Stickyrice

The Beach Supermarket

The beach is a supermarket in Nha Trang, Vietnam's south-central coast beach resort town. Earlier this year, I spent two weeks in its aisles. As is the case in much of the country, particularly the major towns and cities, there's no need to actually physically go shopping. From my front gate in Hanoi's West Lake district or indeed from my banana lounge on Nha Trang's golden sands, I let the shopping come to me.

This morning in Hanoi, where the variety of travelling vendors pounding the pavement meets virtually all my retail needs, I could've bought hot corn on the cob, a studded dog collar, a wedge of pumpkin and a handful of chilies, a padded pink bra, a cornetto, a bunch of flowers and a hoola hoop, among other things. As I stood on my doorstep, I could also have had my shoes shined, my knives sharpened and my cockroaches exterminated.

In Nha Trang, the beach supermarket caters more for tourists and holiday-makers. One afternoon as I laid about like a sloth on the beach having just turned the last page of a fantastic book of food stories, I scribbled down a list of the products walking by. From this list I could eat huge rice crackers as big as dinner plates, fresh fruit peeled and cut, sugar coated cakes carried on aluminium trays on the vendor's head, boiled peanuts, chewing gum and candy, potato crisps and, for the main course, a seafood buffet served under the fine spray of the sea on yellow plastic plates.

Other vendors offer to adorn me. Bead and shell bracelets, fake gucci sunglasses and straw hats would ensure that I return home looking like I'd been on holidays. More cerebral stimulation can be purchased in the form of photocopied Vina-themed literature and mass-produced asian landscape paintings from a vendor whose catch-cry is "Hello...is it me you're looking for?" I can get fags, tissues and postcards that will never be written on. If I'm feeling lucky, another vendor will sell me a lottery ticket. The list goes on and the shopping keeps coming to me. If I bought everything on offer, I'd need a trolley.

And that would be a real bastard to push through the sand to the carpark.

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. 

Fiery Exotica

When on holiday in Nha Trang, where seafood is on the menu most nights, it does get to be a bit of a prawn, clam and squid blur. By all means, call me a spoilt bastard. I deserve it. After all, the days before these evening seafood fests are spent prostrate beachside, big glasses of micro-brew at arm's length, shore breakers falling on the sand in front of me, a sandy dog-eared book at my eyes. 

On my annual trip in Feb this year though, some seafood exotica rose above the standard fare, jolting me bolt upright on my blue plastic chair.

Seafood is actually a bit of a misnomer because this elaborate disc above consists of freshwater prawns, sourced from nearby farms, swimming in a puddle of freshly squeezed lime juice, smeared with green chili paste...no cooking required.

Known as goi tom thai (prawn salad Thai style), these moist and tender little critters pack a bloody fiery punch. I was cautious with the green chili. One of my eating companions mistook the paste for some kind of pesto. She paid! She spent the rest of the meal swilling beer, mopping her brow, muttering incoherently and just generally trying to follow the conversation. I can't imagine her trying this dish again.

But I will.

Nha Toi
Ngo Quyen
Nha Trang

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?

Pre-riot Exarchia

We had no sense of rising tensions in Greece when we left in early October. It was business as usual, bananas and grapes going like hotcakes off the back of the pick-up. This fruit stall was just outside Omonoia subway station in central Athens, a ten minute walk from our hotel on the edge of Exarchia Square, where the shooting of a 16 year old boy started the nationwide riots and protests still being felt across the country.

The area, described as 'bohemian' in the Lonely Planet Guide, reminded me a little bit of Smith Street, Fitzroy at the turn of the century. The walls and windows are plastered in handbills promoting avant-garde theatre, music and festival events. The park benches and gardens in the square are witness to shady characters and drug deals galore. During our brief stay in the area, more than one or two folk were walking around smacked out of their trees!

I wonder how they reacted when the molotov cocktails flew through the air.

And I wonder whether the fruit stall is back in business yet?

