Josh eating his way through Hanoi

Any hopes I had that my last week at Air Mekong would wind quietly down evaporated on Monday.  I don't mind so much, but it's kept me from taking any time off of work so far so Josh and I could venture out during the day.  Hopefully that will change tomorrow as I hope to leave the office at lunch so that Josh and I can head down to the Old Quarter and hang out.

In the meantime, while he hasn't been able to see much of Hanoi the last couple of days, we have had plenty to eat!  Last night, Chi, Duong, Thanh and Van invited Josh and I to dinner on "Grill Street", not too far down the road from my apartment here in Tay Ho.  And last night's main feature was duck!

Our restaurant for the night

Our expert duck griller, streetside.

That's not a garage, it's the kitchen!

First course: Steamed duck!

Next course: grilled duck!

Last course: duck in hotpot!

Great food and great company

My stomach had been a little squishy all day, so I didn't have much of an appetite.  While Josh wasn't so hot on the steamed duck, he loved the grilled and hot pot (with an acre of morning glory thrown in).  He's also enjoying the salt/chili pepper mix that the Vietnamese often use to dip their fruit and vegetables in (cucumbers in this case). 

Since my squishy stomach continued through today, we decided to postpone our "bia hoi" night with Thanh until tomorrow and decided to walk down the street for Indian food instead.  Beforehand, Josh thought some coconut juice might do both of us some good, so we stopped at a new vegetable shop and got some fresh juice, right out of the dairy case and right out of the coconut!

The Indian Palace is one of my favorite restaurants here in Hanoi, but it's much hotter and spicier than what I'm accustomed to.  Hot and spicy is right up Josh's alley, though, so he ordered up some Mutton Vindaloo while I watched.  I finally succumbed and ordered some chicken tikka and it was delicious as usual.

Indian food and Coconut juice for dinner.

Tree Man and Chicken Wings!

Being a Monday, Josh was forced to fend for himself most of the day.  By lunch, he was itching for his next Vietnamese meal adventure, so Chi and I took him next door to Bun Bo Nam Bo where he tried his first Bun Bo Nam Bo (without peanuts). In a shock to no one, he loved it!  (I think we're 5-for-5 at this point!)

While we were eating our delicious BBNB, Josh and I both complained about our needing haircuts, when it occurred to me that Tree Man was just across the street! What a great chance for Josh and I to the one thing I hadn't yet done in Vietnam: get a haircut from a barber underneath a tree along Xuan Dieu.

Since it was still lunchtime, the barber "shop" was quiet as the barber slept in his hammock next to the chair.  With a little coaxing from Chi, I was in the seat in no time.

Mirror, fan and table, all attached to helpless tree.

Before getting started, he covered me with the barber gown, then proceeded to hook both ends to the table so it both made a convenient spot for him to put his comb and scissors as well as provided me with direct access to the fan below the table he had attached to the tree.

Josh was up next.  According to Chi, no one there could believe he wanted to trim his "curly locks".  But he did, so the barber went to work:

The barber did a great job on both our "hairdos" and after 30 minutes, we were done!  Cost: $4 for both of us  (inflation here is running pretty high; when I first got here, haircuts were going for a buck!)

Later that afternoon, Josh and I were invited to dinner by Tuan and Lan.  Les lent us his scooter again so we headed to "Chicken Street" for grilled chicken wings, sweet potatoes and bread.

"We'll seat you momentarily, sir".

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the three pictures I took of dinner were inexplicably missing when I tried to download them last night.  I did find this pic online, however, and it's pretty much what dinner looked like:

After delivering the wings to our table, the waitress used a pair of scissors to cut sections of the wing/leg (including feet) off the skewers.  The chicken is glazed in honey, then grilled and it is fantastic!  Add some tasty grilled sweet potatoes and honey glazed bread, and you've got one delicious meal.  Of course, this was just the appetizer, we discovered after eating ourselves full.

Four grillers grilling streetside.  Note the buckets of wings at bottom.

After we finished, we hopped on our bikes and headed to the Old Quarter to "International Junction", an instersection with several bars on each corner where all the foreigners sit, enjoy a beer and watch the traffic.

Eventually we moved toward Hoan Kiem Lake to a street vendor Chi told me about where I had one of my very first Vietnamese Street foods, green papaya and dried beef salad (or Nom Bo Kho).  Yum!

Josh and Steve's Tam Dao Trip

After waking Sunday morning to wet streets and fog, I was afraid plans for our Road Trip to Tam Dao might fall through.  By the time Josh woke up around 9, it was sunny and clear and a perfect day.  After a couple of ca phe sua das and two omelettes for Josh and I (both looked suspicously like friend eggs) at my favorite Sunday Ochao Tea House, Josh and I decided to pack up and head north to Tam Dao National Park, 40 miles or so north of Hanoi.

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(Curses Google Maps!  Don't know why the perspective's not working again!)

Les was kind enough to lend me his bike so Josh used mine and he rode like a champ!  You'd never have known he had never been on a scooter before.

We left just before noon, and headed west, then north as we took the scooter bridge over the Red River and made a quick left over the same bumpy, half-under-construction, half washed out rural road Thanh and I had taken several weeks ago to head northwest to Tam Dao. 

Naturally I wanted to document our trip along the way, so had my cell phone/camera handy as usual.  Rule #1: My cell camera has an extremely slow shutter which I've learned means I need to keep the cell phone held trained on its subject long after I press "click".  Rule #2.  When biking with your first-time-biking nephew, you want to set a good example and not bike and text/talk/picture-take with your cell phone while riding.  Unfortunately, while remembering Rule #2, I forgot Rule #1, so my photo documentation of our trip leaves a lot to the imagination!

First pic of Josh riding behind me.

Second pic of Josh riding next to me.

