Today is Friday. Final grades have been turned in at Baker Web Academy in Oregon (I'm part-time faculty there, still) and at the University of Danang here. Today is Friday and I have nothing to grade. There's no sense of urgency in my morning. My classes at Danang University don't start up again until March, and my classes at Baker Web are all the same as they were in the fall. No problem. I checked the iNacol website to see if they are accepting session-proposals for their fall conference yet; they're not. I have students coming here at 1pm, then more students coming for dinner and a movie tonight. It's 8:18am, I'm up on the roof starting a blogpost, I'm enjoying the again-balmy weather, and I relish the wonderful lack of urgency.
It's been cold here. Driving a scooter in light rain when the temperature is below 70 is no joke, even though it seems admittedly absurd to talk about it being "cold" to people who live in a land of ice and snow. We have no heaters at all, so I've been lighting candles and using our portable cookstove sometimes to add a few degrees of comfort heating. Can I give you a small example that somehow tells a bigger story? Our kitchen towels stay damp. In the hotter weather, even though it's mightily humid the towels still dry out in time. But these days if you dry your hands on a dry cloth, the cloth will not be dry when you next reach for it, even if it's the following day. Bath towels, too--they just stay wet. We've been glad of long pants and jackets and hot teas lately.
Movies are important. I've been thinking about what movies to show my kids (my teenagers!) in the next half-decade, making that list and getting recommendations from friends. I've settled on the movie Courageous to show to my Viet students and friends in this season. If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth the $4 rental at Amazon. Or better yet, you can buy it for twice that and have it to loan to friends.
Tonight some (8) guys are coming over for a Man Night. We'll go get noodles down the street, then come back here for movie and games. Several sets of friends have been over for movies, lately. Sometimes we show The Princess Bride with Vietnamese subtitles--and they LOVE it--and sometimes I show them Courageous with English subs. The ones that have watched Courageous have been deeply impacted by the life-choices portrayed by these characters, and the follow-up conversations have been life-giving.
There's more to tell, but I'll try to sign on tomorrow and write more. :)
Trip to Saigon - as written by Linda (Grandma) and Michael (Grandson)
Introduction: Linda
Introduction: by Linda
We had arrived in Vietnam in the middle of November and a few days later were
surprised by Mike's prostate which decided to completely close off the ureter.
I admire him so much as he quietly and uncomplainingly went through his
days here using a catheter.
But by January it became really clear that things
weren't getting any better so we got an appointment for surgery at the international Franko-Viet hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (aka HCMC or Saigon.) Our
plan was to fly down early Wednesday morning and take a taxi into town for the
10:00am appointment, have the surgery that afternoon and come home to Da Nang 3
days later. We took grandson Michael with us to see the sights.
Day 1: Michael
There was, as often happens, confusion at the airport. For one
thing, the people at the airport had said that they would put us on a flight at
6:30am, but the night before rescheduled it to 8:15. However when we got there
at 7:00 they said that the flight would leave at 9:20! But we had a doctors
appointment at 10:00. With the help of a very harried customer service
agent, we were out the door and on the plane at 8:30.
We finally got on the plane, and just in time. I enjoyed my ride,
because when we got above the clouds, the view was amazing. We were rising through
the clouds, and I wasn't expecting much. However when we got to the top, the
cloudscape was surreal. I didn't get a picture so I will make a word picture. A plane of white, lumpy dollops of cotton, like a huge
white comforter. There were blobs of larger clouds, and there were stratus
clouds that were floating above and around the plane. As the plane continued to
rise, I started to see more and more, and there came into view a spire of
clouds that looked like a castle. I imagined jumping out and landing softly on
the pile of clouds, and exploring around this quiet world. Then the horizon
came into view, an the as the clouds got further and further away, they got
flatter and flatter. It looked as if we were flying over the Arctic, with huge
ice mountains of cumulonimbus clouds looming on the horizon. There was a
collection of stratus clouds hanging in the air like a disc, and the effect was
astonishing! After a while there was a break in the clouds, and I thought,
"Those clouds must be very thin, that break looks jagged! Not at all like
the thick cumuli clouds." But as more came into view, I could see that it
was not a break, but a mountain! A mountain range was so high up that it was
rising through the clouds. Afterwards I could see more and more through the
clouds, the glistening lakes, the neat farmlands, and little villages, their
roofs shining like gold. I reflected on how, looking up, the plane I was on
would be just another plane, but each person on each plane feels that the plane
that they are on is somehow special.
