Soda Chanh

Vietnam is a wonderful place for non-alcoholic drinks. In many a cafe, menus are a weighty tome  showcasing an array of tropical fruits, juiced, blended and concocted in a multitude of imaginative ways. Then there's the coffees in all their iced, frothed and flavoured varieties, and usually a page or two devoted to tea creations as well. 


However, as thirst quenching is often my biggest priority, I often skip the exotic and opt for a a simple soda chanh. Freshly squeezed lime and soda over ice is an extremely satisfying drink when you're feeling a little overheated.


For me, this drink has three ingredients, as described above. But as you can see from the picture, for most it is not complete without a tablespoon or five of sugar. It made me smile the other day, when this drink was most respectfully placed in front of me. It's funny how soft  drinks are usually loaded with sugar in the west too, but it's all nicely blended in so we can kind of pretend this naughty additive isn't there. 


It's an interesting difference in perception, but sugar's lack of taboo status in Vietnam and liberal use, especially in drinks, is somewhat concerning. This morning I had a freshly squeezed orange juice and requested it duong, just a little sugar, so she only whacked in 2 tablespoons. There's no doubt Vietnamese have a bit of a sweet tooth, especially southerners, because it's used a lot to balance flavours in savoury food too. With growing affluence, it seems that they will be treading the same path of health problems that western countries have.


When you're ordering a drink in Vietnam, a handy phrase to know is khong duong, no sugar.

Tet Trung Thu

Today the Mid Autumn festival will be celebrated in Vietnam. This is a celebration of the Harvest Moon, said to be the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. Traditionally, it’s also an event for children. They make lanterns to resemble the moon and carry them along the streets on this night. They enjoy dragon dance shows and are given toys.

Of course, there is a culinary element to this celebration, which these days is what the festival is most associated with. For weeks before Tet Trung Thu, many bakeries are given over to the sale of only one product, Mooncakes.

Mooncakes are like small pies, eaten cold, and with an array of fillings mixed together; bean paste, lotus and watermelon seeds, preserved chinese sausage, a jam made from squash, roast pork or chicken, but most importantly salted duck eggs. The cooked yellow yoke being the symbol of this lunar celebration.

Mooncakes vary greatly in quality and there have been a number of companies exposed as selling substandard products in the past few weeks. Most people buy from a handful of trusted bakeries that set up temporary outlets all over the city at this time. I am told that to be guaranteed of good quality, you should spend 50,000 dong (about $2.50). However these days, as they have evolved from a gift for children and family into a way of maintaining business relationships and clients, mooncakes with exotic ingredients can cost up to 2 million dong ($100). Now they are a way of expressing gratitude to certain people in your life, like your landlord or the local police, as one article I read suggested.

These cakes are definitely something that should be tried, because they don’t taste like anything else. With the combination of fillings they are often quite dense and rich in flavour. In this way, one that I tried this year reminded me of and English fruit cake, but with more texture and a strong pork flavour.

So yes, you should try them but they are a bit of an acquired taste.

Vung Tau

Any city can drive you crazy sometimes, but sometimes HCMC really really gives you that ‘I’ve got to get away from here’ feeling and you need to act upon it without haste.

The quickest and easiest weekend getaway is Vung Tau. It’s definitely not the most popular place with foreigners though. There are no long stretches of white sand or backpacker friendly bungalows. It’s closeness to Saigon means that it’s more like a city beach. But sometimes a beach is a beach. Waves make the same sound wherever you go. And Vung Tau has a lively local flavour, so it’s a good place for people watching.

The other big attraction of Vung Tau is that you can avoid road travel by catching a boat there. If you’re feeling a bit strung out by Saigon, spending a few hours negotiating your way out of this city and the surrounding built up areas isn’t going to help you much. But for this trip you step on the hydrofoil in the centre of Saigon and step off at Vung Tau’s cresent shaped bay, which is hemmed by modest sized green hills. This is the front beach.

Our hotel is on the back beach, near Vung Tau’s famous landmark, the big Jesus statue. Jesus looks out on a pagoda, which has been built on a small island just offshore. At low tide you can walk to the island along a strip of shell encrusted rocks. Women in conical hats and long sleeved shirts tap away at these rocks to fill their buckets with teaspoon size pieces of pieces of slippery grey flesh.

