Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it

The traditional pipe smokers in Vietnam must have been born with iron lungs, says Teddy de Burca Jnr.

Thanks to the power of thuoc lao (the traditional Vietnamese pipe) I have seen hardy men’s eyes glaze over before they fell flat on their faces, foreign tourists upchuck their dinner into the large ashtray-bowl that is always conveniently provided (though it’s for the ash more than the vomit), and once I even saw an old African-American man turn completely white, but I’ll get back to all that later.

Of course “pipe smoking” conjures up agreeable images of distinguished gents in smoking jackets by a fire with an after dinner cognac in hand, or perhaps a gritty old sea dog, who had a girl in every port in his day, but now is content to puff his pipe as he casts his eye over his only true lifelong love, the ungovernable sea – oh ye fickle mistress!

But with Vietnamese pipes there is little refinement. The pipes – like wee bazookas – are called dieu cay, and the process of smoking one is referred to as hut thuoc lao (smoking the pipe) and if, like a hapless cadet with heavy weaponry, you’re unsure of how to use it, it might blow your head off. An after dinner mint it is not.

The pipe is made from a long thick piece of bamboo, usually with a thin coat of varnish, up to 0.7m long, with a hole at one end, where you suck, and a wee cone, or bowl, that juts out, near the bottom, which is where the tobacco is packed in. The tobacco is coarse, thick and black, as if its been burnt and then left to sit in the sun.

The smoker begins by taking a knob of the tobacco and rolling it in the palm of their hand, before packing it in the bowl. Then with a match, the smoker simultaneously lights the tobacco while drawing and exhaling, a la Bill Clinton, i.e. not inhaling into the lungs, to generate a body of smoke inside, which is cooled by water in the pipe.Then you blow the tobacco out and take a blast.

As the smoke is drawn in anger the pipe gurgles and whistles. It’s a sound I came to love when I first landed in Vietnam. It says you’re on the streets, amongst the people, in a bia hoi, sitting at tea stalls. It says someone-somewhere is getting their lungs slowly obliterated.

Of course, you can’t help but admire the panache of the locals smoking it with a fair degree of nonchalance, so it’s pretty easy to think of your glory days of late nights, bongs and pipes and say “step aside wee man”.

But this water pipe may very well be your waterloo. If you do try it, go easy on the tobacco. The more you pack in and the longer you inhale the more likely you’ll experience a head rush. Not surprisingly, perhaps, as you have just flooded your blood stream with a massive whack of nicotine.

One friend has a particularly wicked after-dinner habit of making it look easy to newcomers. Then, of course, as above, they want to try it. One healthy plume of black smoke through the body later their eyes glaze over, their forehead cracks into a sweat, their body slumps back and if you’re unlucky enough, you can start playing, “I don’t think we had that for dinner, did we?”

Which brings me back to the African American man, who from across a restaurant watched my friend puff away on a pipe. The man seemed impressed, walked over, said “how do you do”, eyed down the pipe as though it were a rifle. He told my friend, who still had smoke oozing out of his mouth, as if his innards were on fire, that he hadn’t smoked a pipe since the mid-80s, which wouldn’t stop him taking it to his table and giving it a shot. A minute later when I looked up, he’d turned as white as a ghost, his head was tilted to the side and his arms hung limply.

The Vietnamese waiter said, “Ong gia say nhu dieu do” (Could mean “high as a kite” but also “the old fellow is so stoned he dropped the pipe”). Personally, I thought he was dead. I rushed off to get him a glass of water, but when I came back he’d somehow dragged himself out of the restaurant and skedaddled.

Of course, if all that hasn’t put you off smoking thuoc lao, well then I guess nothing will, so you might as well put this in your pipe and smoke it. Just don’t try standing up too quickly after you do.

Also...
Here's a link to a lady after a hard day's work.

To the brides and grooms
(To be made into a film: Four weddings and a few red bulls)


Teddy de Burca Jnr. doesn’t always have the time or the energy for a wedding, but that’s no problem, in Vietnam they only last an hour

At times during wedding season you might be forgiven for thinking the whole country was getting married.

