Vietnam Day 1: Ho Chi Minh City Arrival: Ready or Not, Here We Come

How did I decide to go to Vietnam?  Well, talk about impulse buying, the decision to travel to Vietnam was fairly close to an impulse as well.  Let's just say I feel really happy when I can be spontaneous and not plan ahead, but that I also function really well being part of an organized, scheduled system.  I loved being part of the study abroad program in Chiang Mai.  But once it was over, I fell into my schedule-less life in my comfy balcony-clad apartment quite comfortably. After almost a month of chilling, computing and cycling, I knew I needed to do something.  A travel buddy surfaced - Jonathan - and we sat down in front of AirAsia.com together and picked "Ho Chi Minh City."  Neither of us knew much of anything about Vietnam or how to speak Vietnamese, but we were ready for a new experience.  And that's what he told me repeatedly throughout our time in Vietnam: ประสบการณ์ เป็น สิ่ง ที่ ดี.  ("prasobgan pben sing thii dii")  Translation: Experience is a good thing.  Indeed, this was the truth of our time in Vietnam.

Colorful currency: Vietnamese Dong, about 20,000 VND = $1US

Four things you should have ready when arriving in a Vietnamese airport: a pre-arranged visa (or visa letter, which we got online at www.myvietnamvisa.com), $25 US cash to get the visa stamp, permission from your bank back home to use your card at a Vietnamese ATM machine so you can withdraw some multicolored Vietnamese cash, and  the name and address of a good-priced guesthouse already decided upon.  Without the first, you will be sent back to where you came from.  Without the second and third, you'll probably have to borrow from a friend.  Without the fourth, you'll get ripped off.  Let's just say we learned all four in the Ho Chi Minh airport either first-hand or by eye witness account.  :)
I in no way expected Vietnam to be as friendly or easy to get around as Thailand, especially because I don't speak Vietnamese.  But getting laughed at when you walk out of the airport with a piece of paper showing how much you paid for the taxi and the hotel is not a good way to start!  We paid $23 for our guesthouse in Ho Chi Minh City and $8 for the taxi to get there.  Good thing we each paid half, because (as we later discovered) that was way too much!  Oh well, when you don't plan ahead, you have to take what you can get!
After we checked into our hotel, we headed out for food and exploring.

My first impressions of the city: alive, clean, open.  By “open” I mean that the main thoroughfare has two wide lanes going in each direction, with a grassy median between them, flags flying and a wide sidewalk on either side.  By “clean” I mean that the roads, sidewalks and air felt welcoming and safe.  By “alive,” I mean that I instantly felt the “human life” everywhere we walked.  Lots of restaurants with outdoor seating, street food carts, trees dotting and towering over most sidewalks, and people of all ages walking, sitting, standing around talking....  When I think about the average American city or town, I imagine most people spending their evenings in their living rooms with the AC on, watching TV, playing video games or surfing the internet.  Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends or family members.  But it’s hard to know exactly.  Because when you walk down the street, the best you’ll usually get is a glimpse through a crack in the curtains, or perhaps a glance in the direction of people sitting on their porches.  But normally, these after work hours are considered our “private life.”  We don’t go around peeking into each other’s houses, especially if you’re a visitor to that city or town, or in my case, a foreigner visiting Vietnam for two weeks.  But here in HCMC, everyone is outside; the “living room” is the sidewalk space in front of your or your friend’s house.  (And this was a Wednesday evening, mind you, so I could safely assume that this was pretty typical Vietnamese evening culture.)  People set out small tables with tiny stools and sit there to spend time together: drinking hot tea (or beer or whiskey – but you can’t really tell the difference because they’re all the same color!) in small glasses, talking, playing this game with domino-sized pieces, sometimes selling things, mainly just chilling.  And the weather definitely wasn’t “cool” when we were there, even in the evening, so sitting and relaxing seems like a great idea.

We, on the other hand, didn't sit down for a good hour-plus.  We wandered through the streets, getting turned around a number of times, trying to recognize landmarks.  But when everything is new, things tend to all look the same; either that, or the same street or store looks completely different every time you pass it.  Nonetheless, here are a few things that caught my eye:

A street cart of grilled and steamed corn on the cob (notice the lady behind him sweeping the street?).  This was on a corner of a rather ritzy-looking restaurant with outdoor seating.  I always find the confluence of new and old, traditional and modern, quite eye-catching.  Maybe I could have turned around and gotten a picture of the restaurant, too, but the white people sitting there were already conspicuously laughing at me taking this picture…

         

A bit of Spanish and an ATM machine that had air-conditioning but no money available.