After walking out to the Pagoda, we hire a couple of deckchairs in the shade of one of the many multicoloured umbrellas that fill the beach. A woman with skin on her face like a sultana approaches. She’s collecting empty cans and drinking a 333 beer herself. She squats down and chats with us for a while, tells us we’re beautiful. Finally she asks for 10,000 dong to buy some rice for lunch and is on her way. While she sits with us another two woman pass, one offering lottery tickets and the other with a big basket of fruit. There’s also a woman selling trinkets. I buy a cowrie shell, which is engraved with a beach scene and with a few other embellishments has been fashioned into a turtle.

We hear the familiar tune of the ice cream man, and a shiny metal wagon selling fried fish balls wheels past us. These are very common vendors on the streets of Saigon, but in Vung Tau they’ve made their way to the beach. All around people are cracking and sucking their way through freshly cooked crabs. The broken shells pile up while their more fortunate younger cousins keep busy digging up the beach. They scurry out of their holes with balls of sand, then toss them away with disdain.

For lunch we eat Canh Chua. And after the best bowl of this sweet sour fish soup that I’ve ever eaten, I resolve that I must learn how to make it. I’ve heard that it’s a staple of a southern Vietnamese woman’s cooking repertoire so I may see if I can get someone to teach me the secrets of this very satisfying broth. The key ingredients for the sweet sour flavour are pineapple and tamarind. The fish they’ve used today is mackerel, cut in steaks. It always has bean sprouts and okra and you eat it with steamed rice, no noodles in this soup.

Many people wisely avoid the heat of the day, so it’s from about 4 pm onwards that the back beach really starts to get the crowds. There’s a lot of people splashing around in the water, most following the Vietnamese fashion of staying fully clothed while swimming at the beach. Groups of men play soccer and there’s now food stands lining the beach where you can buy freshly grilled seafood and beer.

The next day we visit Vung Tau’s latest tourist attraction, a cable car to the peak of one of the hills on the front beach side. Our ticket gives us not only a return trip but entry to the Eco-park at the top. The brochure tells us of the wonders that await us, Ho Chi Minh statue and garden, peacocks, a big Buddha, retaurants and a lake. You can even camp there. We chug the 5 minutes up the hill with anticipation.

Well, of course, Uncle Ho’s already in a prime position, but it looks like they’ve got a way to go with the other attractions. There’s lots of paved footpaths and expanses of green grass and speakers blasting out announcements of how great everything is, but not so much to see and few visitors, maybe because the price is quite steep for the average local holiday maker. The place has an abandoned feel before it’s even really begun.

What’s probably most interesting about our excursion is checking out the scale model showing the plans for expanding the cable car system all over Vung Tau. There will be a cable car across the bay and lines to the other peaks. And they are going to build a monorail, basically making a loop from the big Buddha to the big Jesus.

As we walk around the front beach back to the ferry I notice how many big cafes there are, the multi-level kind that pump out techno music and offer every kind of coffee, juice and fruit shake you could think of. In comparison with the eco-park, these places are buzzing with people and activity. With the plans for more cable cars and monorail, it’s like they’re going to turn Vung Tau into a big fun park, but will it take off? Are there enough people that can afford the entry tickets, when it’s free to go to the beach, or only costs a dollar to buy a drink and sit in a café for a few hours.

Yet another bold and somewhat risky plan for development in Vietnam. It will be interesting to see what happens.

National Day

Happy National Day to Vietnam. On this day in 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed independence from French and Japanese occupation, four years after he had returned from his epic overseas adventure.

This statue of Uncle Ho stands outside the museum which documents his life, his work and campaigns. From this point by the Saigon River in May 1911, 21 year old Nguyen Tat Thanh, as he was known at that time, set out to find the way to save his country. He was away from Vietnam for 20 years, travelling to many countries including America, France, Russia and China. He worked as a chef in London, he was a founding member of the communist party in Paris and was arrested in Hong Kong.

So this statue commemorates the young man leaving his country to take on the world, which from all accounts he did with great zeal. These days though, he’s stepping out into a very different world.