to celebrate moving into our new house in Hoi An. What a lovely night we had!

We got all dressed up, Andy even wore a shirt, and we started the evening with a pleasant stroll into town.

Our first port of call was to be River Lounge, a very fancy restaurant/cocktail bar on the edge of the river in the old town.

We spent an hour or so relaxing in their ‘beach’ area sipping mojitos and enjoying the scenery.

Hoi An is a very pretty town. There are lanterns everywhere which light the streets like a magical techni-coloured dream. The protected Old Town is a unique mix of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and European architecture and it’s beautiful old ocre coloured buildings line the riverfront.

Housed in one of these buildings was our chosen restaurant for the evening, the aptly named Café Des Amis (-that’s Friends’ Cafe Ade).

This is quite an unusual restaurant, with a very good reputation in Hoi An. There is no menu. You simply choose either meat, fish or vegetarian and then wait to see what arrives. Each night it’s a new menu of 5 courses (!) with all dishes being creations of the owner Mr Nguyen Manh Kim. They’re all essentially Vietnamese style things, but put together in a different way to the standard dishes you get everywhere else.

I get the impression Mr Nguyen is something of a character. Rather than cooking the food for the evening, once he’s invented it and passed on the instructions to staff he then spends the rest of the night hanging around the restaurant chatting to people, showing you how to eat the food and if you’re not eating enough/quickly he’ll come and start putting more on your plate gesturing you to keep eating. We were stuffed! Definitely don’t eat all day if you plan on going.

So what was on the menu? We started with a plate of circles of a sort of steamed white dough topped with crispy fried Cau Lau.

Cau Lau is the local speciality noodle. The recipe is a secret and it is only made by one family in the area (I wonder if it’s the Nguyens – 40% of Vietnamese have this surname!). Cau Lau is usually served in it’s non-fried form in a similar way to other noodle street food – in a bowl as a simple meal with a few herbs, chili, and thin sliced meat. So this fried version is pretty unusual. Mr Nguyen came and showed us that we should scoop up on of the circles and top it with a good dollop of chili sauce before eating. It was a bit like a spicy crunchy scallop. Yum!

Next on the menu was a huge plate of crispy spring rolls:

Quickly followed by a curried pumpkin and coconut milk soup with wanton. Mr Nguyen first broke pieces of the wanton into our bowls, then topped them with soup. This is a great idea. The crispy bits were a top addition to the soup.

By this stage we were already stuffed! Nevertheless another plate full of food soon arrived. This time spicy vegetables and noodles, again topped with the crispy Cau Lau – he’d gone a bit crazy on them that night! Part way through this course I got told off for not eating enough and he piled another spring roll into my dish. I like this guy. It may sound like he could almost be quite annoying in a “Just let me get on with my meal” kind of a way, but he has a good way about him so it’s all quite funny and you can tell he only wants you to eat more because he is proud of the food.

We ended the meal with a small(thankfully!) creme caramel a couple of beers and a good chat with a couple of lads on the next table who had also just been enjoying working their way through the mammoth meal. They were in Hoi An for a couple of days as part of their travels around South East Asia during which they were having fun taking videos of each other eating weird food. Ha! Sounds like a great idea, there’s certainly enough of it on offer. Really nice lads, shame they weren’t staying longer.

After the restaurant we waddled off back towards our lovely new apartment via a couple of bars and over a few more beers formulated our plans for revolution. Well maybe not quite but we did have a good old rant abut things. So all in all we did have a really lovely evening, great food, good chats and all in such a beautiful setting. So thank you very much to John and Helen for your lovely surprise gift. It was really a treat to be able to have a guilt free splash out on a great night out on the town! Thanks! x

I’m not really sure what made us decide to take root here. It was all quite random. We were just looking for a new hotel for a couple more nights and happened to notice a a small sign for a house to rent. More out of curiosity we went to have a look around one. Well I say curiosity I mean I was feeling nosey and wanted to look round a Vietnamese house (is that bad?). Although we’d just gone in for fun we realised actually it wasn’t such a bad idea. Within a couple of hours we’d decided to stay longer and found a place to live.