Into Saigon: Michael
Our descent into Saigon was uneventful. I don't know much about
Saigon, but I know that it is a big city, and so I was surprised that as we
went down below the clouds all I saw were the winding river and tributaries of
the Saigon River and farmland. The rivers were beautiful though, and I enjoyed
it, mostly. By this time I had developed a bad headache and wasn't feeling so
good. I am also getting airsickness from writing this. We started to come into
the city, and I noticed more and more big apartments. Grandpa knew we had to
get to the hospital, so he got into the aisle and held our place while we got
our carry-ons. We got off the plane and immediately got into a taxi to go the
FV hospital.
Into Saigon: Linda
Leaning over to look out the window, I was so impressed by how dense the housing below was. Later I learned the population of the metropolitan area of Saigon is around 12 million which, by the way, is more than Oregon state with its 4 million or even Washington with only 7 million people. The land use cannot be improved on. There is nothing wasted on lawns, parking strips, big alleys, etc. Like in Da Nang the houses are narrow, tall, and share walls with the neighbor. The white building below, in the heart of the business distrit where most buildings were much bigger, was the width of a patio table and umbrella and is the narrowest that I saw:
Here are two pictures from one of the museums that show the before and after work on one of the main canals in preparation for last year's celebration of the 40th anniversary of the "liberation" of the south, and the "reunification" of the country.
The traffic is amazing - it would be total gridlock if we tried to impose American traffic rules. Here is a picture taken out of the cab window. We were probably driving about 25 mph. Seriously.
For example, when I look out the taxi window to my right across 2 more lanes of a city street, I can see solid motorcycles with maybe 18” clear space in any direction around each. Now my taxi wants to turn right. It announces with a beep on the horn and starts turning, slowly, right into the crowded lanes. Motorcycles slow down, speed up, crowd together tighter, and, as we diagonal across both lanes, they split, flowing around both sides of us. I often think of an anthill or hive of bees with all working together, merging and “threading the needle” in a good-natured spirit of cooperation.
The Hospital: Michael
We finally got to the hospital, and then we waited. And waited.
And waited. Then they took grandpa in to do a blood test. And then I waited.
And waited. And waited. My phone died. And so I read. And waited. And waited. A
couple of years later we went to get some "lunch" (a bowl of flavored
water with sponges in it, served with a delicious side of an orange flavored
sponge with whipped cream on top) and then we, wait for it, waited. A couple
decades later they let us out of priso- I mean, the hospital, and we went and
found a hotel.
The Hospital: Linda
The staff and doctors at FV were wonderful. They spent the first day doing a variety of additional tests to make sure the surgery would go well. We were there all day going from one department to the other - they assigned a young man in a suit to be the personal guide for people like us who were new to the complex. Lunch was fun - the cafeteria had an international selection of foods. In the afternoon I even got to watch Mike’s mitral valve in his heart working perfectly away on the ultra-sound screen. They gave him high grades for being in great shape but needed to wait until some cultures came back before giving the final go-ahead. So with the surgery scheduled for Monday, we could become tourists and what a great place to see!
The Market: Michael
After leaving the hospital, we walked out to get dinner, which is how we realized that the
hotel was right next to a bustling market! We wandered through the fruit
section, and bought three different kinds of oranges, some longans, a bunch of
bananas and a bag of guavas, and then suddenly the fruit and vegetable stalls turned into
fish stalls! Many kinds of fish, eel, shrimp, frog, clams, snails, and oysters.
We passed small plates of fish, with the fish still flopping around, and big
vats of prawns.(occasionally a prawn would hop out, and the owner of the stand
deftly popped them back in again.) We came to a place where a stand was serving
big
pork chops with rice and a kind of vegetable that is very common here. It's
technically a weed, and it grows up in the rice paddies, but it is delicious
when it is served with a kind of garlic sauce and rice. Once we were done
eating we went back to the hotel to deal with the various fruits we had
purchased. The grandparents were seeing what was on tv, and they came to a myth
busters Alaska special, complete with snow, which we watched longingly from our room in the tropics. Eventually we turned off the tv and went to sleep.
Day 2: Michael
I slept in. When I woke up at 8:00, most of the breakfast sellers
were already packing up shop. We went out and grabbed some bún bò huê, (bun = rice
noodles, bo = beef, Hue = a local town known for its citadel and imperial
palace,,, and its especially delectable
soup broth recipe) and I got a sugarcane drink, which is basically juiced
sugarcane in a cup. Then we split up, and grandma went her way to
Lotte Mart, and me and grandpa went to our room to rest.
