Stickyrice

Evening Market Madness

At my local market in the late afternoons, the vendors clear out. Meat and produce sellers alike vacate the stalls they rent in the market building and cart their stock to the side of the narrow road on which the market is situated.

It's a monotonous and painstaking process. Perfectly displayed merchandise, having served the pre-lunch shoppers well, is packed carefully into baskets, styrofoam boxes and all manner of containers and hauled fifty metres or so, where it is again artfully organised to attract the consumer eye. In the current heat, this mad daily operation zaps the energy and patience of these small business operators. They are curt to even the most polite bargaining.

They make this move because their customers no longer want to stop, park their motorbikes and walk into the market stalls, preferring instead to do a drive through pit stop shop. A few years ago, one vendor set up a small satellite sample of produce from her main stall and started garnering large handfuls of dong from the evening traffic. Others followed suit and now, the actual market is a dark empty cave at five o'clock while the road outside is gridlocked with motorbikes spewing fumes, sweaty butchers weilding cleavers and forthright shoppers poking and pointing.

Amongst a smorgasboard of the essential flavours of Vietnam.

Mango Sheets

I don't know what was wrong with me when I was a child. I didn't like mangoes. I can't recollect the issue exactly but it was the flavour rather than texture that had me turning up my nose. Also, handling them was disconcerting for a Melbourne boy bought up on a mostly temperate climate fruit diet of apples, bananas, oranges and the odd pear or grape. What was exotic tropical fruit in those days rarely hit the green-grocer's display trays and when we got them home, things turned messy and sticky. Slippery bits of mushy mango flesh shot from our hands directly to the floor.

I gave up on mangoes for a long time.

Of course, in Vietnam and elsewhere in the region, mangoes dominate the fruitscape. I've learned how to handle them and I can appreciate them all ways, shredded fine and green in a salad with duck, dipped in salt and chili as an afternoon snack, in smoothies with ice and condensed milk and even over-ripe and dripping, just the way I didn't like them all those years ago.

At the Nha Trang market, I can pick them up in a sheet, a stunning orange pane of dried mango jam.

At the mango farm, a simple process sees ripe mangoes peeled, wet flesh roughly pared and stone thrown away. In a big pot on the heat, some sugar is added to the flesh and the mixture is brought to the boil. This hot molten mango lava is poured onto a flat surface where it is trowelled even. A day or two in the sun dries the sheets before they are cut into the desired shape and layered on top of one another for packaging.

Known as banh xoai (mango cake), this addictive chewy fruit sweet really pushes my buttons. In fact, I reckon I've eaten a decent square metre of the stuff in one sitting. 

Hot Spice

 

Strangely I've never come across a chili plantation in my travels in Vietnam. I mean I've seen the occasional chili plant for sale, in a pot, not unlike the ornamental ones people give as gifts in the west. I've seen glistening scarlet mountains of hot firecracker chilis out back of the Dong Xuan market. In Laos, they are laid out in cute little piles on banana leaves. The fridges and pantries of this region are full of this burning little condiment in one form or another.

In Nha Trang's main market, its stalls overseen by Uncle Ho, half a dozen spice shops caught my eye.  Ground cinnamon and turmeric, peppercorns, shallots and garlic are available to the cooks in town. But  the fiery ground chili powder and speckled chili flakes clearly take centre stage. Chili must be the grand daddy of all spices. Its colour demands respect for starters. Use it recklessly in the kitchen and there will be consequences.

Implements for grinding and handling the spices are available at stalls nearby.  

So, while I have the product and the mortar and pestle to manipulate it, I am still pondering where in the country this abundant hot spice is grown and processed.

Where is the nearest chili patch?

The Banana Shop

The banana vendor has artfully placed her bananas on display.

The standard Cavendish banana, common in western green grocers and supermarkets, is represented, but amongst several other varieties. Now obviously I missed the lesson on banana identification in my high school botany class. The varieties are called cultivars in fancy bloody banana lingo and, while I have a vague reminisence of 'ladies fingers', the banana shop before me is a smorgasboard only an ape could fully appreciate!

A rainbow of tropical hues.

Ripe and green, speckled with black and flawless, bunched and single or attached to branches, these babies are bound for the fruitbowls, cake-holes and ancestral altars of Nha Trang, to be eaten by the dead and the living.

But be warned, in Vietnam eating a banana before an exam will cause a downward slip in one's result. Strangely, partaking of a banana whole is not de rigeur. Such a practice is considered vulgar in this somewhat modest nation, for reasons which do not need spelling out.

So, while I am tempted to shock, to have the high school girls twitter, to give a big banana a 'job, I am thwarted.

For the banana vendor is missing. I cannot even get my hands on one.

Nha Trang Market Oddity

As is my want, my Tet holiday in Nha Trang over the last fortnight had me shuffling about in the main market. I was there the day before the lunar new year to suck up the atmosphere of the last minute rush, just generally getting in the way and making a nuisance of myself, flashing away with the camera, poking at things and asking inane questions.

Typical behaviour for me in a market environment.

Pandemonium reigned around me. Coconut husks were being hacked off with mini-axes, motorbikes laden with a million pairs of chopsticks shunted and honked along the crammed walkways, jostling was being practised as if it were an Olympic sport and barely an 'excuse me' was being uttered.

All quite normal, especially before big festive occasions.

An ear-drum busting racket of spruikers on microphones competed in attempts to lure shoppers to half a dozen fairground games set up near the market entrance. Throwing a ping-pong ball into the right coloured glass or a dart into the correct square on a red and white checker-board would score prizes hardly worth the price of a ticket. Cans of sickly sweet soft drink, warm beer or bird's nest juice awaited every winner!