Lots of Vietnamese to try to decipher.  You might think the fact that Roman letters are used would make this a little bit easier.  Not so much.  The phonetics of Vietnamese is a bit different than English (and other European languages).  On top of that, Vietnamese has 7 tones, which are marked with various symbols.   So “sounding out” words was rather difficult.  Over the days, I did learn to recognize some words, like bánh mì  (pronounced “baang mi”), which means “bread.”  I’m pretty sure this word is used similarly to how ชัาว (Khao^ which means “rice”) is often used in Thai to mean “food.”  Indeed, this market definitely sold more than just bread: snacks, cookies, meat, veggies, etc..

Despite all the raw red meat on display, I was drawn in by the bright lights and faces to find a little snack.  A lightly sweetened bean-paste filled floury pastry with the trademark red-ink printed Chinese symbol that I can’t read stamped on top. (sorry, no pic!)

It’s a good thing I had that snack, because we walked around in circles and squares for a good while trying to find the restaurant we first saw when we started our walk.  This was after not going to a phở place that Jon really wanted to try, because they had no vegetarian option!  Good travel buddy, taking one for the team.  I guess he knew that there would be plenty more opportunities for feasting on phở.

 

This cutely-named restaurant (which I later found out is a popular new-ish chain all around Vietnam) had a nice little four-dish Vegetarian section.  The Fried Tofu wasn’t available, so that brought it down to three choices.  I decided on the Vegetarian steamed rice crepe rolls.

For 38,000 VTD (Vietnamese Dong), which is just over $3, they were quite perfect for my first meal in Vietnam.  Everything was fresh and tasty: some greens, mushrooms and thin rice noodles marinated in some sauce, tofu strips, bean sprouts, and probably something else.  Sorry for the very vague description, but I’m writing this post more than a month after the fact!  I do remember that it came with one dipping sauce; the other one in the picture was with Jonathan’s dish.  I tried them both, and unfortunately one had a strong meat flavor, and the other a strong fish flavor.  So I opted for straight up soy sauce.  Since there was none on the table, I consulted the short list of important Vietnamese food phrases I had written down in my notebook, smiled at the waiter and said “xì dầu” (pronounced “see zau”).  He smiled right back and brought me a little dish of delicious, salty, animal-free soy sauce!

Food is definitely an integral part of our daily lives.  And that certainly doesn’t go away when we travel; actually, it gets magnified.  One of my favorite parts of traveling is trying new food.  (Or food on its home turf for the first time.)  Then there’s the challenge of communicating what you want to eat.  Sometimes it’s as easy as pointing to a picture in a menu.  Other times, there are no pictures.  Or no menu.  Then it becomes a real act of communication.  Herein lies the challenge.  And the fun and learning!  In the days following this inaugural Ho Chi Minh City meal, I learned new words and phrases pertaining  to food and food preferences, progressed with actually correctly pronouncing what I was attempting to say, and enjoying the fruits (and vegetables and noodles and baked goods) of my labor.  I also learned that it’s so very easy to follow the well-trodden tourist track through Vietnam, speaking English with guides, hotel staff, waiters at restaurants catered to tourists, and other people in the tourist industry.  The fact that I had some “special” requests, questions and vocabulary as part of my daily life traveling, I found that this very challenge also opened doors for me to have a number of person-to-person interactions that made me feel like more than just a bypassing tourist.  Overall, I found people to be patient, kind and helpful in all matters related to food and my attempts to converse about it!  So despite a less-than-satisfactory experience at the airport, things only got better.

วัดสวนดอก & พันพรรณ / Wat Suan Dok & Pun Pun Vegetarian Restaurant - Chiang Mai, Thailand

I want to start off this blog highlighting a place I went to yesterday that is one of my favorite places in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  It's a restaurant called "Pun Pun," located on the grounds of Wat Suan Dok.  I love this eatery for its food and its philosophy.

   

     First - the food!

Rather than tell you all about Pun Pun's appetizers, stir fries, fried rice dishes, curries, salads, desserts, really wholesome smoothies, teas, coffee, etc., let me just begin by showcasing my favorite dish:

Flower Salad!

I had never eaten flowers before I ran across this menu item, but I have now ordered this salad three times in the last few months!  The plate is topped high with red, yellow, green and brown flowers, all light and crispy.  I had to look closely to distinguish actual "flowers" from the heap of colors.  Here's a little yellow one that maintained its shape through the deep-frying.

The salad also has corn, carrots, tomatoes, red cabbage, onions and black sesame seeds.  Oh, and a good portion of greens too - but they're hiding beneath all the flowers!  And what do deep fried flowers taste like you may ask?

