Friday, November 14, 2008
bike repairs
I like how bike repair dudes put a manual bike pump on the side of the road to advertise their services--though such a pump is never actually used. this guy, for example, clearly had a line coming from an electric compressor somewhere.
tube patch + re-inflation: 5000 dong.
xanawu . 12:34 . comments (0)
Sunday, November 09, 2008
where I live
this is our house: the white one with the red brick balcony on the 3rd storey. in hanoi it is not unusual to have very narrow houses, but built tall (used to be that taxes were paid by the width of the front)--in our case, we have 5 floors, with 2 rooms on each.
this is my room on the 3rd floor:
living room on 4th floor:
1st floor kitchen and bike storage area:
some of the bikes--I just rented a new one! it's the bright yellow one, of course. more on that later.
xanawu . 08:28 . comments (0)
Thursday, November 06, 2008
freedom (oslo vs. hanoi)
tilegnet arbeiderbevegelsens-pionerer
frihet-solidaritet
(dedicated to the pioneers of the labour movement: freedom solidarity!)
Hà Nội - mùa đông 1946
("Winter 1946": in reference to the French re-occupation of Hanoi after Ho Chi Minh had proclaimed independence in 1945)
xanawu . 09:20 . comments (0)
Saturday, November 01, 2008
and not a drop to... shower with
it's been raining for the past 2 days, apparently the worst since 1984. and by murphy's law, I of course live on what seems (to me) the worst-hit part of the city. this video is from early in the day, when I first tried to get to work:
it only got worse later. nowhere to stand without being submerged, and all the shops busy trying to sweep water out of their businesses. those who had given up just stood around watching the chaos. I'm amazed at the number of people who still insisted on driving their completely submerged motorbikes, only to be stranded minutes later.
(I did make it to work in the afternoon, but when I made it back in the evening, there was a taxi floating down the street, with drunken on-lookers laughing)
this would all be a bit more tolerable if weren't for the fact that we now have no running water in the house. not such a great thing after wading in, well, everything you can imagine is on the streets of hanoi (ahem, I saw a big rat float by my house this morning).
xanawu . 11:04 . comments (0)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
learning vietnamese
my third lesson today, and it was vocab overload.
| teacher | giáo viên |
| lawyer | luật sư |
| doctor | bác sĩ |
| farmer | nông dân |
| painter | họa sĩ |
| policeman | cảnh sát |
| singer | ca sĩ |
| journalist | nhà báo |
| flight attendant | tiếp viên hàng không |
| engineer | kĩ sư |
| driver | lái xe |
| secretary | thư ký |
| worker | công nhân |
| pilot | phi công |
| architect | kiến trúc sư |
| factory | nhà máy |
| hospital | bệnh viện |
| office (organisation) | cơ quan |
| office (building) | văn phòng |
| university | đại học |
| airport | sân bay |
| bookstore | hiệu sách |
| centre (中心) | trung tâm |
| international | quốc tế |
| national | quốc gia |
some obvious cantonese influences in the words for university (大学), country (国), airline (航空)... and while that may be attributed to 1,000 years of Chinese rule, there was one word I learned today with a French origin:
| movie | phim |
but I guess that makes sense. :)
[hats off to apple, which makes inputting characters from different languages a breeze, and all without having to install any additional software! the keyboard viewer eliminates the need to memorize keystrokes when typing in French, Vietnamese, Chinese, Norwegian... so that the only barrier is actually knowing the language. someone have a widget for that?]
xanawu . 10:25 . comments (0)
Sunday, October 26, 2008
breakfast weekend
I found a housewares store on the new hanoian that's semi-near my house, so I set off late morning yesterday to take a look (similar to ikea stuff, the place is called uma in case you're interested). all this to say, my browsing brought me well past lunchtime, and I noticed I didn't have enough cash to buy what I've been looking at anyway.
so I went to the nearest HSBC atm by my place. gloriously, just next to the atm (on the corner of Doi Can and Van Cao, to be exact) is a Bánh mỳ Huế restaurant.
and what is banh my hue? I've been wondering this for awhile, since this place is on my way to work and all I could see from the street were sizzling cast iron platters.
can there be a heartier meal than a plate of sizzling eggs, steak, spring onions, tomato, & potato? don't forget the side salad of pickled/chillied cucumber & tomato, and of course the bread (banh my). it might possibly cause your next heart attack, but it's damn good. one dish + Fanta: 59,000 dong.