Driving around the city you can see scores of blue tarpaulin-teepees set up in front of houses, loquacious relatives clambering off buses, with the old ladies in their best ao dai, running inside. On the steps of the Opera House or by West Lake wedding parties battle for space for photo shoots. Outside hotels and restaurants, groups of dolled up young lasses and boys with shiny shoes flirt with each other and tease each other over who’ll be next.

Odd though that, when I was a teacher, a young student once told me that seeing a wedding, or passing one, is bad luck. Which, if you couple that belief with the fact that weddings have a whole “lucky” season of their own, seems a trifle unfair. What could be as unavoidable in Vietnam as a wedding during wedding season, with the exception of traffic, my front door or maybe people with conical hats?

Perhaps, as the weddings themselves are so common and in such abundance is the reason they are wrapped up in half-an-afternoon or less. Which suits me fine – I like my leisurely Saturdays with no pressing engagements, slow coffees, large lunches, unfinished crosswords and falling asleep on the couch high on the agenda. Who doesn’t?

Now, back in western cultures you couldn’t do that – weddings last a whole day, from the sober-morning sermon at the church to the drunken-dancing competition around about midnight. There is no escape. If you’re directly involved as a best man or bridesmaid the build up will seem like a short lifetime.

But Vietnamese weddings, I must admit, have their advantages. You come, you sit, you eat a bit (that’s optional), you stand up, you clink a few glasses (that’s obligatory), shake hands with the recently made in-laws, slip an envelope in the heart-shaped box and head off back into the traffic, a little bit woozy, but happy that a day is still there for the taking, unless you have another wedding to go to, that is.

Though the swiftness is, understandably, disarming for some. One Australian friend got hitched to a Vietnamese woman. His mother made the trip out and all was going swimmingly. She was dining in a smaller room adjacent to the large hall where a horde of hundreds was feasting on the sticky rice-yellow chicken- set menu. When she finished she whispered to me that as the mother of the groom she felt she should go and say thanks to all the people who had come to see her son on his big day. But when she stepped into the larger hall she was mortified to see just a few waiters clearing up. Everyone had gone. Of course, she was convinced it was something she’d said, or done, or not done, or not said.

A fair few westerners have got married here in my time, and to be honest that’s where people start getting confused. The old when east-meets-west compromised rules-weddings. Vietnamese bride demands the photo-shoot tour, groom says fine but no Bia Ha Noi. They all work it out in the end but often resulting in four weddings (and a few Red Bulls!) with a wedding back in the westerner’s country, an engagement ceremony in the countryside here, a wedding for the extended Vietnamese relatives at lunchtime and a party for all the friends in the evening. So forget the “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health”, surviving multiple weddings is a real test of faith, commitment and patience. If you’re still together after all of the above, you should be pretty confident of staying the distance.

A smile for your troubles

Fraught and frazzled, but happy others aren’t complaining, or overreacting, Teddy de Burca Jnr. wonders how long people can keep smiling on the increasingly chaotic roads of Vietnam

At the end of the one-way street of Son Tay I pull around the corner, keeping an eye on the traffic coming from Kim Ma on my right. Both are one-way streets, so I shouldn’t have to suddenly be screeching to halt as a young boy (or perhaps he is a small youthful looking man) is coming the wrong way round the corner. We are lucky. Both of us manage to skid just to the side of each others’ handlebars. We end up nearly face to face – a little tete-a-tete on the side of the road – but our bikes aren’t even touching. My first instinct is to hurl abuse. I am a Westerner of the modern world and we don’t take kindly to being (nearly) run into though we would be equally outraged if it were the other way round and someone started abusing us. But as I open my mouth, ready to vent my vitriol, his face cracks into the biggest smile I have seen since the Cheshire cat made his stage debut.

What can I do? How could I shout and roar if the other person is absolutely thrilled to have had the luck to almost run into a foreigner so early on a Monday morning? The answer is I can’t. His smile is itself a kind of apology. So I smile back and mumble, “can than, nhe!” (literally, “Hey! Be careful”), which he laughs at and repeats to his girlfriend on the pillion (as if she’s the one who should be careful). Then without further ado, he accelerates away, still going on the wrong side of a one-way street, leaving me in his wake. I’ve been here for six years, but I’m still impressed at this flippant attitude towards near serious accidents – but I suppose in a city of so many millions, you’d have to be.