Linda’s Day Mike and Michael wanted to stay in the hotel and
do quiet activities but, fearless explorer that I am, I wanted to see the
area. After exploring all around our
hotel and learning how to walk from there to the hospital, not that far as it
turned out, I decided to walk the 2-3 miles to Lotte Mart. Saigon is further south and the average
daytime temperature there was 95 degrees.
So I drank some extra water and took off. Lotte Mart is a giant department
store/grocery store. Looking at the parking lot, I found out everyone else had apparently come by motorcycle.
I stocked up on fun things including a $7
electric tea pot for making tea, coffee, and other hot broths in our hotel room. I was happy to decide that I was so loaded down that I had a good excuse to take a taxi home to the
hotel.
Goat Pizzle: Michael We went to a popular hotpot place for dinner. Grandpa appreciated the big chairs. Many of the places have small stools that can easily be stacked and transported on a motorcycle but aren't well-designed for super-sized foreigners' bodies. The menu had English subtitles so ordering was easy.
I got a lemon beef,
grandpa got goat in an Indian curry, and grandma got chicken legs. My order came
first, and it revealed my arch nemesis. Onions. Apparently when they said
lemon, they meant onions. It contained a bit of delicious beef, but it was
buried inside a mountain of more onions than I would eat in a decade. Grandpas
came next, and the goat meat was truly delicious but the hot curry sauce was
sending curls of smoke up from his head. Here we found a use for my
onions. Grandma sorted out my mountain and used the onions to mellow down the curry sauce. While she was doing this
her order came.
Apparently what they meant by chicken legs was chicken feet,
and they brought her a plate of about 7 chicken feet, skin, bones and all. It gave us a chance for a picture opp and some
quiet merriment. But then she actually ate them!! When we had finished eating, we went back to the hotel. I needed to go to the bathroom
really badly, and so the first thing I did was rush to the bathroom in our
room. There I found not one, not two, but three of the largest cockroaches I
had ever seen. I suddenly didn't need to go anymore. We went through our
nightly routine, trying to ignore the fact that there were probably monster
cockroaches under everything in the bathroom. Eventually my bladder couldn't
take it and I went in. I could see the antennas of a cockroach hiding under our
bathtub, and I tried not to imagine it running out and eating my soul. The next
morning the cockroaches were gone.
Day 3: Michael
Today we went to a tourist agency to look for tours to Cu Chi tunnels. Since we were going to be tourists for a few days we checked into a hotel in the center of the city that had half day tours to many different places. We intended to go the next day. In the meantime, however, we had a lot of time to kill. There was a zoo within walking distance of the hotel, and we decided to go there.
On the way there we also saw a building with tanks and planes and military stuff parked out in front, and the gates were open. We went in and explored around, and there was a lot of cool stuff. Remnants of shot down planes, tanks, artillery, and even a giant surface to air missile! Afterwards we went into the zoo, and I bought some cotton candy. It was so humid, however, that my candy began to shrink in my hands! We went around looking at the different exhibits, and found that the animals in a Vietnamese zoo look a lot like animals in an American zoo.However there were several big cranes that were wandering around freely, apparently not wanting to leave!
One
exhibit, however, made my day. Monkeys. There were several small grey monkeys
with long tails that had escaped! I know they escaped because I saw one of the
monkeys slide through the bars out of his cage as easy as pie. By some awesome
chance there was a Russian tourist who had a bag of peanuts. He gave some to
me, and one of the monkeys climbed on my leg and grabbed them from my hand.
Then a couple of monkeys went into the cage of a big black monkey, and stole
some of his food! Oddly enough, this monkey seemed scared of the little tiny
ones, and he hid at the top of his cage while the others ate his food!
Eventually though, we had to leave.
When the zoo closed we went to a cathedral
that was an exact replica of Notre Dame, built with only material from France.
There was a little square outside the cathedral with a statue of Virgin Mary where some food vendors were sitting on the grass. We got chopped mangoes and a sort of rice cake sandwich thing, and then we
went home.
Day 3: Linda
In the lobby as we were leaving to go to the center of HCMCity, a cleaning team was scrubbing the marble floor and I saw a giant cockroach trying to swim through the suds on the floor. The ladies heard my sharp intake of breath and looked to see what the cause was. They gently swooshed him out the open door to freedom. Hmmm. I see. It is all in a person’s attitude. So I decided to regard cockroaches with joy, the same feeling that I have about butterflies, or the little lizards that hang out on the walls. I didn’t get much practice on attitude-shifting though. During the rest of the time there I only saw 2 other big guys.
