It has been our staple breakfast meal for the last 2 months. It would be a lie to say that we had eaten it every day, but I recon over the last 2 months we must have eaten this dish at least 40 times! Crazy. And we never got bored of it. In fact after only a few days in Cambodia we’ve found ourselves desperately hunting down an authentic Vietnamese Pho.

Each place has it’s own little variation on the dish, but the essential base is always the same. Flat rice noodles are heated in a big pan of boiling water and then popped in a bowl with some stock and sprinkled with chopped spring onion (or “onion leaf” – maybe chives?). The bowl is brought to your table along with a side plate of fresh herbs, bean sprouts, limes and chilis for you to add to taste. Amazing! It becomes a bit of a ritual. Before the bowl arrives you start picking the leaves off the herbs ready to drop into the soup when it arrives. Then it’s time to stir in a few bean sprouts, maybe a squeeze of lime, a dash of chili and then you’re off. It is such a refreshing breakfast. Even in the 30c heat we couldn’t get enough of the steaming bowls of spicy pho.

The stock itself is pretty damn tasty. The places that sell pho tend only to serve that one dish so you can be sure they have spent some time perfecting the saucy base.  I think this is the key. I always get suspicious if a restaurant has an overly long menu. How could they possibly cook all those things well? How could they have all the ingredients in fresh everyday? It’s just not possible. Here, where most of the stalls are actually based in or just outside a market, you can be fairly certain the fresh herbs, and crispy bean sprouts couldn’t be much fresher.

My favorite must have been the pho in Hoi An. They grow a special type of basil there, it has a slightly aniseedy/minty taste which was possibly addictive. Andy and I took a trip out to visit the farm that grew this stuff, Tra Que. It was pretty incredible. They used no chemical fertiliser at all, instead the land was fed with seaweed which broke down in just a few weeks giving them amazingly rich fertile soil.

I wonder how something like this could work in the UK? Compared at least to a cafe/restaurant at home the set up costs must be tiny! All the stalls are so basic, but after all, it’s just good, simple cheap food. What more do you need? A few small tables and plastic chairs, a couple of pans, some kind of heating equipment (normally fashioned from big plant pots by the looks of it) and a metal framed glass cabinet functioning as the preparation area, display, cash desk… This is why they can sell it for 40p rather than the £6 a noodle soup would cost you in the swanky surroundings of Tampopo. No branded napkins and matching crockery here. With plastic plates and bare plastered walls the food tastes just as good. It makes you wonder what it’s all about.

Here’s a small selection of the pho we ate. The more observant amongst you may pick out that some of these aren’t true pho, there are a few other types of noodle soup in there too. It’s guess the odd one out time! Extra points for identifying the type of noodle and name of that dish…

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.

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.

The noodles are special type, only made in this area. They a round long, round noodles, a similar shape to spaghetti, but made of rice flour. Usually they are served with a few pieces of finely sliced pork (obviously we missed this bit off) and a sprinkle of peanuts or toasted soy beans. Then a spoon each of some sort of oil and a type of sauce flavouring (something like soy?) is added before you take your bowl away to a table with a selection of different things to add yourself. Usually this is kelp (our favourite), some other small cubed vegetables, maybe a radish ( I think it was mooli), maybe cucumber, other different small pickled veg, coriander, chives and chili. After all this you add a scoop of stock and sit down with your bowl of noodles and a boiled egg and a long twisty piece of a sort of bread to dip in. Yum

They sell this everywhere. We tried quite a few and while they are all similar, they are definitely not the same. The best one we had was from a cafe marked on the map here.

The last couple of weeks in China were spent down in the south with a trip to Hong Kong and a couple of it’s islands and then a week stay at the English school in Yangshuo. I have to say I think the main part of Hong Kong was probably my least favorite place of the trip so far. Maybe it was just too familiar? Loads of the same fancy shops we get at home, its rip off Irish pubs and fancy bars are far too expensive (£6/pint!) and the huge commercial centre with enormous skyscrapers and shopping centres really wasn’t for me. Sure you can get away from that and find, I suppose, more traditional areas, but the most obvious thing there is money and work. And if you’re after seeing something more ‘traditional’ there are a million other places in China you can go see it with out the priceyness (Guangzhou for example is amazing!).

