More differences

Still been thinking about the differences between Hanoi and HCMC.

Bia Hoi in Hanoi generally costs VND 2000 or 8p or 15cents. Sometimes it's 3 or 4,000. I like the taste and don't mind sitting outside on those tiny plastic chairs chatting with fellow drinkers. Other than Bia Hoi the bars usually charge you VND 20,000 for a bottle of Tiger or similar. Yet I have only had Bia Hoi once since moving to HCM. It was VND4500 a litre and came in a plastic bottle. But it tasted bloody awful! So I will stick to drinking bottled beer. Tiger, Saigon (green or red), BGI (usually the cheapest and comes in a bigger bottle), Heineken (the most expensive) are the most popular and usually available around the backpacker's area. I can find a BGI for around VND 10,000 or 33p/66cents. So drinking is a bit more expensive in HCM compared to Bia Hoi. But of course it is 34 Celsius during the day and only drops to around 25C minimum compared to 17/10C in Hanoi now, so it is nice to sit and drink a cold bottle of beer.

The food around the backpacker's area is certainly more international/westernised than anywhere in Hanoi. For example, I looked everywhere in Hanoi for a decent English breakfast and never found it. The save money, make money mentality meant they tried to save money and therefore give you tiny portions. Even if it said "eggs" on the menu I have known them to give you just one egg. In a restaurant near the cathedral I ordered breakfast, specifically asking for soft/sunny side up eggs (this I have asked for in every restaurant I have had breakfast in and almost always got hard eggs) but of course the eggs came hard. So I said to the waitress "I asked for soft eggs!" She said "I know" and wandered off...

The service in general in Hanoi is poor to diabolical. It is not unusual to go into a restaurant and find all the staff sitting down watching television. Most restaurants serve the same Vietnamese food and that gets incredibly repetitive. In the end I almost stopped eating Vietnamese restaurant food as it was just so dull. There are lots of restaurants that serve international food, but they are generally expensive. I ended up buying wholemeal bread, salad, ham, tinned fish, cheese (which is expensive) and eating sandwiches during the day. Luckily, I enjoyed one local lunchtime dish that was available everywhere in Hanoi: Bun Cha, which is rice noodles in soup with barbecued pork and a plate of herbs to add as you like. This I have been unable to find so far in HCM :-( It really is delicious and filling and often costs VND10,000). Some places serve spring rolls with it too and with a couple of those it is a very filling dish. The Bun Cha restaurants are the dirtiest restaurants in town because of all the barbecuing, but is easily the most delicious and I never had any stomach problems after eating it.

Pho (pronounced fer) is the Vietnamese national dish and is available both north and south, but I am not a big fan I'm afraid. It is rice noodle soup, usually (although not always) with uncooked beef on top: Pho Bo, or Pho Ga, which is the same but with cooked chicken.

There was one great Deli/restaurant on Kim Ma that anyone who is in Hanoi should look up. It is only a small place and is often empty, but has a three course set menu for VND75,000 (US$4.5) which they changed regularly and was always delicious. It was called Oregano and was 657 Kim Ma or something close to that. It had things like stew and mashed potatoes on the menu, and for sweet one option was a fantastic chocolate mousse, with some good starters too. Good French wine was VND30,000 a glass, which was really good value.

Here in HCM the food around the backpacker's area is generally pretty good for Western tastes. So far I have not had one hard egg when eating English Breakfast and don't even need to ask. Mexican food is more prevalent down here and is often very good. Most of the restaurants around here have it on the menu. In Hanoi there was TexMex on Giang Vo, but that was the only Mexican restaurant I found. It is rarely, if ever spicy, however.

Never order curry in Vietnam. They are unable to cook curry as a Westerner knows it, they put some ginger in and call it curry. There are a few 'Thai' restaurants around in both North and South, but I have yet to find one where the food tastes anything like Thai food and always avoid them now, even though Thai is my favourite food. Every table has a bottle of Tuong ot (ert) or curry sauce, so I use that to spice things up.

In Hanoi they are just starting to implement a new law to ban hawkers from a lot of streets. The police often arrest street traders and that is only going to get worse. But you do get bothered by book-sellers if you go for bia hoi at the international Bia Hoi corner at Luong Ngoc Quyen, but it isn't too bad. Here in backpacker's area in HCM the book-sellers/newspaper hawkers/women who sell this and that/women with babies selling chewing gum are totally beyond the pale.. You can sit in a restaurant and you will get 10 sellers come up to you and ask if you 'wanna buy book?' within a 5 to 10 minute timescale. Maybe more. Also there are far more disabled people here in HCM. I see anywhere from 20 to 50 disabled people every day, mostly begging on the streets. From people with a limb/foot/hand missing, to people who ride around on a small wheeled cart because they have no limbs, to people who lay on corners with apparently no control of any limbs, to a woman with a baby in a pram with a hugely oversize head. All just normal everyday sights, ignored by almost everyone, and rarely given any money. In Hanoi, I rarely remember seeing disabled people begging for money, probably because the police would move them on.