Norman Lewis, the late British travel writer and author of Dragon Apparent, came to Vietnam in the 1950s and while walking down a road in Ho Chi Minh City, in the days when traffic was a novelty, he saw a bus career around a corner and smash into a cyclist. The bike was crushed and the cyclist hurled to the ground. The bus driver bounded out the door and shook the hand of the cyclist, as if congratulating him (on not being killed, Lewis presumes) and the two men beamed at each other and everyone around, as if posing for an invisible photographer. The bus driver clambered back into his vehicle and continued on his way while the cyclist picked up his bike and started the long walk home with his bicycle around his shoulder, still grinning, chuffed that he had a story to tell when he got home and a trophy to prove it.

Now I know this is a quaint and distant image and that these days the reality is the traffic is frenetic and aggressive. Young drivers are provocative and deliberately reckless. As one travel journalist for the Guardian described it: this is the land where people use the “horn not the brakes”.

Though not for Anthony Bourdain, whose love for Vietnam extends to even the motorbike horn, which he interpreted rather fondly as nothing more than a “coming through, coming through, keep doing what you’re doing”. Now this wistful description works for me on a good day, but it hardly works as an umbrella under which all beeps fall. What about the “hey, can’t you see the light just went green?” or the “Clear the path for I am a truck and you shall know me by the trail of the dead”?

If you come from a culture where beeping can result in your nose being broken, this is hard for many to accept. You can try and turn around and complain, but of course, there’s that smile again! (Or perhaps even a hearty chuckle).

But I have seen foreigners lose it, plenty of times, most recently on Christmas Eve in Ho Chi Minh City, when everyone and everyone’s mother were out on the streets. The traffic was a flood of engines and wheels pouring down Hai Ba Trung street. But it wasn’t the season to be jolly for one western chap on his Honda@, who took great exception to the taxi that was also moving for the same chink of space and started kicking the bonnet and hurling abuse at the poor driver who, like everyone else, was just doing the best he could in a dire situation. The driver managed to get away and we both laughed at the overreaction on the stressed out foreigner’s part and agreed “Ong Tay dien”.

But as the traffic breeds like a rash in Vietnam’s major cities and more and more cars, motorbikes, trucks, SUVs hit the roads, how long can people in Vietnam keep smiling at the traffic lights?

Head, shoulders, knees and toes - sing it!

Yorkie Pittstop first discovered the joy of healing hands the morning after a late night and he’s been bouncing out of bed ever since

If a man says he’s off to get a “goi dau” (literally shampoo head) or even a “mat xa chan” (foot massage), it’s often met with a seedy chuckle due to a sordid connotation, which I’ll leave to your respective imaginations to conjure up.

But getting a facial or a foot massage – two things I never did before coming to Vietnam – are routine habits of mine, and for good reason. When you’re down and out. Frazzled. Hung over. Hot. Flustered. Stressed. If you’re sick of the traffic and you need to escape the streets. Or just in the mood to spoil yourself. You are in a city – whether it’s Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City – surrounded by foot massage parlours and hair salons offering cheap and cheerful services.

From the hole in the wall, head in a half a plastic bucket to the fancy AC salons downtown, places to get a hair wash are everywhere. You can spend as little as VND20,000 or as much as $20. You can even go for a double whammy – sing it with me “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” – a head massage followed by a foot massage.

The first time I did so it was after a particularly savage night on the town for a gentlemen friend’s stag night (please no seedy chuckles if I say we went to karaoke). The next morning I felt someone had hacked into my brain with a blunt instrument. After showering I struggled around to a reasonably swanky downtown establishment on the edge of the Old Quarter.

Normally I just went to a local cat toc (hairdresser) where a hair wash and face massage is perfunctory but pleasant. But in the swanky salon the process was positively Biblical. It was a near out of body experience. The price (not including tip) a mere VND50,000.

Then for the feet, on Le Duan, just off Dien Bien Phu street, a long time expat favourite is the enormous foot massage parlour, opposite Cao Ba Quat street.