We had a scary trip on the Metro one morning. We hit it at rush hour and found ourselves drawn into the march of the drones.

It was very freaky. Every person walked silently and quickly with blank expressions in a constant flow around the underground platforms. Such a contrast to the lively hussle and bustle of the streets we had grown used to on the mainland. I was really relieved when we finally escaped!

A trip out on a couchsurfing mission to Cheung Chau was definitely good idea. Apart from the island being something of a sun soaked tropical paradise with lovely quiet beaches and great walking around the green hills, we struck it lucky with our host who turned out to be a really lovely person, and an amazing cook!

Actually it was the guy on the right, Nir, who was the official host, but he was working away on the first night and back late others, so his girlfriend Wanda took over the job and really she did a lot more than you would ever expect! We were treated to an amazing curry using vegetables I’d never even seen or heard of, papaya salad with a fantastically spicy dressing, a tasty Thai(?) dessert, which was like jellyish type squares and a special Spring Festival sweet treat which, I think, was sugar cane which had been boiled up for hours to create a thick sticky sheet which is then cut into slices and fried til crispy. Yum!

She also made this soup, which went straight into the top ten soups of the trip so far.

It contained so many different root vegetables and squashes with all different tastes and textures. I’d really like to try them again when we get home (if only I could remember what they all were!). It was really a pleasure to meet her. We shared a couple of great evenings sat chatting outside on their balcony overlooking the beautiful bay. She had an interesting background, having grandparents from 4 different ethnic Chinese backgrounds. She grew up on a farm and so from them had learned so much about food and growing. Their balcony was home to an impressive range of fruit trees, vegetables and herbs that was really an inspiration. No excuse of not having the land when we get home! Her family had emigrated to Canada when she was young but her back ground gave her a great knowledge of and enthusiasm for Chinese culture, traditions and all styles of Asian cooking that it was a really amazing opportunity for us to be able to speak to her about.

The mornings there were similarly spent relaxing on the balcony. We’d have breakfast and read a while and watch the small boats sail by before maybe going for a stroll to the tiny temple just down the path where an elderly man practiced Tai Chi under a banyan tree . Amazing. A big thank you to Wanda and Nir for opening up your home to us and treating us so well.

While we were stying on Cheung Chau we took the ferry across to Lantau, the home of the “Big Buddha”. Which was really quite impressive. The statue is 34 meters tall, making it the world’s largest seated Buddha.

Don’t make the mistake though of arriving here straight from Hong Kong on the metro and taking the cable car (! ARGH!) across. You’ll get dropped in a hideous “traditional” (ie fake) street full of expensive tacky souvenirs where, for a fee, you can also visit the Buddha experience (some sort of virtual tour I think) and plastic banyan tree. I think after arriving this way it would be difficult to take the important spiritual significance of the site seriously. The over commercialisation of it all really detracts from the spiritual significance and tranquility of the beautiful surroundings. I wonder if the monks who decided on this project really anticipated that area surrounding their once peaceful temple would be turned into a theme park.

On the same island Tai O is definitely worth a visit. A beautiful old fishing village of stilt houses and narrow twisting streets to get lost in you’ll see a way of life unlike anywhere else, and also, if you’re lucky a surreal display of cut out characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to a very bizzare image I’m sure I’ll never understand the significance of which was a dog (or pig?) giving birth to several dog/piglets which are then cleaned by a dog/pig wearing a bikini. Hmmm.

This post is getting too long, so I’ll skip a few things and just briefly mention again our stay at the English school in Yangshuo. Again organised through couchsurfing we spent a week there with accommodation and food in exchange for 2 hours conversation 4 days a week. It was really a brilliant thing to do and we’re already thinking about going back at some point. As I said it was a great opportunity to meet people, we had some really interesting chats with some of the students and amongst went out with the whole school for a lovely hotpot dinner, my new favourite meal!

