30 year anniversary of the "American War"
CA trip to the past helps a family discover present Vietnam
Cyclo Dreaming
Greetings and welcome to the June edition of Vietnam Art Gallery newsletter!
Last month marks an important anniversary for the people of Vietnam - 30 years since the end of the war. Westerners know of it as the Vietnam war but here we call it the American war. But whatever name it goes by, we hope the peace of the past 30 years continues - and that the friendship our country now enjoys with our world neighbours continues. Peace is never overrated!
This month, we have some interesting stories for your eyes and stomach.
=============== CONTENTS ===============
- A trip to the past helps a family discover present Vietnam Go >>
- Cyclo Dreaming. In a Vietnam gone by, they banned them; they even banned a film about them! Go >>
- June feature artist: Bich Ngoc. Bich Ngoc's minimal femalescapes are reminiscent of the older Matisse's reflective nudes. Go >>
- Deep fried tiger prawns with lychee and a chilli mayonnaise sauce. If you're on a diet don't read any further! Go >>
=== A trip to the past ===
This is my parents' first trip to Viet Nam in almost 30 years and the first ever for my brother Andrew and me. The voyage is a long time coming.
While Ha Long Bay is only 170 kilometers - just a bit more than 100 miles - from Hà Noi, where we are first staying, it is a four-hour drive with country-road conditions. Coming here and departing from the noise of the city, however, is a relief. And after three days of non-stop sightseeing, a respite to the northern coast is something the whole family can agree on.
Several times, my mother had tried to organize a visit to the motherland, yet scheduling conflicts and my father's trepidation postponed it. But after writing a draft of a book partially set in Viet Nam, without ever stepping foot in the country, I was determined to go and do some fact checking for the editing. My parents commission a tour guide, Viet, and a driver, Tuan, to usher us around this part of the country, since their memories of Viet Nam are hazy.
As the car rolls along, we absorb the vivid landscape around us. Water buffalo napping on emerald patches of farmland. Families scooping water out of irrigation channels. Skinny, brightly painted houses with ornate wrought-iron balconies in the front, but no side windows. A single, winding row of white ducks waddling across the road.
We drive through small townships, where families display fruits, cigarettes and household goods for sale in front of their shanties.
At our mid-way rest stop, a large handicraft store, tour buses unload customers to browse for dresses, tapestries and trinkets, while disabled children sit at long tables, working at sewing machines. A large sign on the wall declares that all goods are crafted by handicapped kids and victims of Agent Orange.
Young adults with neatly trimmed hairstyles and pressed suits roam the display area. While looking at a jewelry box, I realize I am being followed. A woman rushes to my side several times to show how various items work. Then I notice that every visitor entering the store is being tailed by a sales associate.
Initially irritated, I eventually give in to her companionship and she helps me find some purses and embroideries. Visitors must realize the price tags here are clearly more expensive than in Hà Noi, but they still purchase souvenirs, and wave goodbye to the youngsters sewing.
We arrive at Hâ Long Bay in the afternoon. The coastline is foggy, but as we drive closer, high-rise hotels come into view.
Viet Nam's proudest jewel, Hâ Long Bay is a 4,000-square-kilometer cove with mossy limestone sculptures jutting from the sea and a recently declared World Heritage Site. But even before it became a tourist staple, its lagoons and island caves were revered by the country. According to local legend, the bay is home to a celestial dragon that created the rock formations to prevent an ancient sea invasion. My father had been here once, years ago as a child, and only in passing, as his family fled to the south after the demarcation.
The next morning, our five-hour cruise begins.
The tour company rents a private fishing junk with a family crew of five people. While still early and officially off-season, the harbor is noisy and smoggy with other junks leaving on similar cruises. With the China border only several hours away, Hâ Long maintains a steady flow of Chinese tourists year round.
Away from the waterfront, as the junks negotiate room to drift away from each other, the bay is quiet and breathtaking. The limestone formations emerge from the fog, appearing greener and rockier. The boat docks at the popular Driftwood Island, giving us time to go cave exploring.