During the time between finding the place and deciding to stay we had an encounter with an interesting chap who runs a vegetarian restaurant called Karma Waters. We’d gone to talk to him about snorkling courses he runs, and if the weather would be good for it or if we should wait. Somehow the conversation morphed into a sort of philosophical discussion about why we were there and what we wanted from travelling. I think he said “If you are looking for an experience, you will find one”. Whatever it was something he said had me convinced we should stay and we went to sign the contract. I think he hypnotised us. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing quite a bit of this guy while we’re here. Have a look at his website, they have a really interesting philosophy on life and business (or busi-ness: that activity that keep you busy) that really fits with a lot of things I’ve been thinking recently.

Anyway, so having decided to slow things down a little I’m looking forward to experiencing things in a new way. Given the time to explore and take things in more I think we’ll get a lot more out of this trip. I always find it’s best when you have some time to just sit, relax, do nothing and let ideas and thoughts come to you. I’m planning on making more regular blog updates with 2 new exciting series of posts: “The Story of my Experiments with Fruit” where Andy and I get adventurous with Vietnamese fruit and “Meal or No Meal” a photo quiz where you decide if a given dish is animal or vegetable. Woo!

For now I’ll leave you with a few photos and a little restaurant review from a Vegetarian restaurant in Hue called Lien Hoa, which is at 3 Le Quy Don (map).

This place doesn’t really look much from the outside. It is on a busy road slightly out of the main streets, but well worth a visit. In fact we got addicted to it and went 3 times! Very chilled, frequented by lots of monks and nuns. Occasionally you’ll see a monk run in to collect take-away too, which for some reason looks really strange. We saw one dash in collect about 12 cartons of food then run through the restaurant and dive in a taxi and speed off. Very amusing.

As we went a few times we got to try a good few things off the menu, here are my recommendations of things to try if you go. The first is a salad called “Affection and Missing”, the Vietnamese is Van Vuong Thuong Nho. I wonder if this really does translate to Affection and Missing? It’s a great name either way. I think I’ll start naming any new dishes I invent in this way. Pumpkin Soup can be Golden Dreaming. Yes, very nice.

Affection and Missing

This salad has twelve ingredients laid out very prettily on a plate. There are sections of finely sliced cucumber, red cabbage, carrot, three unknown veg, scarily realistic strips of ham, mint, parsley, some peanuts, a pile of crispy noodles and topped with an enormous fancy red chili. It comes with a sweet chili sauce which the waitress then mixed into the salad using some very nifty chopstick skills until it looked like this.

It’s a pretty mega salad! Apart from the strangeness of tasting ham for the first time in nearly three years (which I have to admit was very nice) all the different tastes and textures all work really well together. Mmm mmm mmm. Until going to this restaurant Andy had said that pizza was his favourite Vietnamese food, but since Affection and Missing he’s converted. Gonna have to get myself one of those shredding devices or this one would take about 2 days to make with all the slicing!

Jack fruit mixed with sesame

We’ve been trying to learn and sample a few new fruit and veg. Sometimes this means we pick random things off menus that maybe aren’t so great, or really don’t go with the other things we’ve ordered, but this one was a definite winner. It looks and tastes like chicken. Not just lumps of tasteless breast meat though, these are those bits you get left after a Sunday dinner. You know the tasty, juicy darker bits you can pick off the bones and put in sarnies. Mmmm… oops do I sound like I am on the turn? I’m not… really.. promise. I’m used to people describing meat they’ve never tried before as tasting a bit like chicken, “Frog… It’s a bit like chicken”, but this has to be a new one. Fruit that tastes like chicken? Crazy. I thought also it was a bit like artichoke.

I’m not sure if the jack fruit is served cooked or raw. We’ll have to go out and buy a raw one chop it up and see. Anyway this particular jack fruit dish came a bit spicy and sprinkled with sesame seeds. You also get a big cracker which you snap bits off to pick up pieces of the tasty, juicy chicken, I mean jackfruit and then dip it all in a spicy sauce. Yum!

Bitter Melon Soup

In another daring new vegetable move we opted for the “Bitter Melon Soup”. It’s name does not quite portray what the soup is actually like. It is not bitter, nor does it appear to contain any melon. From what I could see it was made of erm… wriggly cucumber, button and white oyster mushrooms, thin slices of pineapple, tofu, tomato, spring onion and chives. Quite a jumble. Especially when I was expecting maybe some cold watery bitter soup.(Yeah, I’m not sure what made us order it either, who wants to eat cold bitter soup?). It turns out wriggly cucumber is actually called Bitter Melon how odd. Wriggly Cucumber is better. Wriggly Cucumber Soup gets 6.5 out of 10, so maybe not a big hit, but I think it’s good to try local specialities and I’ve had this soup since in other places and it wasn’t as nice and in fact has been, as described, quite bitter, so if you want to try it, it’s worth a go here.