(btw, Hue is a city in central Vietnam, and presumably the source of this dish)
today I decidedly went more low-key with breakfast, and opted for cháo--essentially vietnamese style congee--with chicken added (gà).
the surprising difference from chinese or thai congee is the herbs that are mixed in, the usual mix of basil/mint-ish leaves that you find with other dishes, as well as green onion. red and white pepper, to taste. one bowl: 20,000 dong.
(small alley of chao places just at the start of hang bong street.)
xanawu . 08:09 . comments (0)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
nobody doesn't like bún chả
it may distress some of you to know that food isn't good all the time in hanoi (and there are nasty rumours saying that all *good* vietnamese cuisine, and certainly what we know overseas, comes from the South)--however: there is not a single person who doesn't love bún chả.
I admit I first heard of bun cha while bored on a plane, watching anthony bourdain arrogantly explore vietnam on his travel-slash-food show. I remember watching him at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant in hanoi, when the camera pans to the guy grilling meat on the street using a small wire contraption. I am transfixed. not only by his grilling, but also by his wild fanning of the unbelievably enormous billows of smoke rising from the tiny fire.
and that is how you know a bun cha place is nearby--if there seems to be more smoke in the air than usual (unfortunately sometimes hard to tell in hanoi).
here is a high-tech bun cha place that actually funnels the fumes into a hood (not very successfully, it seems). note the wire grills:
and I'm sorry, it seems I only have a post-consumption shot here. when having bun cha you're given a bowl of grilled meat sitting in this sweet broth/sauce that I haven't been able to figure out yet (the stuff you often get when ordering fresh spring rolls). you're also given a plate of bun (rice vermicelli) and some leafy greens (incl. basil, etc.): basically dunk what you want into the broth and you're good to go! condiments generally include pickled garlic and sliced chilis.
I'll try hard to snap photos before eating next time.
xanawu . 12:03 . comments (0)
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
fried bananas
and fried plantains, 3000 dong each. Doi Can street, Hanoi.
(ed: 4000 dong as of November)
xanawu . 08:33 . comments (0)
Sunday, September 28, 2008
bamboo field trip
the company I work for partners with a French NGO to do the field work in Thanh Hoa--and this weekend 10 of us, from both organizations, went on a field trip to see some of the bamboo workshops in that province.
so after work on friday, we set off towards Mai Chau village in Hoa Binh province to spend the night: although only 120 km away, it took well over 3 hours to get there. it's a well known 'ethnic minority' village (don't know what the PC term is nowadays), and though I think it's supposed to be charming to sleep in a stilt house, it was a bit odd to share with people I barely or don't know from work (1 other woman and 8 older men).
anyway, we got an early start the next day (one of the roosters crowed for an hour straight, while another just seemed lazy), but it wasn't long before we reached our first stumbling block:
because of the typhoon that hit China and north Vietnam, there's been a lot of rain the past few days and so the river here has risen and flooded the road (the boys running this raft were making a killing). our van couldn't go, and other trucks in the area refused to take us (because they knew that even if we passed this point, we'd get stuck further down).
here is a picture of the river nearby: the extremely fast-moving 'horse' (ma) river, also used to transport bamboo.
well we didn't see what we had planned, but it was not a total loss; this is bamboo country and there were several workshops along the road where we were--so after wading through some water we saw a bamboo chopstick-making workshop, and we delved into the woods and took a look at one of the farms in the hills. I learned a lot, with the help of the agronomists and field workers with us. we also ran into the farmer and got to ask her a few questions about harvesting practices...
I didn't take many pics of the farm, but here is the chopstick workshop:
tiring, but a really good trip: starting to understand what we're doing out here...
xanawu . 06:12 . comments (0)
Saturday, September 20, 2008
hanoi, SE of hoàn kiếm lake
you know when you're in the french quarter when:
(the opera house. yes, I could have taken a nicer photo, but why not include the xe ôm driver?)
arrived in Hanoi on tuesday, started work on thursday, and am staying in a guesthouse until I land a place to live--which looks like might take a few weeks.
but it's the weekend, and though I'd like nothing more than sleep, I decide to face the 30-deg heat to find, at the end of the alley to the hôtel des artistes...
the lovely cinematheque. membership (200,000 dong) art-house cinema with a lovely outdoor cafe. the schedule for 21-30 September: "Masterpieces of Mexican Cinema" (the woman of the port, maria candelaria, the violin, el, danzón, midaq alley, amores perros, frida, crime of padre amaro, duck season).
finally, just another block away I stumbled upon the book-selling street (because hanoi is filled with streets specializing in only one thing).
xanawu . 12:40 . comments (0)