There is a line to enter the first cave, Hang Thiên Cung (Heavenly Palace Grotto). Discovered over a decade ago, it is touted as one of the bay's most beautiful caves with its display of stalactites and stalagmites. The rocky ceiling and imposing stone columns are impressive, but the fluorescent twinkle lights positioned to accentuate the animal-like formations and artificial water fountains detract from its natural beauty. Trudging along the crowded pathway through the cave arouses memories of standing in amusement park lines.
The second cave, Hang Go (Wooden Stakes Grotto) is much better. Most tour groups leave after visiting Heavenly Palace, so Wooden Stakes is remarkably less crowded. It also isn't as commercialized as the first, with no fountains and fewer light displays.
Practically alone in the cave, we marvel at the massive stone pillars and stalactites jutting from the ceiling. The legend behind the Wooden Stakes Grotto is that in 1288, Gen. Tran Hung Dao collected hundreds of ironwood stakes in the cave for a successful resistance battle against Kublai Khan's armies.
Afterwards, we return to the junk and drift further into sea. The crew docks at a floating boathouse, where a fishing family displays their rainbow-colored crabs, plump shrimp and huge, iridescent fish in underwater cages. From where we are, I can see a flat-screen television in their three-room house. Vit says we can buy some fresh seafood, which the cook on board can immediately prepare for lunch.
It is up to us, he says; there is food already prepared for lunch, but there is a certain pressure to buy, since our junk pointedly stopped and docked at their floating market. My mother selects a six-pound fish which costs $44. That seems expensive, but the seller will not bargain down.
"It's not that important," Andrew says, not wanting my mother to feel uncomfortable. "It's okay," my mom says, pulling out her purse. "I want us to have a good time."
A fisherman nets the fish and tosses it across the wooden deck. It flops several times until a young boy thwacks its head with a plank of wood.
Our meal is sumptuous. Fresh shrimp, mussels, seafood stew. Our fish is too large for us to finish. We thank the cook for such a delicious meal. Later, she comes out to the main room to show us her collection of pearl necklaces for sale.
On the drive back to Hà Noi, Tuan offers to take a short detour through Ha Dong, my father's hometown. It has been more than 50 years since he has been there. What we see is clean, sleepy, and clearly not part of any tour itinerary.
When we step out of the minivan, no one tries to sell us anything. The buildings are mostly new, unfamiliar to my dad, until he recognizes his old church. Walking through the courtyard, he points out what was his kindergarten and remembers where statues used to stand. The weathered colonial church is boarded up, though a sagging Christmas tree on a pitched roof above the arch indicates it is still in use.
A family lives in a one-room shack in the courtyard. Several toddlers spy through the window and wave at us. My father asks the young mother if she remembered an old priest who used to live there. She shakes her head. That was a long time ago. She invites us into her home, but my parents politely decline. We take lots of pictures.
I don't even care where my camera points, determined to record as much of my dad's hometown as possible. Perhaps he can look upon these pictures when we're back in America, and remember a building or a landmark he couldn't recall while there.
Elsewhere, my father asks my brother to follow him. He wants to record the church in every angle. He places his hand on the plaque bearing the building's name, looks up at Andrew's camera, and waits for the flash.
= Cyclo Dreaming =
In a Vietnam gone by, they banned them; they even banned a film about them.
But now the humble cyclo is back on the streets of Vietnam, striking a retro note as the country celebrates the 30th anniversary of the end of the war.
Behind the comeback is 56-year-old Do Anh Thu -- a man the Vietnamese press dubs "The Cyclo King".
A university graduate, truck driver on the Ho Chi Minh trail and ex-cyclo driver himself, Thu says he wants to preserve a national symbol, not glorify a way of transport seen by many as outdated and an unsavoury reminder of Vietnam's war-torn past.
For many American troops based in the South, one abiding memory was a city tour by cyclo, a three-wheel vehicle with the driver pedalling at the back and a compartment in front big enough to seat two passengers -- or one big foreigner.
In his fight to save the cyclo, Thu took on his own government -- and won -- to build a thriving business, one of a myriad ways that Vietnamese found to survive in the economic devastation left by the "American War".
There were once 10,000 cyclo drivers in Hanoi alone, with similar numbers in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and Danang.