Random Photos for Nosey Bonks

**Click photos for more waffle**

Petrol Station

We ran out of petrol on a day trip out to see some tombs. For some reason we caused quiet a stir at the “petrol station”, practically the whole village came to see us.

Rush Hour

Believe it or not this was the main road!

Ho Woz Ere

Uncle Ho’s House in Hue

River

This river runs through the citadel in Hue which means the part shown here is actually running straight through the middle of a biggish town, but I think this part looked really remote and tropical. I loved the mistiness in the air.

Front Gardens

This row of houses was at the north end of the walled town in Hue. We’ve seen lots of places like this. People grow food on every available bit of land, it’s a real inspiration. Food not Lawns!

Also this is one of the only pieces of farming machinery we’ve seen in this whole country. I’m guessing this one isn’t really used much either!

Hanoi is hectic! The pace of life there is far too crazy. There’s a constant stream of bikes zooming around every corner loudly tooting their horns on average every three seconds, or less. And the streets are packed full of little shops each with their owner trying to entice you in to buy something. If you walk down the street a Xe Om (motor bike taxi) will ask if you want a ride. If you stand still a cyclo will will hunt you down and insist that you must want a tour. As if that wasn’t enough if you sit down anywhere for a ‘quiet’ drink, guaranteed within 5 seconds someone will come and ask you to buy a book/hat/banana or any number of other things.

Despite all this we really liked it. We had a lot of fun there. In fact maybe too much fun. In true “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” style we hopped on the back of a scooter and zoomed over to “Beer Corner” (a crossroads with small bars on each corner, marked C on this map) where Bia Hoi the local brew is sold for only 3000d (12p) a pint.

It was a respectable start, just one or two beers before going to meet my Dad and Elaine (who happened to be on holiday in Hanoi while we were there). We chatted with them for a while in their hotel, which Andy and I both agreed was undoubtably the strangest place we’d been all holiday. After the craziness of the city and general grime of the streets and squat toilets that we had become used to this place just seemed insane. A quiet, ‘civilised’ bar, spotless western toilets and receptionists who spoke perfect English?! It was all a little too odd. Like we’d been transported to a different world, far removed from the city we were really in.

It was really lovely to see them, but also kind of sad to realise that that’s the last we’ll see of anyone we know for months now.

It was after this that things went a little crazy. We made our way back to “Beer Corner” and settled down at the side of the road for another one or two. We got talking to some really nice people, Cara and Angus, from Australia, with who we decided that the best plan of action after the bar had closed was to hunt somewhere down that was still open and sold cocktails. We found a place within minutes and then spent the next 5 hours drinking very strong Long Island Iced Tea, arm wrestling (always a bad sign!) and rambling on about something incredibly important that I cannot remember a single thing about.

In a drunken stupor we’d arranged to meet them at 2 o’clock the next day to go see Uncle Ho (By that time the mausoleum would have been closed for at least 3 hours, but regardless that was our plan). However we didn’t even manage that. We barely were able to crawl out of bed for ten past two and after a failed attempt to find a taxi we gave up and went home. We weren’t fit for anything. This behaviour became typical of our whole stay in Hanoi. It’s the only place we’ve been to so far that made us completely incapable of doing anything constructive.

Actually that’s not quite true. We did manage a trip out of the city, to a beautiful place called Mai Chau. Although only just- we woke up late after yet another unplanned night of merriment feeling pretty groggy. A cat had eaten part of our laptop’s keyboard, everything we looked for was missing, the washing we needed to take was wet, the bus we wanted to catch didn’t exist. It was a bad start. But we made it. And what an amazing place it is! It couldn’t be more different from Hanoi. We stayed in a little village just past Mai Chau called Ban Pom Coong, which is the home of the White Thai people .

We stayed in this house:

Slept in this bed:

And looked out of the window to this:

Although most people have now abandoned their traditional dress the village, and the place is pretty obviously managed to make for a comfortable rather than authentic stay it is still very different. The ladies are expert weavers,they make some really beautiful fabrics, if you plan on visiting and like that kind of thing take a lot of spending money. There is so much lovely stuff. Actually you shouldn’t need too much. I treated myself to a bag and was all ready to start bartering but she only wanted about £2 straight off for it. Really I felt like I should be offering her more, not less.