Most places seem to follow the same formula.Your feet are dunked as they go over the shoulders, before taking on your knees, calves and of course your dinky little toes.

Your only problem might be a couple of lads come in and start puffing away on cigarettes, ask for the TV to be turned on and start shouting and roaring down their mobile phones. So ask for “mot cho yen tinh” (a quiet spot). And the price? Once again a positively paltry VND50,000. (Though, again, an extra tip is the norm).

The masseuse may not have studied for seven years on a mountaintop in Tibet, but my experiences have all been of a good, consistent standard, and as long as it helps my liver, or at least alleviates my hangover, I’ll keep going back.

So the next time you roll out of the wrong side of bed, be aware that this city is full of answers more healthy than a Codeine tablet or a hair of the dog. You’ll be singing “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” all the way home.

Online Fiction by Connla Stokes

The Lover's Nest

While listening to the sound of the recently-nested birds twittering on the balcony, the girlfriend lay in her bed – her hands behind her pretty head – and pictured the child she and her boyfriend would make together, soon. Ten little fingers. Ten little toes. The gurgle of pleasure when she tickled its nose, which, she was sure, would be like hers, for her boyfriend’s nose – large and hooked – would look rather out of place on a child.

Click here to read the rest.

I show you my country...

Teddy de Burca Jnr. tries to come to terms with the fact that from an Asian perspective certain countries, including Ireland, don’t get a mention

When I first came to Vietnam to work as a teacher none of my students knew where I came from. I would keep pronouncing “Ireland” over and over again, with the emphasis on the “r” sounding first syllable, in the hope they’d recognise it.

“Yes, I know,” one would reply, “I know Holland.”
“No, Ireland, not Holland,” I would correct them happily.
“Ah, yes – Iceland!” someone else would chime in.
“No, Arrrrland!” I’d say, writing it on the board to clarify the ‘r’-ness of the word.

This would provoke a mini-discussion, a wee conferral in Vietnamese of which I could pick out “I know, isn’t that the country where men wear dresses?”

“No, Scottish men wear kilts, but in Ireland we prefer trousers, as you can see,” I’d tell them, curtseying in my chinos. Then the penny would only drop for one savvy man who would jump up and shout, “Zoy (Roy) Keane!” the then captain of Irish football team and, far more importantly, Manchester United.

Was that it? Was Roy Keane our sole cultural ambassador? A man who is known in his home country as the Dark Destroyer and famous for his short fuse and ability to strike the fear of God into anyone looking at him, even his own teammates.

Not quite. I also discovered that the (seemingly nameless) members of Westlife, and previously Boyzone, were the only Irish people famous amongst the teenagers in Vietnam, which was nothing much to sing about either.

How funny it was to see the disappointment on student’s faces when I introduced myself as something other than Australian, American or English. But, in another way, it how refreshing it seemed as well. I had travelled a lot before and all across Europe and America I’d met people with plenty of opinions or notions on what it is to be Irish: We are usually drunk, we live on potatoes, we talk too much, most of the time incomprehensibly, we come from a land where it rains everyday, have close relations with sheep and it takes more than one of us to change a light bulb.

But the Vietnamese don’t know anyone of these clichés (truths). There is no “top of the morning” nonsense, no “craic”, no “shamrocks and shenanigans”, nothing but a blank stare of wonder. I could see them thinking: “how could an European country be so small and insignificant that Vietnam hasn’t even heard
of it?”

Briefly, I thought it was my chance for Year Zero. I had before me a blank canvas on which to construct history. I could have told them anything. I could have said: “Irish people speak better English than the English: fact!” and they would have scribbled this down studiously. I could have told them an Irish monk discovered America 800 years before Columbus but having taken a vow of silence he modestly kept it to himself.

But I decided to stick to language training and like to think I left my mark. Out there, somewhere, today, perhaps there are a few graduates of the Teddy de Burca Jnr. school of English, saying “howya” instead of “hello”, saying “‘tis” rather than “it is” and who know that Ray Houghton stuck it in the English net in Stuttgart, 1988. (My finest hour as a teacher came when one student aced his test and his classmate beside him said, “Good man yourself, Tuan Anh.”)