Hanoi now has just 200, and numbers have dwindled elsewhere.
"The cyclo is part of our life and heritage," Thu says. "We couldn't let it die."
In 2001, as Vietnam strove to lure foreign investment and present a modern image to the world, the cyclo was banned as a remnant of the past.
"The government was modernising the economy and they just didn't fit," Thu says. The cyclo had already run into trouble five years earlier when authorities banned the critically acclaimed film "Cyclo", accusing director Tran Anh Hung of blackening the country's image for its gritty portrayal of a hard-pressed cyclo driver.
It seemed as if the cyclo's days were numbered, but then Thu hit his law books and argued that they could survive as a "tourist vehicle".
The government agreed and in 2003 the ban was lifted.
Now Thu, who once had a fleet of just five, runs 140 cyclos charging 20,000 dong ($1.25) for an hour's ride.
As he sits in his small two-room apartment in a back alley of Hanoi's Old Quarter, his mobile phone rings endlessly with calls for cyclos from hotels and tour organisers.
"Each driver generally makes four or five trips a day," Thu says. "We also have special occasions like weddings when Vietnamese ask for them."
Thu says that in the two years since the ban was lifted his revenue has tripled and is still growing. He acknowledges that the cyclo will never again be the mass transport vehicle it was in the past. "I accept that their slow pace doesn't fit in today's traffic," he says. "But there is a place for them still."
That place can now only be in the niche market of tourist transport. City commuting has been transformed as Vietnam's economic fortunes have risen, with virtually every household now owning at least one motor cycle, often several.
But Thu is building up another source of revenue from his cyclos -- tourists so enchanted that they buy them up and have them shipped home.
"French and Australians love them. And we had one Saudi Arabian customer," he says. His eyes light up with recognition when I mention multiple Tour de France cycle winner Lance Armstrong. "He'd be a good cyclo driver," Thu says. "I'd hire him at once."
==== June feature artist: Bich Ngoc ====
Bich Ngoc's minimal femalescapes are reminiscent of the older Matisse's reflective nudes. Minimal and expressive, his pieces are an effortless homage to the female form.
Bich Ngoc - "Nude 2003-1" - $160 - more >>
Bich Ngoc - "Nude 2003-2" - $160 - more >>
With watercolour and paper and simple smooth brush strokes, Ngoc knows how to do more with less.
Minh Duc - "Minh Duc 10" - $250 - more >>
A favourite of Vietnam Art Gallery's clientele, Minh Duc paints the watery streets of his home town with the houses' bare legs spindling, doors open like mouths agape.
Minh Phu - "Naive 7" - $450 - more >>
Minh Phu delights here with Naïve 7: a captured moment of play and contemplation, mere seconds before the flowers become bovine salad.
== Deep fried tiger prawns with lychee and a chilli mayonnaise sauce ==
If you're on a diet don't read any further! Chef Nguyen Xuan Minh, from the Hanoi Daewoo's Cafe Promenade Restaurant takes no prisoners with this dish, which combines mayonnaise and tomato ketchup to create a rich, creamy and very naughty sauce which he then pours over deep fried tiger prawns.
When questioned over this unusual combination Minh urged people to try it, saying it would bring surprising results.
INGREDIENTS:
- 300g tiger prawn meat
- 1 egg white, whipped
- 2 tbls cornstarch
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tsp roasted sesame seeds
- 150g tinned lychees
- 200g best mayonnaise
- 2 tsp chilli sauce
- 2 tsp of tomato ketchup
- Cooking oil for deep frying
PREPARATION:
Mix the prawn meat with salt, pepper, whipped egg white and cornstarch and leave for 10 minutes.
Heat enough oil in a pan for deep frying (about 170oC) before adding the prawns and cooking until crisp. Remove and allow to dry on a paper towel.
Mix the mayonnaise with the chilli sauce and tomato ketchup then add to a pan on very low heat. Add the lychee and prawn meat. Saute gently until the mayonnaise and chilli sauce covers the prawns.
Plate on a serving dish and sprinkle with the roasted sesame seeds. Enjoy!
Thank you for reading! We wish you peace and good fortune for the coming month!
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