The village is a jumble of stilt houses laid out along small paths surrounded by ponds and paddy fields. In between the houses you’ll see various animals, cows, chickens, ducks, dogs happily wandering around amongst the people. If we weren’t planning on moving on I think we would have stayed much longer. It is the perfect place to just relax and do nothing except maybe go for a walk, bike ride or read a book.

Eek! Huge centipede! Actually it was dead, or there’d be no way I’d have my foot so close to it, yak!

We went for a bike ride to the next town where we saw the best toilets ever. The town itself turned out to be nothing much, but the toilets alone were well worth the 15km bike ride. We gone there hoping to get some lunch only to find that the only food available to buy in the whole town was choco pies or crisps. Hmmm. Anyway so we sat ourselves down with a bottle of beer and packet of crisps (healthy lunch hey?) and enjoyed a bit of people watching. Andy went to the loo, never said anything when he came back, although he did have a slightly cheeky grin. A little while later I went too. You walk through the back of the cafe/shop which is also the persons bedroom/living room (as most places over here are) and then through a door to a kind of store room/kitchen/shed. At the back there is another door to the toilet. It’s a fairly basic squat toilet, no flush, just a bucket of water to throw down, not that that’s too unusual. However on either side of the toilet ther were two pens,one which contained about 12 chickens, and one with 4 pigs! Crazy. Just in the back of their house. It was just so unexpected. Why not though I suppose.

If you ever go to Hanoi I’d definitely recommend taking a few days out to visit this area, it’s so relaxing, beautiful and different. Some places in the city offer expensive ($100!) tours, but it’s easy and cheap to do yourself. Take a bus from My Dinh bus station (6.30am or 2pm price 50,000d – around £2). It’s a four hour drive, so the 2pm gets you there just in time to find somewhere to stay before it gets dark. When you get there you just walk around and find someones house to stay in. Usually people will be hanging about outside and ask you if you want to stay, so it’s easy to do. They’ll normally make you some dinner too, very tasty traditional Vietnamese food. We paid 100,000d/£4 each a night for dinner, bed and breakfast. Perfect.

The family we stayed with were lovely. There was an older lady who wandered around chewing Betel nuts smiley and chatty (no idea what she was saying though! I suspect most of it related to her wanting us to buy her scarves and blankets), and then the lady who did most of the running the guest house bit who was very friendly, spoke pretty good English and was really helpful. When we left they were all hanging over the balcony waving us off! How nice.

After a couple of days of relaxing it was time to head back to the city. While we were in Hanoi itself we’d been staying with a Spanish guy called Ugo (from couchsurfing, again). He was really cool. Quite chilled, although he certainly likes a good “discussion”. He made us feel really welcome in his beautiful house. So much so we ended up staying much longer than planned. An intended 2 or 3 night stay in Hanoi somehow turned into over a week. As a thank you we made a meal for him and a couple of friends. I was pretty nervous about it. I’d told him usually I would make Spanish tapas style food, but that as he was Spanish I was afraid it wouldn’t be up to scratch. He insisted however so I made a tortilla, patatas bravas, garlic mushrooms, pan con tomate and a couple of salady type things. The food got official Spanish approval! Hurrah! Although he said, of course, it wasn’t as good as his Mother’s.

A couple of foody things. Bia Hoi Hanoi (map) is pretty good. A true locals hang out, it’s always packed so the atmosphere is pretty lively. The food is very typical Vietnamese, noodles, rice, various soups, spring rolls etc. One thing that was a bit wierd though. We’d gone on the 15th day of the lunar calendar. We’d gone to this particular restaurant specially on this day as most Vietnamese don’t eat meat on either 1st or 15th day of the month, so we’d assumed as this was a really typical Vietnamese restaurant this would be THE place to go for good veggie food on this special day. So we went and ordered a soup, a morning glory, rice and a tofu dish. The waitress then told us they didn’t have any tofu on at all. Strange we thought, but never mind. However 5 minutes after our food had arrived literally on every other table were Vietnamese people happily tucking into several different types of tasty looking tofu dishes! No idea what was going on. Maybe we just weren’t allowed. Humph!