Flashback to Greece

In Greece, we waited.

But we saw things.

Travelling independently, sometimes off the well-trodden track and between the peak and off seasons, meant that we sat at bus stops and ferry terminals in remote villages.

For hours.

The single onward morning bus may have just departed or the ferry schedule had shifted from full summer service to intermittent just the day before. Whatever the reason, we were occasionally forced to stay put. More often than not, the layover occurred in surroundings of little aesthetic value. Huge hangar-like bus stations on the outskirts of large Greek towns were not much fun. The book came in handy at such places. Pages turned and clocks got a lot of attention.

At other times, an ouzerie or kafeneon made the waiting seem shorter. We would snack, drink and run up a bill.

And across the way there'd be a fruit seller swinging his legs, flogging tomatoes and pumpkins.

Waiting.

Guess where I've been...?

...so I lost a bit of motivation.

Finding new food experiences in one town gets tougher the longer you stay. A long period of home-cooked meals and occasional forays to old favourites ensued. Pencil, notebook and trusty camera got archived on the shelves with other clutter. The comments in this little piece of cyberspace got inundated with spam. I periodically looked at my creation and felt guilty. I replaced stickyrice as my homepage on my work pc. My colleagues and friends stopped asking me about when I was going to post again. A slow death was approaching.

It's miraculous how a holiday can reinvigorate.

But I've had my fill of feta. I've spat out my fair share of kalamata pips. I've island hopped and now I've stopped.

I'm back in Hanoi and I'm ready again to blog!

Young Bamboo

At the base of Yen Tu and along the trail to the Dong Pagoda (1068m), the chief commodity for sale is young bamboo, plucked fresh from the forest, trimmed and bundled in string. Vaguely resembling asparagus with thick woody white stems rising to finer green or purple tips, this local specialty is peddled with vigour by members of this community. Grubby little urchins appear from the undergrowth with string sacks of it, feisty young women in blue workers shirts stand their ground on price with equally astute Hanoian hagglers. 

In the car park at 5pm, as pilgrims drag their weary limbs into vehicles, the bamboo pushers persist. Escaping the site minus a bunch would be miraculous. Being foreign, I manage it.

What would I do with it in the kitchen anyway?

Mountain Pilgrim Picnic

Halfway up the mountain to the holy bronze pagoda at Yen Tu (Quang Ninh Province), there are half a dozen green corrugated tin eat-houses. When pilgrims do the early morning climb, these primitive sheds double as overnight dormitories. Nestled on the side of the hill between the two stages of cable car that save worshippers what is a strenuous four hour climb, I get the sense that these places offered more of a respite from the delirium of two hours of uphill agony rather than any great or exotic culinary experience.

Today, the luxury afforded by the cable car is that folks can cart a picnic lunch and a half up the mountain themselves. The Vietnamese are remarkable in their pack-horse mentality. 'Packing light' is not a concept in this country. This can be witnessed most emphatically at airports and bus stations where individuals struggle  onto conveyances with two rice-cookers and ten kilos of lychees - in addition to their bags. Here, five hundred metres above sea-level, it can also be observed, albeit on a smaller scale. Thermos flasks, plastic bags filled with Heinneken cans, packages of sticky-rice, whole cooked chickens, store-bought cakes and potato crisps and thousands of mandarins and dragon fruit are lugged mountainside. Hunched over little old grannies in bare feet carry some of the load, well-to-do Hanoian matriarchs under umbrellas in high-heeled trainers manage their share, strong lithe boys hold mobile phones in one hand, the heaviest plastic bag of supplies in the other.

Mats are spread in the courtyards of the various pagodas on the ascent to the top where trays of offerings are prepared. The food is also quickly gobbled down and thus, the load is lightened for the remaining and most daunting section of the climb.

Of course, if carrying the kilos of picnic stuff is too much like hard work, rocking up to one of the eating houses is the other option. Here, Bambi is waiting for another hunk of his neck to be hacked off for someone's lunch.