Today we found a classy hotel in the central zone of the city - the Old City. Here there were many remembrances of recent wars. Talking about the war with our many Vietnamese friends during our stay here has been
interesting. I share with them my
understanding of history: The Geneva Accords in 1954 divided the country on the 17th parallel just
north of Hue into North and South Vietnam and gave the people 300 days to
freely settle in the country of their choice.
About 30,000 southerners moved to the north and about 800,000 northerners
moved to the south. It is thought that
more people wanted to come south but were intimidated by the guards at the
border and the already stringently controlling Communist government in Hanoi. Also, it was later clear, some stayed in the
south who were Communist sympathizers and could later join in subversive
activities. South Vietnam asked for and
got assistance from the US in developing their country - the US was at that time in a cold war with the USSR and feared a growing Communist presence. North Vietnam turned to China and later Russia
for aid. Their trained troops had
successfully dislodged the French and now, under the powerful leadership of Ho
Chi Minh, they turned their attention to getting control of the southern areas. US helped the south with material goods but
didn’t send advisers over until about 1964.
The French had not developed strong governmental skills in the native
people and they basically just wanted to be left alone to farm and live peacefully. Finally, at South Vietnam’s request for help,
the US sent “feet on the ground.” The North Vietnamese aggressed into the south, not vice versa. Americans tried desperately to help the south target VC supply routes and encampments, which was very difficult. Eventually, they gave up.
Then I let them share what they have learned in their history
classes which is that a puppet government had been set up in the South by
outsiders and that the southerners were waiting to be liberated and were happy to have Ho Chi Minh accomplish the reunification of the country. Everyone agrees that this version is correct. It is, however, against the law to disagree with the government, an offense punishable with jail time,
Day 4: Michael
I spent this day sick. What a shame.
Day 4: Linda
After enjoying the breakfast that came with our room,
Mike and I left our grandson in the air-conditioned hotel room and
spent time exploring through the Ho Chi Minh Historical Museum. History here is long and complicated. There were 18 rooms in the museum, each dedicated
to artifacts and information about eras of rising and falling dynasties. A delightful interlude was a water puppet
show offered periodically throughout the day – water puppetry being an ancient
theater art form here. And yes, the
performers stand in thigh deep water behind the screens to manipulate the
mannequins attached to long underwater sticks.
Day 5-7: Michael
The next day was mostly uneventful. We went to a revolutionary museum
that had more artifacts of the war, and a history of Vietnam as well. There
were charts of who ruled what and where, and a bunch of old stuff. I know this
is a bit unprofessional, but I was still a bit sick and tired. We went back to
our original hotel near the hospital, which was a 45 minute drive (10 miles) I
went immediately to our hotel room when we got there and rested the next days.
Day 5-7: Linda
Mike and I attended the English international mass at Notre Dame
Cathedral, a beautiful landmark in the center of the “old city.” The service was standing room only and the congregational
singing reverberated through the cathedral with a richness of sound and spirit
that I will never forget. I wonder how many nations were represented in that service.
Later we saw the Imperial Palace and went through the HCMC Museum - I hung out mostly
in the room that had full-sized recreations of the traditional wedding dress and customs of the many ethnic minority groups here,
We then regretfully said good-by to District 1 and headed back to District 7 to get ready
for the next day’s surgery. The next few days, for me, were spent walking back and forth between the hotel and the hospital with some side trips for exploring the area. The surgery went very well. We were extremely pleased with the expertise and the care that we found there. And the prices.
Day 8: Michael Cu Chi tunnels is a popular tourist location, where the north
Vietnamese hid out in a massive tunnel system, ranging over 250 kilometers,
under rivers, villages, farmlands, and even an American military base!
We got in a van at 7:30 to go to Cu Chi. On our way there we watched a video that
explains what we were about to see. Cu Chi tunnels is an old system, dating back to when Southeast Asia was still
called "Indochina" and the French were still here. It is a key
tactical position, just a short distance from Saigon, and the Viet Cong made
good use of it. Soldiers had whole families in there, and in the course of 8
years, 15 babies were born in the tunnels. When we got to the tunnels, we saw
several artillerys? Artilleri? What do you call that? Anyway we saw several,
along with old weapons and bombshells.
We made our way into the forest with our
guide, and you could see many bomb craters and collapsed tunnels.
Also there were many big termite mounds, but our guide said that most of them were actually a ventilation system for the lower tunnels.