While we were there we met a lovely couple Frank and Jane who we also ended up spending quite a bit of our spare time with going on various bike and boat rides around the surrounding area, which is stunning. The Karst rock formations spring up magically from the ground everywhere for miles around and we went on a 3 hour boat trip along the Li River which winds its way through this amazing scenery.

Apart from the good company it was also incredible to have someone with us who could do the various deals. Nothing ever has a fixed price and the boat trip we did if it were even possible would no doubt have been at least 2 or 3 times the price without Frank’s hard bargaining. It was also useful to have them around to translate the signs like this one:

Which reads, “For your safety, do not sail on the rafts”. Hmmm. Not that it made any difference. Here we are happily ignoring this piece of government advice.

“Chezzer!” Ready to board the raft!

Just to check if anyone has actually read this whole post I’ll leave you with two pictures. You can leave any comments for discussion below.

What is she doing?

:-0

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The idea is simple. The Hot Pot is essentially a big bowl of water heated to boiling point by placing a container of red hot coals in the centre. A simple stock mix is added which may be of spring onion, ginger and garlic. Customers order the various ingredients to go in, which they add as and when they like. Popular choices are mixed mushrooms, various vegetables, tofu, and noodles. These are allowed to cook for a few minutes before being picked out and dipped in a sauce before eating. The stock in the pot also turns into a tasty soup as the various vegetables and mushrooms are gradually cooked throughout the meal. This alternative style of eating not only keeps the customers amused it also cuts out the need for chefs to prepare the cooked dishes as the customers seem more than happy to do it themselves. No one would have believed it was possible to make people want to pay to cook their own food in a restaurant, until now.

Crowds of restauranteurs have been seen queuing every morning from 5am at newly opening branches of Hot Pot Harry’s, the leading supplier of Hot Pot merchandise in counties around the world. It has been gradually spreading west and looks set to hit the UK in the next few months. Several restaurants are already preparing for the expected demand from hungry Hot Pot diners and are ordering online to beat the rush.**

This from Gurtrude, 87, born and bred in Beijing,

“Well it started with Derek down the road last October, as t’nights were drawing in.. He was the only one ‘ere with a hot pot at t’time, but then Eileen and Authur they kept popping round begging him, they’d tried it once and now they were hooked. They wanted his Pot. Eventually all t’neighbours were round all t’time and ‘e couldn’t keep up tha nos. And that’s how it all started. He got a restaurant, made 365 kerzillion Yuan in a week and then they were all at it. In all my 87 years I’ve never seen anything like it!”

This happy couple were spotted in a restaurant in Beijing recently and were reported to be having the time of their lives!

“We’ll I used to think Andy was the only hot pot for me, but now it’s all about the Beijing Hot Pot! It’s just so tasty. I can’t get enough. We’ve been back here 5 times already and we’ve only been here 2 days! I can’t believe I didn’t know about it until now. Now I know where true happiness lies.”

*This may or may not be true. All rumours are made up, with no evidence to back them up.

** This rumour was started with the intention of making fiction reality. Hopefully by the time we get home through my huge readership this nonsense will have spread far enough for people to believe it. Then when we get back we will find Bejing Hot Pot restaurants springing up everywhere and we will be very happy bunnies.

The lady in the chair in front was rather large to say the least and every time we went over a bump, which was about every 5 minutes, her chair bounced back with the weight an banged into my knees. I thought the whole chair was going to collapse and she’d crush me. What a nightmare.

We made it alive though and luckily our hostel, the Old Town Hostel was not too far from the station. We dropped our bags off and had a snooze in the common room until our room was available. The room turned out to be really nice. Practically a small flat, it had a little kitchen and our own bathroom which we weren’t expecting. Great stuff. I’d definitely recommend staying there.

Vilnius itself is absolutely beautiful. It was -15 degree and 6″ deep in snow the day we arrived, with perfect clear blue skies. The town is one of, if not the, prettiest town I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the largest baroque style towns and was inscribed on the UNESCO world heritage list in 1994 due to its uniqueness.