I’ll finish the post with our first experience of the most typical Vietnamese meal, Pho. This is sold through out Vietnam and eaten for any meal, breakfast, lunch or dinner but usually breakfast. The basic pho is a noodle soup, which has various things added to it. Usually beef or chicken (but just ask for without) and then some herby salad, spring onions, chilli, beansprouts and lots of other different things can be added which vary between each place it’s bought from. Typically it’s just a small street-side cafe or even just a lady with a table and a couple of pans set up on the pavement. Very tasty indeed. Healthy too I recon. And cheap. The standard price seems to be 10,000d (40p). What a bargain. We’ve been having a lot more days on budget since we’ve got into it. Deffo another new breakfast for home too. I wonder if it could ever take off there? It seems to be the norm here to eat breakfast out in one of these small pho cafes, and why not? Given the choice of a poxy bowl of sweetened cardboard or a lovely nutritious bowl of hot noodle soup I know what I’d choose. The campaign for a new British breakfast begins.

Beijing is amazing, we were there for 7 days, the longest we’d stayed anywhere so far, but even that was no where near enough. You could stay for months and only really scratch the surface. It’s kind of hard to really appreciate what’s going on in a place like that. We were staying in a hostel in the Hutong. At the moment a lot of these are in the process of being torn down as some are really quite run down and the drive for modernisation is meaning some people don’t want these ancient dwellings anymore. Others (including Prince Charles!) are trying to save them. I hope this is successful. They really do have a lot of character, it would be a real shame if they all went. You can happily stroll around for hours. Each street has it’s own little buzz about, small shops, restaurants, snack stalls. But generally it’s just great to go and, well lets be honest, just have a nose around.

Typical Hutong

The actual hutong we were staying in has been “redeveloped” meaning now it is full of trendy little boutiques, bars and fancy restaurants. You know, this made it a great place to hang out, and a good base, but I wonder how the people who are really still living there feel about it all? If you stray just 10 meters off the main shopping street you can see down the alleys into the places people actually live and it’s easy to see it’s a very different place. It would be great to spend a bit more time in Beijing, learn the language enough to maybe go chat to people who live there.

Our Street

We arrived in Beijing on New Years Eve. Our 3rd or maybe even 4th New Year so far. Crazy considering we’d only been away about a month. Through couch surfing we’d arranged to meet people to go out for a meal (THE Hot Pot!) and the guy that had organised it had also arranged for us to have exclusive access to the roof terrace at a bar by the Drum Tower. Prime fire works watching spot. I’ve already hinted at how good the meal was, so I’ll move swiftly on to the New Years celebrations, which were well just insane. We were expecting some kind of an organised display, but what actually happened was more like a game of fireworks chicken. Hundreds of people were there who would randomly edge into the middle of the square, set off some huge bomb of several meters of fire crackers and then leg it before it exploded in their face. And at midnight the sky was just lit up in all directions with fireworks bursting in the sky which must have just been being set off all over the streets of Beijing. Never seen anything like it. But what really made the New Year celebrations crazy was the fact that they just didn’t seem to stop! For the entire time we were there, day and night, you couldn’t walk down a street without being cut off by a huge line of fire crackers exploding. They are so loud! Andy ended up wearing earplugs for most of the time we were there!

The Drum Tower, by day

The drum tower by night. Pyromaniacs!

A small pile of used firework cases!

It was great to meet up with the people from couchsurfing. Fantastic was to spend new year. Also got to meet some pretty sound people. Including fellow vegetarian Yvonne, who we ended up hanging out with a few nights while we were there. She was also travelling overland, but had stopped to earn some money teaching English in Beijing. Seems to be the thing to do. Up to 20GBP/hr and rents around 100GBP/month. Adds up better than the deal you get at home.

Yvonne and other couch surfers – on a couch!

We went to a fantastic vegetarian restaurant with Yvonne and Catherine (someone she had staying on her couch). It’s called Still Thoughts, however don’t go looking for it expecting it to say this translation on the sign as we did. You’ll end up wandering around for hours and never find it. Just look for a big (8ftx6ft?) bright green sign. Also other clues like monks eating there might give it away. It was one of the best veggie restaurants I’ve been to. I’m not normally into fake meat dishes that use quorn etc, but the stuff this place does is unbelievable. We had eels, prawns, hedgehog (!!) and other things and they were all just so tasty. No idea what an eel or hedgehog would normally taste like, but if they taste like this I might have to convert back! Although a diet of eel and hedgehog may be a little impractical at home. Dunno though it seems pretty easy to lure them in with a little bowl of milk…. Mwaa ha ha haa. There’s a map here to help you find it. It may also be useful to ask your hostel to ring the restaurant before you set off, they can then write you the address and directions to show to your taxi driver or passers by.