Weekend in Cuc Phuong National Park

This weekend we went to Cuc Phuong National Park. Jane, Henrik, Cuong, Fiona, Sara and me set out at 8am Saturday morning from Hanoi and arrived around 9 hours later! Why it took us that long I have no idea. It is normally a 4 hour ride we were told. But it wasn't important because we all enjoyed the ride and had the weekend. We stayed in a nice guest house outside the park for the first night and also ate there because in the village they had no food. It is late in the season so they probably weren't expecting too many visitors. We sat around drinking fruit wine and beer and play Pass the Pigs and then some dodgy card game Henrik suggested, gradually sinking down into inebriation before heading off to bed.

Early the next morning (10am) we paid 40,000 Dong to get into the park and rode the 20 kilometres to our chosen guest house along a concrete road with lovely views of the forest, which had no hot water but was only $12 a night a room, whereas the accommodation with hot water was $25 a night. We were only stopping one night as we all had to be back at work on Monday so no problems.

We had a fantastic walk through the forest and really Enjoyed the trees, ferns, rocks, and beautiful scenery. It was so powerful it felt like we were under the influence of something. Cuc Phuong is a lovely place to visit and I would recommend it to anyone. At the end of the path there was what is called a 1000 year old tree and huge and wonderful it is. We heard and saw many birds and butterflies and animals.

In the evening there is only electricity from 6 til 10pm but it is enough. We had dinner at the park restaurant, which was tasty then retired for music and beer on our balcony as Henrik had brought his guitar.

Next morning it took us 4 hours to get back to Hanoi, a bit of a nap and ready for work at 4ish. Henrik Jane and Cuong left earlier because of work. Altogether a fantastic weekend spent with good people and everyone having lots of fun. Next weekend is my last weekend in Hanoi (and Henrik is leaving for Sweden, too) so we are hoping to get a big group together and go back to Cat Ba for another good weekend.

My trip to UK, Thailand and Cambodia

Well it is nice to be back in Hanoi. I enjoyed my two weeks in West Sussex England with my friend sw. I saw my mother and stepdaughter, took them to Great Yarmouth, went to the wedding of my friends Brian and Mazzie and a very strange but brilliant karaoke hosted by a lady man who sang beautifully and took the piss out of everyone, followed by a week in Thailand where I bought a Nintendo Wii in Pantip Plaza but spent most of my time on the Kao San Road before meeting up with Fiona and heading to Koh Chang, which is the Thai island closest to Cambodia. It is very biodiverse, beautiful, mountainous yet lacks beaches, at least at this time it did. The weather wasn't the best either, with big seas and some rain. So it was great to get to the lovely Sihanoukville in Cambodia where we had a great time with great weather on the wonderful soft sandy beaches.

I would write more but I am totally addicted to playing Metroid Prime 3 Corruption on my wii and need to get back to it...

Do you miss anything from home?

IF you are an ex-pat reading this or are thinking about becoming one what do you miss or what do you think you will miss about your home country?

Here's what I don't miss:

British weather; getting up at 6 or 7am to struggle into work; fog; rain; hail; sleet; 40 or 50 hour weeks; overtime; cold, dank, dark evenings and mornings; speed cameras; petrol that costs the earth; beer at £2 or £3 a pint; pubs that serve food only at certain hours; boil-in-the-bag pub/restaurant food; fruit that tastes of nothing.

Here's what I do miss:

Errrrr... Still thinking about this one...

Here's what I enjoy about Hanoi:

The weather, although it is occasionally rainy and sometimes windy and cold, the climate seems generally favourable, much cooler than Ho Chi Minh or Bangkok. Although I haven't seen the wet/hot season yet, having arrived in September. I like working short hours and being paid enough to live on; I like being able to rent a motorbike for $40 a month and a great 4 bed house for $500 a month; I enjoyed living in a hotel for $9 a night inc free internet in the room; I love Bia Hoi, which is fresh rice beer from a local brewery and costs 8p or 15 cents a glass; the food, especially cheap local food is often delicious (although the more expensive restaurants are not always). It often seems the more you pay in Hanoi the worse the experience. At the top of our alleyway there is a snail soup restaurant! which we tried the first night we moved in, not knowing what it was before we sat down. It was actually surprisingly delicious. My students (well most of them!) they are hard-working and really want to learn English, which makes my job a pleasure.

Coursebook: New English File, Elementary, which has everything in it an elementary class needs, it reintroduces language over and over again, has games, exercises, all four skills are covered and it is paced exactly right for new learners (although it is a little UKcentric) like so many coursebooks. I did my dissertation/thesis on coursebooks being too Western, and pushing our culture onto the rest of the world, so it is something I care about and would love to change.

Being able to get on my motorbike without a crash helmet, ride off into some of the busiest roads on the planet without a nanny government making sure I am safe and sound. I love the unruliness of the roads here and as a foreigner I am never stopped by the police (although I see local people getting stopped every day) I can break the law with impunity, as does virtually everyone else, and never have to worry about government trying to tax me with speed cameras.