For lunch the first day we went to meet some people from couch surfing who had helped us to buy train tickets to St Petersburg. This is a great example of how valuable couch surfers can be when travelling. We’d posted a message on the forum as when we’d tried to book the tickets ourselves no one on the phones spoke any English and it was not possible to book over the internet. We asked if anyone had any idea of how we could do it. One person rang the station for us and found that there were actually only 2 spaces left in the train we needed to get and that you had to pay for them and then collect them in person within 6 working days! This would be completely impossible for us to do as we were still in the UK so we began to panic a little. But then another person offered to go buy the tickets for us if we transferred him the money and then we could go meet him to collect them when we arrived. Now everyone we told this to thought we were a little bonkers, but that’s the great thing about couch surfing. I think it’s pretty unlikely you’re going to get anyone who will rip you off. Maybe it does happen, you obviously need to be careful and check people’s references but mostly you should be able to judge that a person is trustworthy. Amazing.

So we met Augustus who had bought us the tickets and his girlfriend Katja and went to Balti Drambliai for lunch. You guessed it, more soup. Very good spicy soup.

Augustus and katja had been travelling around South America for the last 3 years on $10 a day and had only been back in Vilnius for a few days. The contrast must have been quite hard. After travelling for so long with the kind of freedom of lifestyle and mind that will develop I imagine it must be very difficult to come back. While Vilnius is undoubtedly very pretty it is, like any main town, based mainly around working and shopping. They said a lot had changed since they had left and I got the impression maybe not in a good way. They said they planned to go travelling again soon, I really hope everything works out well for them. They were very inspiring and helped us out so much for no reason other than they are good people.

Apart from Balti Drambliai we went to a couple of other places that definitely deserve a mention. The first was Sue’s Indian. I normally wouldn’t specially recommend going to have something like a curry in a country that has it’s own speciality cuisines, but this place was really fantastic. Better than any curry I’ve had at home. Even in Rusholme. The tastes were just different somehow. The spices seemed so fresh and we had the most amazing peswari naan ever. It was just perfect. Almost worth going to Vilnius just to go there. It would take about 3 days to get there the most direct route though, so don’t wait till you’re too hungry to set off.

The other place was restaurant called Zeppelin. It was here we had our first of I imagine many experiences of not getting exactly what we thought we’d ordered. We’d walked all the way across town to go to this place as I wanted to try Zeppelins which are a traditional Lithuanian dish of a kind of potato shape stuffed with cheese. However despite being named after the things and apparently specialising in them, at the exact time we arrived they had ran out and wouldn’t have any more for at least an hour. It was already quite late so we opted an alternative potato dish, described on the menu as “Potato pancake served with sour cream”. What actually arrived was the most greasy plate of grated potato covered in little pieces of pork and fried onion, topped with a few rashers of bacon for good measure the whole thing was dripping in pork fat. Yum.

I expect this is going to happen to us quite a lot during our journey across the world, so we decided we just had to get on with it, scraped the meat off and ate the greasy, pig flavoured potato cake. It was actually pretty tasty, if I can admit that. The waiter must have thought we were mad when collected our plates and found we’d only eaten the potato and left all the ‘good bits’.

Overall Vilnius was really a great place. Maybe my favourite few days so far, apart obviously from the lovely events of Paris. I’ll definitely be going back, it is just so amazingly pretty, and a good size too. You can really get a feel for the place after only a day or so, which is great when you’re moving around quite quickly as we are at the moment. There are loads of great bars and restaurants too. One of the main reasons why I think it was so pleasant was  that it hadn’t been spoilt by the kind of stag weekend invasions that seems to have happened to other similar European cities. I hear some blinkin budget airline is planning on starting flights there next year, so this may all be about to change. I really really hope it doesn’t.

The train itself was pretty cool, quite old school. We were in a carriage with two other people, one of which kept trying to talk to me despite the fact I clearly had absolutely no idea what she was saying. Going to have to get used to that I suppose. It was funny, I think crossing over into Poland was the first place I’ve been that really seems very different. An announcement would go off sounding like someone shouting something very important, but you would have no idea what.
And every half hour or so a guard would come round to check you tickets, again shouting something completely incomprehensible. We saw this great sign by the emergency stop devise. Loving the translation.