They're not really sweet, or salty, or bitter.... They have something like an airy green-leaf-vegetable flavor.  Crispy and a little chewy.  And fun to eat!  They also take on the flavor of whichever dressing you choose.

The dressing in the picture at the top of this post is Banana.  The ingredients in this dressing added a little bit of sweet and tang to the flavor.  Most recently, I tried the steamed pumpkin dressing, which had a nice bit of sweetness and flavorful herb-iness.

Here are the other salad dressing options.  So far the Avocado dressing has not been available, but I will keep asking.  Avocado - one of my favorite foods!

The Pun Pun menu has a bunch of other creative salads, all presented very decoratively and usually quite colorfully (such as Mixed Fruits Salad and one that includes homemade black sesame tofu).  So far the Flower Salad is my favorite, but I haven't tried them all yet.  Try them yourself if you can, and let me know.  :)



Here's a sampling of a few other dishes I or my friends have had:

Massaman Curry

Deep-fried Shiitake Mushrooms

Panang (Red) Curry Fried Rice

You can see the mango smoothie in the background of this picture - definitely a winner.  I wasn't expecting the fried egg on the side, so I just gave it away to my non-vegan friend who was eating with me.

I know I'll be going back soon to try more dishes and enjoy the quaint outdoor setting.

It's mostly shady, with the table umbrellas and the shade of the ancient Boddhi tree towering at the center of all the tables.  Monks walk by, birds sing, and you have a view of some temple buildings.

Now that you've seen some of Pun Pun's unique and tasty food, here's some background information that will make you appreciate it all the more.  And I say this with the hope that you have the chance to go away from this blog and visit the area and try some of the dishes for yourself!

Chiang Mai is a small city with a long and rich culture, beautiful sights, wonderful fun-loving people, and some of my favorite food in the world.  It's located in northern Thailand, with the Mae Ping river on the east side of the city and a view of Wat Doi Suthep (Suthep Mountain Temple) to the west - very Feng Shui.  A square-shaped old city is located at the center with a moat and remnants of the protective stone walls.

This is Suthep Road - where Pun Pun Restaurant is located - with a view of Suthep Mountain in the background.  Look closely and you'll see Wat Doi Suthep located on the top.

There are about 36 Buddhist temples located inside the old city alone.  Wat Suan Dok is a temple that lies a few minutes to the west of the old city.  Its name means "Flower Garden Temple," and it is not only beautiful, but meaningful to me personally.

I first came to Thailand for a cultural immersion study abroad program during college.  It was an amazing program led by a gracious American couple.  During my time in Chiang Mai, I lived with a Thai family, had wonderful Thai language and culture professors, and spent my afternoons doing a service internship.  Wat Suan Dok was the location of my internship, namely, the Buddhist University located on its grounds.  The college students here are Buddhist monks and novices studying within various majors to earn Bachelors Degrees.  I remember walking through the white stone monuments with a few monks as they explained the temple's history and whose remains were preserved inside them.  They practiced their English, I learned about Buddhism.  I think we both learned about lives very different from our own!

This year I came to Thailand as an Assistant Director with the same study abroad program.  While I was a vegetarian when I came here as a student, I did let loose and eat a bit of chicken, pork and fish in order to try all the variety of dishes and flavors.  But about a year ago I decided (again) to stop eating animals and animal products as much as possible.  So this time around in Thailand, I've harnessed my language skills, as well as a deeper conviction about not participating in animal cruelty, and it's been a rewarding journey of seeking out vegan food in this country that I love.

There may be some exceptions, but as far as I know, Buddhist monks in Thailand don't have any stipulations about not eating animals or animals products; they eat what is offered to them by faithful Buddhist laypeople each morning during alms collecting.  That said, I greatly appreciate and respect the fact that Wat Suan Dok has a vegetarian restaurant on its grounds: Pun Pun.  It's actually a "project aimed at supporting local organic farmers, networks, and propagating biodiversity" - quote taken from this first page of the menu:

Here are a few quotes from the menu:

• Pun Pun is an organic farm, seed saving operation, and sustainable living and learning center.
• By producing organic produce on our own farm as well as buying from farmers producing organically, we support farmers' transition to sustainable food systems.
• Vegetarian - we use no meat products but offer eggs and dairy in certain dishes (clearly marked on the menu).

So many good reasons to eat at Pun Pun.  I'm sure I'll be going back soon and probably posting a few more pics of the food and surroundings.  For now, I hope that this "first post" has given you an idea of what this blog will be about.  Thanks for reading!