Thich Quang Duc

This is an interesting development in Saigon. I stuck my camera though the metal gates still surrounding the construction of this monument to Thich Quang Duc, the monk who self-immoliated in 1963, to protest against the Diem government’s persecution of the Buddhist community.

The monument will be located where this event took place, at the intersection of two main streets in central Saigon. On the opposite corner there is already a very modest altar and small statue of him, but you could miss it if you weren’t looking for it. This statue will take up a whole corner block, with grass and trees surrounding. As everyday I pass another example of old and intriguing places making way for new office blocks, it is refreshing to see something other than money and progress being celebrated.

Apparently Thich Quang Duc was encircled by monks and nuns 7 or 8 fold deep as the flames engulfed. And what is much celebrated about this story is that his heart remained intact, and is still kept in a nearby pagoda.

David Halberstam, an American journalist who witnessed the event said, ‘I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.’

Time to cook

HCMC offers such a fantastic array of cheap and delicious food, that like many expats who live here I don’t cook that often. Eating out here is always enjoyable and offers the most accessible way for a foreigner to experience the culture. And, you have to be shopping at the local market, rather than expat grocery and produce shops, to make it economical to cook. Local markets can be fun and colourful, but also hot and tiresome, which makes it easy to fall out of the habit of going and drift back to the air conditioned and expensive foreign supermarkets. Especially during the hot season we’ve been experiencing.

However, I’ve been watching Luke Nguyen’s wonderful cooking show about Vietnam recently (thanks Kerry and Peter!) and have been inspired to get back to the market and start chopping. Above is my version of a recipe from the show, Ga Ham Kieu Tuoi, Chicken cooked with fresh pepper. What intrigued me about the dish is that you cook the chicken in the juice from young coconuts, which is one of my favourite drinks here, but I’ve never cooked with it. Mr Nguyen cooked this amongst the pepper plantations on Phu Quoc Island. I’m not sure if the green pepper I bought at the market was the much revered Phu Quoc pepper. However I do know I had coconut juice from Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta, a region famous for all things coconut.

The recipe worked well, though I don’t think I added enough pepper. It really does need a lot to balance the sweetness of the coconut juice. Anyway, it still tasted pretty good, and it’s great to have the ingredients, some of which would require some shopping around in Australia, so readily available. Looking forward to more inspiration from this very entertaining and mouth-watering show.

Vegetarian Soup in Chinatown

 

A very different bowl of soup today, a 100% vegetarian bowl of abundant flavours, textures and colours, that I slurped my way through out in District 5, HCMC’s Chinatown. Today is the first day of the lunar month, so many vendors sell wholly vegetarian dishes, to suit the practices of their Buddhist customers.

This soup contained wontons filled with a taro mixture (instead of pork), fresh rice noodles which were tinted by the bright orange broth, two (maybe more) kinds of mushroom, squares of deep fried tofu, (chunks of) tomato and cabbage, shredded banana flour and morning glory, bean shoots, a few fresh green herbs, and something crumbled on top for the final flourish, I think it was wafer thin sheets of deep fried bean curd. As the wide girthed soup lady plonked it down in front of me, it was such an explosion of colour that I was dying to take a photo. However this was a particularly intimate table and seating arrangement, even by Saigon street food standards. I was shoulder to shoulder with a rather stern looking Buddhist nun, so it didn’t feel like the time to whip out my camera.

The food was much more successful than the intended purpose of my visit to Chinatown, to buy some fabric at a market out there. I did find a lot of fabric for sale. Actually I think I found the mecca of ‘day pyjama’ fabric for Saigon women, (see woman in yellow above) I passed stall after stall of this stretchy synthetic stuff in every garish pattern you could imagine. I know it suits millions of Vietnamese women, but not what I was after.

The photos above were taken at a pagoda just around the corner from the Fabric market. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been to it before. Though the hustle and bustle of Chinatown usually leaves me fairly disoriented, so I may have stumbled upon it another time. It was quite busy here, again because of the new moon. I think I saw the youngest worshippers I’m yet to encounter; a very small three year old girl praying most enthusiastically, and being very bossy with her younger brother to make sure that he did too.

Hu Tieu

Pho may be Vietnam’s national dish, but out on the streets of Saigon, the soup that I see being enthusiastically slurped most often is Hu Tieu. I’ve heard it said that this pork based noodle soup has Chinese origins, so it’s a good idea to try it in Chinatown, though I think you’d find a fine example on almost any street here.

Sometimes it’s sold from old style wooden wagons, though more commonly the set up looks like this. This vendor sells near our house. I’ve been going here for breakfast on the weekend recently. She makes a very satisfying bowl of soup. The pork broth has just enough sweetness. And I like that you get extra greens on the side to add to your bowl; the curly leafed celery tasting one goes especially well.

The contents of the soup will vary from place to place. There will always be pork meat, but it may be fine slices, or minced, or a hunk of flesh still attached to the bone. The noodles may be wheat or rice, fresh or dried. A prawn is usually placed on top as a final flourish. At this place she also adds one fishball, the white orb you can see bobbing on the surface.

 The only problem is this little soup stand is quite popular, so we always seem to end up at the table in not such a great position, next to the man cleaning motorbike parts with some chemical cocktail. The smell of sweet pork broth and celery competes with toxic fumes. There is a solution though, keep your head close to the bowl, and slurp those noodles down as fast as you can. If you asked a Vietnamese person, they would probably say this is the only way to eat a bowl of soup anyhow. 

...some rain

This happened 5 minutes after I finished writing on Sunday. Ha!

It's taken from our front door.

(Oh - I just watched it, not such great viewing in this format, just turn up the sound and you'll get the idea.)

More weather whinges

The blasting hot season seems to have come to an end. Now we have days of cloud cover and “some” rain, but the weather is still not as it should be.

Again, yesterday as everything darkened and the temperature dropped, I was fooled into finding a strategic position to watch a downpour that never came. It did rain a little, but there was nothing satisfying about it. It didn’t cleanse and calm the city (or me) with its coolness, because when it doesn’t rain enough, all you get afterwards is steaminess. Sun showers are common these days too, which people here describe as two Gods in the sky. And the rain is so scattered. If there’s a shower and I ask someone at work about it the next day, even though they live in a nearby district it’s likely they didn’t get any rain.

To summarise, this rainy season is yet to have any conviction.

I don’t know how to take a photo of my discontent with the weather, so here’s something unrelated and more cheerful. I reckon I see a new poster around town every week, and when there’s nothing to commemorate or celebrate, you’ll just get some stirring words and a general reminder to follow Uncle Ho’s example. I like the colours and composition of this one, and the use of the lotus petals to frame the great man. Is it just me, or is the military fellow in green a little more prominent than the other citizens?