Before we left we’d joined couch-surfing and Warsaw was to be our first go at it, so we were a little nervous. Couch-surfing is a great way of traveling. Basically you sign up to the website and create yourself a profile with some information about yourself and if you have a place that people can come and stay, either just a couch, or maybe their own room, or you can just offer to meet up with travelers for a drink or to help them out.

You can search through other people’s profiles and arrange to go stay or meet up with people from practically anywhere you might be going to. People leave references for people they’ve stayed with or had to stay, but really I suppose it’s all based on trust and joining a community of like minded people.

It seems to work really well. We’d arranged to go stay with Tomek and Julka in Warsaw, and really I think we couldn’t have picked better first hosts. They were amazing, they had a beautiful house, a lovely dog and a cat and when we arrived they picked us up from the station, gave us a quick tour of the city and then Julka cooked us a great meal of pasta and some of her Mum’s Pierogi, which are a traditional Polish dumpling, they can have various filling, but these were a mix of potato, onion and some kind of cheese, I think, and very very tasty.

Hookah pipe in a bar in Warsaw.

Outside Tomek and Julka’s house

We ate several different versions of pierogi over the next few days. They are pretty addictive. We went to a lovely place in the old town where we had then in the traditional way – served with borscht, the beetroot soup. Mmmm.

Borscht seems to be made in a slightly different way by each person or place, but generally it seems to have been thin, almost just water consistency, but amazingly tasty and a little sweet. One place we went it was served with beans in, another just plain in a cup, and we’ve since had it once more, served with pieces of grated beetroot in and a dollop of sour cream. All are lovely. But I think my favorite was the one we had with beans which we’d got in a Milk Bar.

The Milk Bars in Warsaw are fantastic. One of the surviving reminders of the communist times in Poland they are really just very cheap places to get basic food. Julka told us that years ago it was very difficult to get hold of even basic items such as plates and forks, so in many of the milk bars the plates would literally be screwed to the table and you would be served straight onto your plate, and the forks were attached to the table on chains. Crazy. It’s hard to imagine this was only a relatively short time ago.

Here’s a link she sent me to a clip from a filmshowing a milk bar very similar to the one we were in.

http://ru.youtube.com/watch?v=g4GpuOeKNBU

The milk Bar we went to became known as Kraluch, which translates as Cockroach, Tomek said we could imagine ourselves why, so I really wasn’t expecting the most amazing lunch. However despite the cheapness (our lunch for 4 people including soups, drinks and pierogi cot us the equivalent of around £8) the meals are really very tasty, and normally prepared in the traditional way, meaning they are really simple, but healthy ingredients. I think they are probably the best place to try some real Polish specialities. It helps if you have a guide to help you navigate the menu and order though, as it’s quite uncommon to find English speakers working in Milk Bar. Thanks again to Tomek and Julka for taking us there!

Warsaw was a fascinating place. It’s history just seemed so much more in people’s consciousness than you normally are aware of. Besides the milk bar Tomek and Julka also took us to the Uprising Museum which was really harrowing. They’d already told us that around 80% of the city had been completely flattened during the war, but the museum really puts across the terror and devastation of the time. It’s very sad. Julka told us her Grandmother had been in one of the death camps so I can only imagine how that must feel for her.

We also visited the Fotoplastikon, which had photos by Chisa Niedenthala of “Stan Wojenny” or the time of martial law in Poland which ran from 1981 until 1983. There was severe food shortages and rationing, thousands of people arrested without charge, many killed, censorship was high and several independent organisations, universities and schools were outlawed. I imagine this period is still strong in the minds of a lot of people living there it really makes you realise how lucky we are not to have had to live through anything like that, but also to be aware that this kind of thing could easily happen again and also that similar and worse things are going on right now in many places all around the world.