I have no clue.

Cow on roadside itching itself on bridge.

Our first stop: waterbreak!  This cute lady couldn't have been any more cute.  She tried to find us cold water and wanted to serve us tea.  When I tried to pay, she flashed ten fingers, which I thought meant 100,000 Dong (about five bucks and in line with my American line of what they should have cost).  When I gave her a 100,000 Dong note, she smiled and shook her head and gave me ten fingers again.  10,000 Dong.  Fifty cents for both our waters of Aquafina.

Picture-taking begins to improve on beautiful, quiet country roads we had all to ourselves on a spectacular sunny Sunday afternoon.

We continued through the country and up the mountain to Tam Dao village. After Josh and I arrived in Tam Dao, we walked through the market and marvelled at all the same things I marvelled at in late June when I last was here (see postings June 26-28).

Remember this church?

When Thanh and I were here in June, it looked like it might be vacant but under renovation.  It's definitely under renovation, but it's sure not vacant.  Josh and I wondered in and found out that it's the only surviving colonial architecture from the revolution in the 1950s.  After that revolution, religious buildings like these were given to local communist party "chapters" and it was only in 2008 that this one was returned to the Catholic Church.
 

For lunch, Josh and I stopped at the "Belvedere Resort" which, in spite of its corny name, was a very nice hotel perched on a cliffside overlooking the valley below.  While I had a bowl of spaghetti and Josh, some fantastic springrolls, a Vietnamese couple was having their wedding invitation photo shoot near the pool while we ate.

We hit the road again for our trip back to Tay Ho and where my photo-taking returned to poor form.

Extremely wide scooter load.

I don't know.

Another beautiful Hanoian sunset.

For dinner, Chi met Josh and I for porridge (which, surprise!, Josh loved). 

Porridge time!

Afterward, the three of us made the long trip across scooters-only Long Bien Bridge and halfway back again to park, along with hundreds of others, on the bridge and enjoy the Red River and a perfect Vietnamese night. 

At this point, my cell was nearly dead, so no flash.
Good thing we were sitting under a street light.

While we sat, we had dried squid dipped in chili sauce (which was actually pretty good; tasted like salty jerky) and a glass of "sua" which is a tea made from a fruit grown only in Hanoi.  Yum!

And did I mention that we were sitting on rugs on the side of the bike path?
Yes, hundreds of scooters, zipping by, two feet from my head.

Oh yes.  And another four feet farther to my left were train tracks
and the slow moving trains that go with them!

After all that excited, I was bushed.  Josh and Chi, however, had other plans and headed downtown to the Dragonfly bar for a drink and "shisha" (don't worry, mom: he was home by midnight).

It was an exceptional day and a great introduction to Vietnam for my nephew who, by all accounts, is loving his trip so far.

Josh's first day and the forgotten Sunday Road Trip

My nephew Josh arrived late Friday night, so yesterday was his first full day in Hanoi.  Unfortunately, between meetings with our chairman, Mr Viet, and mechanical issues, I ended up working a good portion of Saturday.  The good news is that Chi, as usual, came to the rescue.  The bad news: since I wasn't there, not many pictures to record the day's events.

For Josh, though, it meant that he was in exceptional hands with my adopted Vietnamese little sister!  For lunch, Chi and Thanh took him next door to Bun Bo Nam Bo where he had his first plate of My Xau and a Hanoi Beer.  Josh said it was great and, of course, I'm sure my friends took great care of him.

Afterward, he and Chi headed downtown to look around.  They spent some time walking around Hoan Kiem Lake, sampling green tea ice cream and walking a bit through the Old Quarter.  I was finally able to join them around 3pm, so we met for Tra Chanh near the Cathedral.  It was a nice afternoon, so the street was jammed with tons of people all enjoying their iced tea and sunflower seeds on small stools.  Josh loved it!

We decided to do a little shopping of our own and Chi treated us to an afternoon snack, the name of which I never did hear.  It was essentially a sticky glutinous rice sandwich.  The "bread", two blobs of glutinous rice so sticky that they were wedged into a banana leaf to accommodate the actual eating process (otherwise they'd just stick to your fingers), sandwiched a pork sausage of some kind. 

The pork was pretty nice.  Josh and I are still trying to decide what the rice blobs were for.  They were neither tasty nor did they contribute to the "convenience of eating" process.  Next time we'll order our pork sandwich without the "bread".

Since it was rush hour, Chi thought it best she should drive (after allowing Josh to drive her from Tay Ho to town earlier in the day.  Yikes!).  How Chi managed to navigate the harried streets of Hanoi with a guy twice her size is a tribute to her scooter-driving acumen!

Later we joined friends at a Japanese Hot Pot Restaurant.  The seven of us enjoyed way more food than we all could eat before finally heading to a shisha bar (in the US: hooka) which Josh loved as well.

It was a great first day for Josh.  Vietnam is nothing like he expected.  And I think he loves it so far!  :o)

Meanwhile, I realized this morning that I never posted pics of the Sunday road trip Thanh, Van and I took two weeks ago. 


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It was a short, half day trip East of Hanoi to Chua But Thap Temple. 

Man walking down the street selling bread out of a styrofoam box on his head.

Our stop for breakfast pho.

Crossing the Long Bien bridge (for scooters only)

The Red River

Along the main road, there was one lady after another selling the same fresh bread.

Farmers along the dyke on which we travelled

Chua But Thap Temple is a Buddhist temple located near the dyke of the Duong River, Thuan Thanh District. The temple is also popularly called Nhan Thap Temple and houses the biggest Avalokiteśvara statue with one thousand eyes and one thousand arms. Or something like that.

I loved this: You can't see it too well, but the box on the right is a donation box.
On it, in yellow print it says "Box for Kindness".

Wide load ahead!