I escaped to the dried seafood section, where I spent half an hour wondering about what I was observing. I knew about shark fins and seahorses, dried squid and prawns.

I'm still puzzling about the mysterious items above.

I was thinking assorted fish turds.

But that can't be right.

Can it?

Night Fruit

Amongst the tack, trinkets and cheap shoes, the fruit stand at Hanoi's weekend Cho Dem (night market) is one of few highlights for me. An artfully arranged exhibition of colour and shape, this ready-to-eat fruit is peeled and treated with salt and chili which adds a red-mottled sweaty sheen to its surface.

The stall holder sets up as I'm polishing off yet another spring hot pot with my mate's family from the south. She wields her knife skillfully, angling slices of mango (xoai) off the fruit's stone. She strips the inedible string from jackfruit (mit) pouches. Segments of tiny under ripe plums are cut and piled on a plate.

And the customers round the corner from the market's trash and treasure to make the inevitable purchase. I made mine jackfruit and mango.

Bag O' Fruit

Half a kilo of ready-to-eat mango and jackfruit - 50,000VND (USD$3.20, AUD$3.55)

Dong Xuan Night Market
along the north facing wall
Fri, Sat & Sun 7 - 11pm

Village Market

A couple of Saturdays back I ventured marginally into the provinces. The ones surrounding the capital are extensions of the city in reality, so if one can hack the journey along the dusty thoroughfares exiting Hanoi and endure the noise and lack of driver courtesy, it actually doesn't take that long. Within an hour, I was a blonde sideshow in a Ha Tay market unused to foreigners.

The Cho Chuong (Chuong Village Market) is most noted as a centre for the production of one of Vietnam's enduring symbols - the humble, all-purpose conical hat (non). All of the paraphenalia required to whack a hat together is on sale here. The special palm leaves were drying on the side of the road above the marketplace, the thread which holds it all together was being flogged off little plots throughout and the frames around which the components are assembled are laying about in doorways in the lanes leading away from the market.

All very interesting. A touch of culture, in fact.

But it all paled into insignificance once I spotted the colour of the local produce, that which is eaten rather than worn.

The primary colour rainbow of Vietnamese kitchen essentials, hot, rich and sour.

The sunny gold of carrots and pumpkins on a dull grey day

A gnarled clump of pink root.

Hats. What hats?

Eat Meat?

The butcher's aisle at Coles or Safeway is all styrofoam and clingwrap, tidy cuts of pink and red product, with nothing resembling an animal in sight.

The butcher's aisle at the main market in Luang Prabang, by contrast, affirms the fact that meat indeed emanates from living beasts with teeth and flesh which bleed and die. Perhaps my grandmother, who grew up in times when we westerners were not so fussy about which animal bits we consumed, could identify the head above and suggest what could be done with it in a kitchen. I can't.

These gelatinous blood cakes shine with an odd allure. They, too, look manufactured and far removed from their origins. Of course, the colour gives them away. I know what can happen here. They are divided into smaller clumps and added to soups in the region or diced and stir-fried with vegetables. Strangely dull and inoffensive, I have to report.

More Mo Market Magic

Under the temporary canopies inside the Mo market, where the light is dim on a sunny day, a specialist vendor squatted over her single short season product. Rather than peddling a range of common garden vegetables, this type of vendor chooses produce less fundamental to the cuisine, much less visible on a day to day basis. It might a tiny fruit ball with a two day season or a mutated lime. One thing is common - these vendors are going for top dong, playing the rarity ("you won't see these again till next year") card to entice the consumer.

This trick doesn't work on me this particular day. Again, they looked like Chrissy decorations. I did want to know the name though.

"Atiso," she said.

"Artichoke," I guessed, was the translation. But they don't look like the arties I know.

Market Wonder

An unfamiliar market is invariably fun. Even more so when it's off the tourist trail and not often visited by foreigners. Some of the stallholders were looking at me with the same level of surprise I was exhibiting at their produce. We were all of us agog! The Mo market in Bach Mai Street is a relatively solid permanent structure from the outside, one section of its walls adorned with spectacular communist propaganda.On the morning of my excursion there, the sunlight was hitting the colourful 'message' at just the right angle.

Inside, the mostly covered space is illuminated with suspended single light bulbs - many of them those power-saving fluoro ones - and sharply angled beams of day through gaps in the very temporary 'jerry-rigged' ceiling. The merchants operate out of stalls banged together with odd bits of timber, a few clouts, lengths of twine and a square or two of tarp.

Interiors of markets all over this region are 'designed' in this same 'wet market architectural style', an inherent feature of which is bloody big fire hazard! And, even though the stallholders themselves would probably run around on fire to save their livelihood, there are already moves afoot to gradually demolish these retail dinosaurs to make way for the shiny chrome, glass and stainless steel supermarkets and food emporiums of other worlds. It won't be long before the whole world population is constantly attired in white coats and plastic gloves with identity tags dangling around our necks

Best get your fill of mad market action while you still can!

Mo market is not just a convenient fruit, veg, fish, butcher and flower shop. A lush selection of tropical plants, pottery products (including coffins!) from nearby Huong Canh village, bamboo and rattan goods, a rather depressing pet section and truckloads of flimsy Chinese shoes and garments are amongst the bargains on offer here.

In a fleeting whip around the fresh produce merchants, various rarities caught my eye. Just outside the market's southern gate on the footpath of Minh Khai Street, a shallow aluminium tray containing these pretty little orbs had been placed.

I know not what they are. Vegetable, fruit or Christmas tree decoration?

Mo Market
Cnr. Bach Mai & Minh Khai
Bach Mai District