Dini and Anju came to visit last month. They stayed for almost two weeks and we had a great time. Dini is Bina’s sister and Anju is Dini’s husband for those who don’t know.
The day after their flight left New York, a record 27 inches of snow fell in Central Park.
They brought us bagels from H&H! As if I wasn’t already happy to see them. And the bagels were still fresh!
Bina and I have discovered so many great restaurants in Hanoi that we were determined to take Dini and Anju to as many as we could. We even designed a schedule that covered each restaurant for lunch or dinner, and had to leave a few off in favor of others. They really should have stayed longer, but we were able to hit the best ones, regardless.
We hung around Hanoi for a few days and then took a flight to Danang. From there we took a bus to Hoi An. Hoi An is famous for its tailoring and food. It’s a bit of a tourist trap in comparison to other places in Vietnam, but because of this, it is also really accommodating to foreigners.
Our obsession with getting clothes made started out slowly and almost in a healthy nature. But by the time we left, we had become insane tailor junkies in need of a constant fix. We bought so much shit that we lost track of what we bought! We had accumulated more receipts than a nightclub coat check. It was ridiculous. But oh so worth it! Our fixes came in spurts of jackets, dresses, shoes, suits, and getting favorite things copied. Our addiction became so bad that we actually had to purchase two additional suitcases to pack it all. Luckily, we were only in Hoi An for three days.
The final tally for me included two pairs of pants, a three-piece suit, three shirts and a pair of shoes. Bina limped away with four suits, five shirts, four dresses, two jackets, and a pair of boots! I don’t remember what Dini and Anju got specifically, but we were all pretty evenly matched.
The problem was that it was all so cheap! If you wanted to stock your closet with a bunch of new business suits it would almost be worth the price of a ticket to Hoi An just to save on the suits! And the material is nice and they’re tailor-made! Incredible.
Our favorite tailor was an old woman we affectionately called Grandma, because, well, she was an old Grandma. And her Granddaughter, whose age we couldn’t agree on, was her assistant. Grandpa even showed up one day and proceeded to salute us like soldiers, so we kindly returned the salute.
Grandma made me a three-piece suit.
When we weren’t shopping like celebrities, we ate and drank a lot. Of course, drinking never helps in a town like Hoi An. Bina has been known to beer-goggle dresses before, only to come back the next day, sober, and reel at the hideousness of her purchase. Friends don’t let friends drink and shop.
We did take an excellent cooking class one night and learned how to make green papaya salad, spring rolls, and a few different meat dishes. We learned that the four main spices used in Vietnamese cuisine (At least in Hoi An) are salt, pepper, sugar, and chili pepper.
Hoi An is also close to the beach so we rented bicycles and biked to the beach. It was a little too cold to go swimming, but the view was nice.
We took a train from Hoi An to Nha Trang, a beautiful beach town eight hours to the south. The train ride was enjoyable and the passing scenery was fantastic. In Nha Trang we mostly ate and wandered around. We spent an afternoon at the beach too but the waves were so wild that we didn’t stay in for very long.
From Nha Trang we went to Dalat. This was a very pleasant surprise. Dalat is my new favorite place in Vietnam. It’s in the mountains and surrounded by pine forests. It’s not too touristy despite being a popular destination for tourists, and is home to the best vegetarian cuisine in Vietnam. The people are warm and friendly and the city is laid out over hills, so its streets are rolling like a true mountain town.
We rented motorbikes and explored the town and its surroundings. We even went for a hike up a mountain.
Anju Easy Rider.
Swan boats in the local lake.
We paid a visit to the local celebrity artist Duy Viet at his café. This guy hosts people from all over the world and has been written up in several magazines. He’s a bit of a cult figure and very eccentric. He keeps instruments and sketchpads around for his visitors and encourages creativity and hippy-like camaraderie. At one time, he was actually the Mayor of Dalat, and this is probably why the city is so cool. It’s probably, at least, why the giant town radio tower is lit-up at night to look like the Eiffel Tower!
Although the French at one point colonized Vietnam, they adopted few French traditions. I mean, you can find croissants here and there, and the people love coffee and café culture, but the one thing they totally overlooked was cheese and wine. The later being the topic I want to address.
Vietnam produces one kind of wine and it comes in white and red. It’s called Dalat wine. And yes, it’s from the Dalat region where we were. But the vineyard and winery are somewhere farther away from the city so you can’t easily visit the production facilities. Anyway, Dalat wine is typically one of the worst drinks you could ever consume. A bottle in Hanoi goes for the equivalent of $2. (2-Buck Chuck anyone? … Only nowhere near as delicious!) And has usually been sitting out in the sun for a week before you buy it, so it’s old, spoiled, and smells more like dogpiss than anything grape-based. It’s real shit, and usually only socially acceptable after everyone’s already drunk on three or four GOOD bottles of wine. Even still, people hate the way it tastes.
So it was funny to take Dini, a wine expert and budding entrepreneur in the wine business, to Dalat. And to add to the irony, we ordered it at a restaurant ....and it wasn’t too bad! In fact, I might be so bold as to say it was pretty good. This solves a mystery for me; Dalat wine isn’t the poison everyone thinks it is, it’s just that the Vietnamese don’t know how to ship it or how to take care of it in their stores. And maybe the best place to drink Dalat wine is, well, in Dalat.
From Dalat we flew back to Hanoi where we spent a few more days hanging out. The weather wasn’t as nice in Hanoi as it was in the south, but we still enjoyed walking around. We even went to see the entombed Ho Chi Minh. He’s embalmed and laying in a mausoleum for anybody that wants to pay him a visit. Of course, you can’t take pictures of him and you’re suppose to observe a series of respectful guidelines when you enter the mausoleum, like keeping your hands out of your pockets and dressing conservatively. I wish I had a picture of Uncle Ho to show you. It was really quite spooky. But here’s the mausoleum from the outside.
We also paid a visit to the famous “Hanoi Hilton” which was once a prison. However, despite what you read, the Hanoi Hilton has nothing to do with the Hanoi Hilton. The Hilton is actually on the other side of town. What is now build on the old prison grounds is the Hanoi Tower, a different hotel. Anyway, part of the old prison remains and has been turned into a museum. The artifacts displayed show how terrible the Vietnamese were treated during French colonial times, including two Guillotines and solitary confinement cells that would make Houdini claustrophobic. All accompanied by gruesome photographs of poorly treated Vietnamese prisoners.
Of course, when the prison was used by the Vietnamese after French colonial times to detain captured Americans during the Vietnam War, the displays and photos take on a whole new prospective. The propaganda, er, I mean “artifacts”, make it look like the prison was a summer camp for GIs. There are pictures of the men hanging out, playing cards, laughing, and having the time of their lives. It’s an amazing display of altered history.
John McCain’s flight suit is on display too. And everything he had with him when he was captured.
I’ve used a bunch of Anju’s pictures for this blog entry because he took such good ones, but there’s a bunch more if you want to see them: http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=7ahh00gv.1nnkfowf&Uy=890moa&Ux=1