We’ve really been having a great time, and so much has happened though I’m not sure where to start. I guess it’s best to just start from where we began, in Paris and some pretty exciting news.

We spent the first couple of days in Paris with our friend Bruna wandering around aimlessly and drinking incredibly expensive beer. With an exchange rate of practically 1 to 1 the average price of a drink was about £6! And that was just for a half! Ouch. This was more than made up for though with the amazing magical atmosphere of Paris at Christmas. The Champs-Elysees had a Christmas market running the length of it and the trees that line the road were lit with beautiful white lights that seemed to drip down through the trees.

We went to quite a nice Alerian Restaurant, Le Bec Fin which I’d definitely recommend. We had tagines which were fairly simple, but very tasty and quite reasonable. We’d gone early, but by the time we left it was pretty full, mostly locals too and lots of the tables had been reserved, so I’d definitely book if you’re thinking about going.

One thing I love bout Paris is the variety and quality of food shops. Practically every other shop was either boulangerie, patisserie or some kind of amazing delicatessen. Food is clearly so much more a part of their culture. You can probably find more amazing food shops on one street in Paris than you could in the whole of some towns in the UK. So jealous.

We said goodbye to Bruna on the second night and packed up our bags and set off, I thought, to the hostel we’d be staying in for the next couple of nights. I began to get a little confused as we seemed to be heading in completely the wrong direction and when Andy told me the place was just round the corner we were surrounded by lots of very impressive grand buildings. Then we were stood in the square in front of the Pantheon and he told me to put my bags down… something was definitely going on… Andy proposed and I said Yes! As you can imagine I was pretty happy and spent the next ten minutes jumping up and down around the square. So rather than book us into a hostel Andy had actually booked us into Hotel des Grand Hommes which was an amazing surprise. The hotel was beautiful, and we had a lovely evening. Big grin.

The area around the Pantheon was actually the best we found for good bars, many of which also did cheap tapas type snacks and there were quite a few decent restaurants too. I’m on a bit of a soup mission on this trip, trying to sample as many different types, if possible the most typical of the area so while we were there I had my first bowl, which obviously had to be onion soup.

Without a doubt it was the most amazing onion soup I’ve ever had. It came topped with some kind of melted cheese, possibly gruyere also had lovely chunky croutons in it. Mmm mmm mmm. So tasty. It’s going straight on the menu of my soup shop that I’m going to open when I have a win on the bingo.

So that was Paris. Amazing, romantic and lots of great food. Yep definitely Paris.

For New Years we went to Berlin with our friends John and Viv. We’d met them in Paris and then got an 8 hour train across to Berlin. The train journey was great. Really relaxing. We’d packed ourselves a lovely picnic with celebratory Champagne and cheese from Fromagerie du Pantheon and had a great time just drinking, chatting and playing dominoes.

For the count-down we went to the Brandeburg gate, which was ok, but a bit manic. With only one way in and huge crowds of people, a terrible sound system and really not very much going on apart from being shoved around in the crowd. Actually yeah I hated it. Don’t go. Berlin in general was fun though. The streets were full of people throwing fireworks around, which after having all the safety stuff drilled into us so much was pretty scary at first, but we soon got used to ducking out of the way and enjoyed the madness of watching people light fireworks and hold them in their hands spraying sparks into the streets. Some of the bombs people were letting off were HUGE. We saw this one in the on the pavement, glad we weren’t around when this went off!

On New Years Day we went to meet my friends Rob and Pauline that I know form art college who now live over in Berlin. It was really great to see them again, we spent a lovely afternoon/evening with them including visiting some of their favourite Berlin bars. I had my second lot of soup at Strand-bad Mitte , this time traditional German potato soup, which is very different to our normal leek and potato, it was quite thin, but very tasty. I think it’s more normal to have it with some kind of sausage pieces floating around in it, but it was very good without. Recipe please Pauline!

I’ll leave it it that for now, hopefully I should get chance to post a bit more of a catch up before we leave tomorrow. There’s still 3 more countries for me to write about. Can’t quite believe we’ve been to 5 different places already! And still a long way to go. Yay!