“Hedgehog” and “Eel”

Loads more happened in Beijing. Far too much to write about, so I’ll just mention one more thing, which was our trip to the Great Wall. Quite an experience. The bit of the wall we chose to go to Simatai to Jinshanling was recommended as it was quieter, not as many tourists. Brilliant, we thought. Nice undisturbed day enjoying the scenery. A few km into the 8km hike I began to understand why. Huge sections of it were really falling apart, almost rubble. There were 70% climbs and massive drops either side of collapsed walls.

Now I suffer from a bit of vertigo and can get quite wobbly and unsettled with heights so as you can imagine it wasn’t my favorite ever walk. To top it all off at the end there was a really long wood slat bridge, that was slightly wobbly and had little gaps in it. I hate bridges! By the time I’d got across my legs were shaking like a petrified dog! I think I just have too good an imagination. In my head it’s entirely possible that my body would somehow be able to fall through those tiny gaps in the wood, or that the chains might snap like they always do in the films, or any number of bad things could happen. Actually having said all this it was great thing to do. Andy loved it. I’m just a bit of a whimp with that kind of thing.

Photo of me, actually pooping my pants.

You might guess from the gallery below that this post could have gone on for a few thousand more words, like I said just saw and did so much. You just have to go there and experience it for yourself.

Also there are pics from the ice festival, which wasn’t quite what we expected. It seems from this year it has been taken over by Disney. You can imagine our joy when we were greeted by a huge Mickey Mouse, lots of merchandise and general selling out of a previously independent event. Booo. Still, we had a good time. Well actually it got 3.5 out of 10, but you know we had as good a time as we could at -23 surrounded by plastic Disney characters when we were expecting world famous ice sculptures.

I have to start the post off with this though:

It is the breakfast from the hotel we were staying at, The Lungmen, which was just opposite the station. Have you ever seen anything like it?! There was a huge choice of dishes, from grain based porridge type soups, steamed bread, different steamed vegetables, sweet potatoes, black eggs, white eggs, fried eggs, stuffed buns and loads more. It was brilliant! We had no idea really what we should be eating with what, or how, so we just had to go for it. I have to point out though that these plates and bowls are very small! We didn’t really have like the equivalent of 8 full sized plates of food just for breakfast! Honest.

So, to the photos… **Click to enlarge + for more info**

Our last stop in Russia was a couple of days in Irkutsk, including a day trip to Listvianka on Lake Baikal. The lake was amazingly beautiful. It is the largest fresh water lake in the world at around 400 miles in length, so looking across the lake was more like looking out to sea, except for that it was frozen! Actually it wasn’t completely frozen, in a few months it will be frozen enough for people to drive all the way across, but right now it is just frozen around the edges. Still enough for us to stand on, which we did!

One day there was a bit of wind which was causing part of the lake to freeze and shift across as we watched it. The sound was incredible! Never seen anything like it in my life. The ice that was coming across was only a couple of mm thick, but you could imagine the power that anything thicker could have, it was unstoppable. As soon as one bit hit the edge the power from behind would force it up and shatter it into tiny pieces which then would form the frozen edge. And I’d always watched these nature progams thinking,”but how would ice move huge rocks?!” Now I know.

One day we were there some important religious type person arrived. Crowds of people were on the street. He blessed the lake, then with a branch splashed water on everyone, then people collected water from the lake and then, crazy people, some of them got in! It was -15! I can’t imagine how the water must have felt. Brrrr.

While we were at the lake we went dog sledging, which was fantastic. Weaving around a forest, being pulled along by 10 very giddy dogs on a sledge, dodging trees and clinging on as we bounced over bumps was great fun. Seemed like the dogs loved it too. If only it snowed all the time at home we could all scoot around on sledges, woopeeeee!

Also at the lake there are places which have these amazing Banyas. which are the Russian Saunas. Actually the one we went to was more like a sauna house. As well as the typical sauna room first there is a small room for you to hit each other with branches in, then a separate room with a small pool of cold water to plunge into, which I think was coming straight from the lake and then also there was like a lounge attached where you could order food and beers to be delivered. Wow. As it was off season we had this whole place to ourselves! If there are a few of you can hire the whole thing out for a few hours which I imagine would be brilliant fun!