We got to a clearing with a small hill in the middle. The guide said
that the mound was a place where soldiers would wait and ambush the American
troops, shooting their AK-47's through the slit at the bottom.
Then he guided me to a
place in the undergrowth, and told me to shuffle around in the dry leaves. I
did, and it revealed a trapdoor into the bunker!
We could tell that parts
of the tunnels we went through were touristified, as they were very clean and
big. Grandma went into those tunnels - she had to stoop way over in places, but no crawling on her belly.
A bat flew over my head once, but that was all. We moved on to a place
where an example of a VC trap was, as there were many traps. This one was a
tiger trap, but easily used for humans as well. It was a rotating platform that
flipped easily with weight, and under it was a pit full of spikes made out of
American bombshells. Our guide said that when an American soldier fell into the
trap, the VC would run out and put land mines all around the trap to cause
collateral damage.
We went on and saw hospitals, wells, barracks and more, all underground. We
eventually came to the "cafeteria", where we ate a classic VC meal of
manioc root, a potato-like vegetable, and sticky rice. You dipped the root and
rice into a sugar-salt-peanut mixture, and it was actually kind of good, but I
would not want to eat that every day for 8 years like some of them did. We left the cafeteria, and
that marked an end to our tour. I bought a hand-crafted model F5 fighter plane at the gift
shop, and we were on our way.
Back to Da Nang: Michael
We got to the airport at 4:00, and only 4 "short" hours (yay) later the plane finally left for Da Nang. I
am glad to be home. It's nice to be a tourist, but I like my home. I am glad to be home.
Linda
Me too.
Pictures of Mike and me 1 block from our
Da Nang home: (There are 6 banana trees on our block)
When we first arrived here I asked her where to buy coconut oil because I was surprised not to see it for sale on every corner--we are, after all, in the land of coconut trees, and coconut oil is all the rage in America. Surely the people of Vietnam would all be cooking with coconut oil and enjoying its many health benefits? Not so. She was puzzled why I would be asking for it, and when I explained that I liked to cook with it, she expressed surprise and asked why I would do such a thing. She told me that her family in the countryside could make coconut oil (the family already produced peanut oil), and she checked with them and came back with a price. It sounded really high to me, and so I dropped it. I figured I would cook with something else and eat my coconuts fresh on the beach rather than in my stir-fries.
Since that time I did see coconut oil for sale in some places, but it was packaged as a beauty product rather than a food, so I wasn't sure what else might be in it. And it was quite expensive. But then last week that same neighbor told me she had been using coconut oil on her hair and skin and she was ready to make it herself. I told her I wanted in!
The next day she went to the market and bought 6 coconuts. She scraped out the flesh and put it and the coconut water into a large pot. Then she boiled it for ten minutes. (I would have helped her with all this, but she didn't tell me she had started!) After boiling it, she took out the pulp and squeezed all the milk out of it, then refrigerated the liquid overnight. This caused the water to further separate from the cream. At this point, she had a big batch of what you'd find if you opened a can of coconut milk that had separated. This is where I walked into the process.
She was making a fire in her outdoor cooker--I really don't know what else to call it. People use them for eating hotpot outside, or they take them on beach outings and put little grills on top and light charcoal fires underneath. After getting the fire going, we put the coconut milk in a pot and let it simmer. As it cooked, the oil separated from the "meat." At first, the oil still had a watery feel to it, but as the water evaporated and the coconut meat gave out all its oil, it became thick and slippery and very slightly yellowish. The pulp it left behind became very brown and dry. This whole process took about two hours, but I gotta tell you, the two of us were pretty pleased with ourselves for doing nothing and watching oil come out. She had never made it before, and the experience was as novel for her as it was for me. We each got a bit more than a cup of oil for our trouble and our five bucks. The oil smells wonderful. Anna is wanting it for her skin, and I'd love to saute some chicken and chili in it. For now, it sits as a prize in its jar. It's a little bit like canning--once you've finished the process, the wonder of it makes you want to just look at it for a while before you use it.
The browned bit at the end tasted faintly like toasted coconut, but it was obvious most of the flavor had left with the oil. I thought about further toasting the bits and sprinkling them on my granola, but then I remembered that I didn't have any granola and would have to make some of that as well. I opted not to save them (we'd eked every drop of oil out of them, after all), but now that I look at the pictures again, I wish I had. Oh well!
