More Bánh Xèo, Please — The Towering Travelers

On Monday morning, 17 of us (a much more manageable number) took a boat ride on the Thu Bồn River to the Kim Bồng traditional carpentry village. It was lovely and cool with a nice breeze. Along the way, we learned a little more about Dang and he taught us about traditional ways of life in the central Vietnamese countryside. We boated by fishermen while Dang (our tour guide) explained what they were doing and why. He bribed one fisherman with a box of cookies to let us take the boat up close so that we could take pictures of him throwing the net. We also rode near the shore to see the farmers working in their fields. Dang explained to us that there are three main life goals for men in the Vietnamese countryside: get married, build a house, and own water buffalo. The water buffalo have a few uses. Besides supplying labor, the buffalo serves as a chalkboard so that children can learn to draw and write on its skin. When the buffalo dies, its skin is used to make traditional drums.

A fisherman on the Thu Bồn River (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A fisherman casts his net on the Thu Bồn River (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A bird flies off the top of a fishing net (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A few minutes into the boat trip, Dang shared a jar of lemon slices pickled in honey. He explained that once a year, when lemons are in season, he buys 20 kilograms of lemons and 10 liters of honey and pickles all of it for two months. The result is a very odd textured, sweet, slightly lemony snack that is apparently wonderful for sore throats.

We docked the boat at the carpentry village and got off to take a look around. We stopped at the market area and Dang bought us some local fruit to try. Milky apple is green, but the inside is closer to the consistently of an overripe tomato. It has a subtle, sweet taste. We ate these by cutting off the top and putting a spoon in the fruit. We also ate a bumpy apple, which had a lumpy external skin that crumbled away from the smooth white inner fruit. After our snack, we walked around and looked at the various wood carving workshops. Dang bribed some of the wood carvers with cigarettes to let us come take a closer look at what they were working on. We also visited a boat builder who received cigarettes to let us ask questions about building boats and take some pictures. It takes a couple of weeks to make one of the wood and metal rowboats, and they cost about $1000 and last around 15 years. The all-wood boats take longer and are more expensive. Dang also bargained with a woman to bring her shoulder pole basket of fruit over so that we could take the most touristy picture ever (a white person with a listening device and conical hat holding a shoulder pole basket). As Dang explained, there are four functions of the conical hat: it keeps your head dry in heavy rain, you can use it to fan yourself, you can use it to carry vegetables at the market, and in the old days, farmers in the field could use it to take a drink. At least 6 people in our group have bought them at this point.

A carpenter carves out a pattern with a tool resembling a jigsaw (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A milky apple (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Jason selling fruit (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

After wandering around the carpentry village, we went to an organic farm to learn how to make bánh xèo, which is a Vietnamese pancake made from rice powder, water, egg, turmeric, and spring onion (bean sprouts and meat and/or seafood are usually included inside). The chef was very animated. After he gave the initial demonstration, he asked for two volunteers from the audience that we’re going to catch the pancakes that he was tossing from the pans. One of the guys lost the pancake as it slid across the plate and fell onto the ground. The other managed to lose the plate as well as the pancake, which both smashed into the floor, but he was very proud of having caught a small bit of the pancake in his hand in the process. After that, he brought us up in threes and taught us to make the pancakes while good naturedly berating us about our cooking skills. It was a lot of fun, and bánh xèo is delicious. We’re going to make it at home frequently. When everyone had learned how to cook, we sat down to eat a delicious four-course lunch from ingredients made at the organic farm. They integrate a lot of mint, which doesn’t usually occur to me when I’m cooking. It’s delicious, though. Dang explained to us that Vietnamese food is all about the yin and yang; instead of making it spicy, they use complimentary combinations of different flavors. They also try to balance crunchy and smooth with every dish, which is very nice.

Jason catching bánh xèo on his plate (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Nicole fails at flipping bánh xèo (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Boats on the water near the Tra Que village (Photo/Jason Rafal)

For dinner, we visited Morning Glory, which appears to be a restaurant catering to foreigners who want to try southern Vietnamese comfort food. It was excellent. We got an assortment based on Dang’s recommendations and what sounded good, including white rose, three best friends spring rolls, tofu and garlic chive soup, and cao lau. At the end of the meal, I had frozen yogurt with fruit. Even this had some crunch, though, in the form of roasted coconut shavings and peanuts.

Cao lau (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Rickshaws in Hội An (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Lights on the Thu Bồn River in Hội An (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Tuesday we left for Huế. We stopped for a few minutes at a marble carving workshop and store at the foot of the Marble Mountain, which was where Vietnamese marble was originally sourced from (at this point, they want to retain the mountain’s structural integrity, so they source the marble from the mountains in northern Vietnam and ship it over land to the workshops). There was an enormous number of sculptures of all sizes. I was impressed by the amount of color; some statues were the traditional all-white, but many had marbled color or a few different color variations within each piece. I especially liked when they used white marble for skin and colored marble for clothes on the statues of people.

Marble carvings at the workshop near Hội An (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Because the weather was good (it rained in the wee hours of the morning, but we still haven’t seen rain on this trip) we were able to go over the mountain pass to Huế instead of using the Hải Vân tunnel. The pass is a stunningly beautiful and somewhat treacherous twisty mountain road between Da Nang and the area of Huế. While I never felt afraid for my life, our driver took corners quicker than bus drivers in the United States, and we did pass a work truck on a two-lane road while going up a pass. Motorbiking on the pass looked fun, but the drivers also had to deal with the tour buses taking up all of the space. Dang said that before the tunnel was completed in 2005, there was a lot of traffic on the pas and accidents were frequent. There were many small shrines along the side of the road.

Hai Van Pass (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The view from Hai Van Pass (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On the bus, Dang taught us about Vietnamese letters and sounds. Mostly, I learned that I should never try to say anything in Vietnamese, because the same two letter pair can mean six different things depending on the slight change in intonation causes by adding one of the accents above the vowels. He said one of the sounds is impossible for foreigners and told us a story about a foreigner who wanted to ask his girlfriend’s dad for permission to marry her but ended up just asking to become one of the man’s goats (the man responded that he had many goats already and did not need more).

If I could pronounce it, the Vietnamese alphabet does make some sense. Instead of vowels arbitrarily making different sounds in different words, like in English, each vowel with each accent has a set sound. The accent line that goes up means that you add an upward lilt at the end of the sound, and down means that you drop your voice at the end of the sound. It’s impossible to speak Vietnamese in a monotone.

We arrived in Huế in the early afternoon, had lunch, and headed out to the Imperial City for a tour. Dang walked us around the former royal quarters and then let us walk through the Forbidden Purple City, where the kind, eunuchs, and concubines lived, at our own pace. The Imperial City fell into disrepair over the past century and is in the process of being restored, so it was an interesting mix of crumbling ruins and rebuilt structures.

At the Imperial City (Photo/Jason Rafal)

At the Forbidden Purple City (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We had dinner at a restaurant called Banana Mango, which ended up being delicious Vietnamese comfort food (we had spring rolls and stir fry). We have both decided that we really like how Huế feels as a city—it’s bustling, but it’s not as insane as Ho Chi Minh City. We have also decided that we want to come back some time and ride motor bikes—the traffic is still a little insane, but it’s growing on us, and the bike seems like a natural way to get around in Vietnam. It definitely makes a whole lot more sense than a car.

Evening traffic in Huế (Photo/Jason Rafal)