We left Russia via a 2 day train journey to Harbin, our penultimate stop on the trans-siberian, and for both of us our first visit to China. The train station door opened up onto a very busy square. There was hundreds of people rushing around. Everyone seemed to be in quite chirpy moods too. Lots of smiles around. As we stepped out of the station into the squre the first thing we saw was an enormous colourful tree, about 20 meters tall and looking like something from a computer game it really wasn’t what I was expecting to see! Stood next to it was a huge ice sculpture all lit up different colours.

We could see our hotel from the station, however between us and it there was a huge road, about 4 separate sections of 2 or 3 lanes each. As far as we could see there didn’t appear to be any subways so we joined the Harbinians and dashed across the road with all our bags, jumping out of the way of cars which seemed to come from every direction and leaping over the barriers in between each lane of traffic. This whole situation was made all the more ridiculous by the fact that despite it being a very cold place (-23 when we were there, but often colder), meaning that for at least 4 months of the year the whole place would be covered in snow and freeze up, all the road and pavement surfaces were made out of the most slippery surfaces I’ve ever know. In some places there were even patterned sections of polished marble, to make things even more fun! People seemed to be sliding around everywhere clinging on to each other and giggling.

Harbin was sooo cold. We found it quite difficult to stay outside for more than about 30 minutes at a time. We both had every item of thermal underwear on we owned, scarves wrapped round our faces, two pairs of gloves and many pairs of socks on and despite this it was still too cold. We found we had to plan our route for the day carefully to make sure it didn’t involve us being somewhere outside for too long and we kept dashing into random shops just for the warmth.

Food in China so far has been an experience! We’ve had some very good meals and some where things didn’t work out quite as we expected… So to start with the good. Dongfang Jiaozi Wang (Eastern King of Dumplings) is indeed the King of Dumplings! We tried dumplings a few times in Harbin and these were definitely the best. Also they were around half the price of other places. They have a menu in English too! Well sort of, some of the literal translations have been quite amusing. I must remember to note some down in the future. Things like “The fire lights the bean moving” often randomly appear next to pictures of vegetable dishes. Somehow though we managed to negotiate this menu and order ourselves a few things which as far as I could tell contained no meat! Hurrah!

Although I did think for a second when this arrived that it might be snakes!

Luckily it turned out to be very tasty aubergines that we forgot we’d ordered. Phew.

We also had these mushrooms, described on the menu as edible tree fungus we had to try them.

I wondered what on earth had arrived when we got them! They turned out to be a type of mushroom very similar to jelly ears that grow commonly at home. The taste is fairly bland, but they came served with the hottest horse-raddish sauce I’ve ever tasted! Anymore that the tiniest dip on the edge and although it didn’t burn your tongue seconds later the sensation in your nose is as if all the hairs in your nostil are being stripped by strong acid, this is followed by fits of coughing and eye watering. Despite this the taste is so good you can’t stop yourself from trying it again and falling for the same nasty trick.

Our second meal in Harbin was not quite so successful. There is a food market on the high street which has a canteen style restaurant above it. We sat down, got the menu, compared it to our little dictionary and sheets of safe veggie stuff. We also had help from a waitress who could speak some English. Although there’s no real way to say I am a vegetarian, we showed her our page of Mandarin with the closest you can get, it says various things. “We eat vegetables”. “We DON’T eat Meat/Fish/Chicken”. She looked nodded, crossed off somethings we’d ordered and suggested some other things instead. Brilliant.

We thought we had ordered two types of vegetarian dumplings, a pancake filled with spring onions and some green tea. What actually arrived was dumplings which contained pork, not even pork and vegetable, just pork. A lovely cabbage and pork meatball soup and some orange juice, not green tea. The only thing we’d got right was the pancake. Oh well. Eating around the edges again. This blinking pork is tormenting us.

At least we didn’t end up with a plate of these little creatures which were on sale downstairs, wriggling around in a pot in the middle of the salad section!

Another thing we discovered in Harbin is that the Chinese like to serve their soup in ridiculously big portions. We went to one place and ordered what we thought would be small bowl of soup. It was really cheap, we nearly ordered two so we could have one each, but decided instead to order other things to try then share the soup. But look at this enormous vat that arrived! Also contrast to the tiny size of the bowls to eat it from! There was at least 20 servings of soup in it! All for around £1. Crazy!

I’ll leave it at that for now. More to come from Harbin including the most amazing market I’ve ever been to and photos from the famous Ice Festival.