And despite an influx of Irish expatriates in recent times, including the establishment of an embassy, Ireland still isn’t quite on the mental map for most Vietnamese. When I meet locals for the first time I still like to play “see if you can guess where I’m from.” There are only so many native English speaking countries but they never get it. My only consolation is they’d say Ireland before Wales, which in the words of Ali G, is “a country just 200 miles from London” after all.

I should also do well to remember when I first told my grandmother I was going to live and work in Vietnam she gasped with dismay, took my hand and whispered, as if someone might be listening in: “But isn’t there a war on there?”

It seems, across the board, we little countries have a lot to learn about each other. So how about it Vietnam – I’ll show you my country, if you show me yours?

Just 'cos it's Paddy's day tommorow:

A non-biased account of Ireland and the history of America and the world

Ireland populated a large part of America: There are 34 million US residents who claim Irish ancestry. This number is almost nine times the population of Ireland itself (3.9 million). About one in 50 New Yorkers of European origin carry the genetic signature linked with Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the fifth century AD.

An Irish saint discovered America before Columbus: The ancient annals of Ireland include a detailed account of St Brendan the Navigator, who in the 6th Century sailed across the sea to a new world with a group of acolytes in a leather boat! The new world is believed to be America. The boat was simply a frame of wood covered in animal skin and then tarred. Tim Severin, author and explorer, was inspired by the story and by the feats of Heyerdahl, and to prove the doubters he built a replica, called it The Brendan and in 1976 he sailed across the Atlantic in it with a crew of five, proving that it could be done. Severin’s boat is on display in the Craggaunowen Project, Quin, County Clare, Ireland.

The Irish saved civilisation as we know it: In a so-called hinge of history, Ireland played a crucial role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. St. Patrick did not only help preach Christianity across Ireland, but he also he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become “the isle of saints and scholars”, thus preserving Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization – copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost – they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task.

The Irish never bend the truth or exaggerate: that’s most certainly true.

Home thoughts from abroad

For those of ye in Ireland there's a Letter from Hanoi by Connla Stokes in the latest issue of Irish Homes magazine. So the next time you're in a newsagents to buy a pack of crisps or a Choc Ice saunter over to the mags and have a quick read while no one's looking. Alternatively, if you're also interested in houses, you could just buy the magazine.

Be wise and exercise (or not)

Never a man for gymnasiums, or working out much at all, Teddy de Burca Jnr. speculates on some alternative exercise routines to get healthy in the big smoke

Back in the old country, I used to stroll down to the park, but in Hanoi I just shoot past them on my motorbike, admiring the brief glimpse of greenery in the urban landscape.

Now I don’t climb mountains, I drive over them. I don’t walk around the corner to buy bread, because it cycles past my door. I never walk to work, or anywhere at all. In fact, I drive pretty much everywhere.

But all this time in the saddle, as wonderful as it is, makes me fear for the ticker that is my heart. I realise I should be trying to keep fit somehow. But being allergic to organised sport, I wonder what activities are out there for little old me and my knobbly knees.

One friend recommended when I went downtown to walk a bit more, do a bit of window-shopping and the like. But even if it were a good idea health wise, when I try it just seems too much trouble – the constant coos of the cyclo-drivers, the badgering postcard boys who won’t let up even when you tell them you’re not a tourist, the woman who sells green bananas stalking you down Hang Trong street. As much as you’d like to, it’s hard to switch off, put on the blinkers and aimlessly amble around.

In my mind, there’s only one thing worse than walking and that’s jogging. But hats off to the West Lake crowd. There seems to be a never-ending flow of determined joggers in that area – huffing and puffing up and down the road. So much so, if I were running for mayor of Tay-town, I’d promise treadmills on every street corner and stroll to a landslide victory.

Personally speaking, it would never work. Jogging makes me too thirsty and there’s too many cafés and bia hoi around, so I wouldn’t get very far.

Alternatively, I could join those that opt to cycle to work, and even to the pub, but there’s only two or three months a year I can manage that without melting. