Staff Photographer
‘If you have a free day you must get to Ha Long Bay,” I was told by everyÂone who heard I would be working for a week in Hanoi.
“Ha Long Bay is one of the wonders of the world. You must get there.”
I had different ideas. A Grand Tour crammed into one day after a gruelling week was not what I wanted.
So until I have a longer stretch in Hanoi my vision of Ha Long Bay will remain inhabited by Catherine Denueve in Indochine.
“No,” I said firmly. “I want to go small.” Micro-tourism is more my style — not a five-hour bus trip.
“I have two quests. I want a real taste of Vietnam; I want to learn to cook one classic Vietnamese dish. And I want to find a Vietnamese silk tunic dress, like the one worn by The Quiet American‘s girlfriend.”
“I’ll find you a cooking course,” said Nguyyen Hang, our very determined and dramatically beautiful translator, who was moonlighting from her job as an international news editor. She made this her mission and gave me a daily report on her progress. “I’ve got the name of the best cooking teacher in Vietnam!” she announced one day.
“That’s very nice, Hang,” I said politely as she set about finding the telephone number.
Her delight and triumph when her planning came together rather surprised me. “The teacher can’t speak any English so I’ll come with you to translate. I’ll fetch you on Sunday at three,” she told me. I was relieved. Just crossing a road through 20 motorbikes and several cars travelling each way took courage and will power.
We had been tasting the wonderful flavours of Vietnamese food from our first memorable meal.
An Australian academic couple had given us two bits of useful advice on our first day in Hanoi. They told us where to go for lunch: to the Hoa Sua School for Disadvantaged Youth.
“It’s a restaurant school for children of poor parents. A bit rundown but the food’s very good and the place has style.”
And they told us how to cross the road. “Wait for a small gap, step on to the road and then keep walking. Don’t hesitate. The drivers have seen you and they’ve planned to swerve around you. If you hesitate or stop they’ll drive into you.”
That sounded reasonable. So, a colleague from The Scotsman and I set off as instructed to find the Hoa Sua School in the French Quarter. I stepped off the pavement at the zebra crossing and jumped straight back again.
After a little hyperventilating I took a deep slow breath, was about to try again, when instead I stopped to stare at a Christmas tree, aglow with several hundred orange lanterns, bearing down on us. As it sailed past we saw it was a cone-shaped naartjie tree in full fruit; it was nearly 2m high and balanced firmly in its ceramic pot on the back of a motorbike being driven calmly through the traffic.
Tree worship, we discovered, is not confined to the Germanic tribes. In the darkness of winter the Far East dresses its trees in bright colours to celebrate the Lunar New Year, called Tet in Vietnam.
We knew the naartjie tree was a New Year tree. Our minder from the host newspaper had pointed out the cone-shaped, red-blossomed and tall japonica quince in the hotel foyer and the naartjie trees hung with little red envelopes when she dropped us off.
“For Tet, New Year trees. Like your Christmas trees,” she told us.
We waited again for a small gap in the traffic, stepped on to the road and sure enough the drivers swerved, accommodating us. We saw no sign of road rage in Hanoi, not even irritation, as a million unhurried drivers wove determinedly around the lava flow of other bikes, motorbikes and cars, each just a 10cm gap away.
The Hoa Sua School, with its courtyards and balconies, was shabby, simple and elegant and the disadvantaged youth spoke very correct English with a charming glimmer of humour.
The cold snap that brought blizzards to Southern China had yet to arrive in Vietnam so we sat on a balcony looking into the back gardens of old French houses as we sipped the house wine. It was a surprise: fragrant, dry and modestly priced. We guessed the students were also being taught to buy wine.
The soup called, in English, Vietnamese noodles with beef, a bit like a Chinese ramian, was light, delicately spiced and aromatic.
As we left, the waiters were being herded into a big room.
“What’s this? A lesson?” I asked.
“Yes, English lesson,” said the young teacher.
A head appeared over his shoulder, “So we can explain nicely to you what you eat,” said our charmer.
“We liked your wine,” I said.
“From Chile,” he answered as the door closed.
We arrived back at the hotel to find the staff lined up outside. A red carpet led to the lifts, which were all closed to us except for the furthest. Army top brass, colonels perhaps, with square shoulders and plenty of medals, pointed us to the free lift.
“Who are you waiting for?” I asked.
“Clown plins,” I thought I heard.
“Who did you say?” I asked again.
“Clown plins,” Ah! Probably from Thailand we figured.
“So what’s a good communist country like Vietnam doing welcoming a crown prince?” I asked and got delicious sideways grins from the two very proper colonels.
I had still to find the tunic dress. So at the end of the last working day of our stay our translator arranged to take us to Hanoi’s old silk village.
“It used to be outside Hanoi, like all the craft villages, but now has grown and reaches around it. We thought you might like to buy presents from the silk shops,” said Hang.
Silk can be bought from most places in the East, but the Vietnamese know how to cut clothes that hint at a waist while they fall loose. Trousers are cut to flatter, even on an African backside like mine. A daughter-in-law had requested a Vietnamese tunic dress and I had a family wedding coming up. So, remembering The Quiet American‘s girlfriend, we went on a quest. We were four women walking around in the dark and rain. There were no street lights in this old village. “Something is missing,” I thought, and then realised: no one gave safety a thought. It was menace that was missing.
We found what we wanted and as we headed back to the car I heard a loud clanging above the hub-bub: clakkity-clakitty-clack, clakkity-clack.
I followed the sound down a rough muddy lane and there, lit up in a room as big as a garage, were two looms. They looked old, maybe 2 000 years old I thought, but they were electric, so OK, maybe they were silk looms built just after the industrial revolution — One old woman tended both. She looked up and then continued her work, so I went inside. The others called that they had to go and off we dashed into the dark, safe night.
The next afternoon, even though I knew theoretically that the drivers would swerve to miss me, I was pleased to have Hang guide me through the Old Quarter to my cooking class on my free day.
After a week of icy rain Hanoi was muddy. We sloshed along muddy broken pavements down an alley between the narrow shops. Roads are cared for but pavements are battered, probably by the overspill of motorbike traffic, which is another hazard you face in Hanoi. As I darted through and around the relentless pedestrian flow I had to jump to miss motorbikes coming at me on the pavement.
In a courtyard we trod mud up the tiled staircase to the first floor door.
Madam Pham Anh Tuyet’s broad smile welcomed us. Her foyer was set up for the cooking lesson; a gas ring on a small table.
She took my hands in hers and doused mine with surgical alcohol; to sanitise them, I was told.
She spoke; Hang translated.
“Vietnamese food is healthy — low fat,” she told me. “Even deep-fat fried food,” she said. And then for 20 minutes I practised folding and sealing spring rolls. “They must be sealed properly to keep out fat. Fat only on the outside,” she explained.
The fragrance of lime juice and lime leaves, used as a herb, permeated the flat.
A free-range chicken had been rubbed with honey and pre-roasted.
We made the dipping sauce: tender young lime leaves folded and chopped very fine and then doused with the juice of several limes.
We added a pinch of coarse sea salt, black pepper and a few rings of depipped chillies and left it for 15 minutes while we tore the chicken meat off the bones.
The chicken was served with noodles, a sculpted garnish of carrot and of course the lime dipping sauce. It was fragrant and sublime.
As I left the flat I spotted a photograph of Madam Pham Anh Tuyet with Anthony Bourdain holding a copy of A Cook’s Tour.
“I have the same book.” I told her.
“I was on BBC Food with that man, Anthony,” she told me, through the translator, as 10 French tourists traipsed through the foyer into her formal dining room for dinner.
I hoped Hang had not picked up my scepticism about “the best cooking teacher in Vietnam”.
Now I have a lime tree in a pot. Limes are often available at Woolworths or Pick n Pay and, for lucky Jo’burgers, from Tyrone Fruiterers in Parkview.
The lowdown
The rainy season is from May to October in the south and north and from November to December in the centre of the country. There are no direct flights to Hanoi from South Africa. The most direct route is via Bangkok on Thai Airways or via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific and then on to Hanoi. Seats range from R13 000 excluding taxes. Visit www.thompsons.co.za or www.vietnamtourism.com.