We've decided it's time to unlearn and relearn what it means to live in Vietnam. In just the past few days we've been out and about and find ourselves seeing things with new eyes again. Probably it has a little to do with the normal cycle of culture absorption and a little to do with the calendar--new eyes for a new year? We've realized that when we first came every impression, every experience, was filtered through a screen of "It's HOT." I would see palm tree lined promenades and wonder who would ever walk there--indeed, they were always empty. Street restaurants served food early and then closed up shop, for who would want to hang about in an oven? Much better to stay indoors with the fan on and the shades drawn. You may remember us writing about trying to pick up the rhythm of life here and go along with it. What we didn't know then was that we were seeing a summer rhythm. In spite of the fact that this has been an unusually dry rainy season, there is a rainy season rhythm that's ingrained in people whether the weather really cooperates or not. Now that we have pleasant temperatures nearly all the time, and not nearly as much rain as the weather websites say we have, we are learning a whole new side to life in Vietnam.
Like walking. We used to shudder at the thought of walking more than a couple blocks to find a taxi. No one was out walking. If you weren't creating the breeze of a bicycle or motorbike, or enjoying the A/C of a taxi, you weren't moving. The only exception to this was if you were on the beach, in the early morning or late afternoon/evening. Now we see groups of men or women (always separately) walking around the neighborhood for exercise. I've suddenly remembered the palm-lined riverfront and have taken to walking there. Today a friend of ours took Anna and me to a craft supply store across the street from "29th of March Park." The park has a lake in the center and beautiful gardens and paths around it, and every other time I've seen it it has just looked like a place to be hot. Today I found it irresistible, and we had a lovely stroll around it. A funny side note--our friend got stopped several times by people wanting to know how she had found some foreigners to practice being a tour guide on. They were university students majoring in tourism wanting some extra experience.
The other thing we're re-evaluating is food stalls: who's serving what, and when. We've written before about how everything closed up tight after lunch, but that lunch was over by 11;30 or so. Now it's not so crucial that you get out of the mid-day heat, so it's possible to still find lunch at 12:30 or even 1:00--maybe 12:59 at the latest. Breakfast, also, is a more lingering meal. If you've got to be off to school or work you'll be gone by 7:00, but if your schedule doesn't require you to be out so early, why not sleep in a bit and eat at 8:30?
I've been re-exploring our neighborhood street food, and I have a new favorite. Many of the stalls are served out of someone's front room, spilling onto the sidewalk but with indoor seating as well. The family lives upstairs. My new favorite is nothing so fancy. There's a demolished building with one brick wall, about 5 feet tall, still standing along the sidewalk. It's at the entrance of a narrow street with a furniture repair business blocking most of one end and this "restaurant" at the other. Probably the mother/daughter pair that runs this stand lives in one of the houses there but uses the corner for their business. They have a series of tarps tied up to provide shelter for their cooking area, which consists of several charcoal burning "stoves" and an "oven" area for keeping bread warm. They serve a noodle soup with fish, some kind of purple rice porridge, and baguette sandwiches. I like the soup best, with a plain baguette for dipping. The broth is a little richer than pho or the other beef soup we like, with cracked black pepper bits and a smattering of green herbs floating around. The noodles are thicker than spaghetti and a little square, but they cut easily with a spoon so you can eat them without making a mess. Actually, I've been surprised that there are no chopsticks provided, only spoons. There are large chunks of fish and pieces of "fish cake" in the soup for protein.
You may not think that fish noodle soup sounds good for breakfast, but I had an epiphany today about why I love this place in all its dinginess so much. Picture this: you're camping. It's morning and you haven't made any breakfast at your campsite yet. It's been raining all night and looks like it might start again at any time, so everyone has makeshift coverings out of colorful tarps, trying to create a place to cook and a place to eat that's out of the rain. You're doing a little morning stroll around the campsite before heading back to fry some eggs or eat instant oatmeal when you see that someone else has a huge, steaming pot of a hearty soup and they're dishing up big bowls of noodles for their family. Somehow they've managed to get fresh-baked bread that they're keeping warm over a low fire, and the fish came out of the lake that morning. Your jaw drops and your mouth waters. Yes, you'd rather eat a nourishing, flavorful soup this morning than that packet of instant oatmeal you have at camp! Then you're invited to pull up a chair and share in the feast. You're not sure how clean the dishes are (this is camping, after all), but eating outdoors in the morning air takes care of all that. If you're someone who likes camping and who thinks that dining outdoors makes all food taste better, then you would also love to eat streetfood with me here.
I haven't taken pictures that go with what I wrote about, but I do have lots of pictures of how we spent Christmas. I'll let them tell their own story:
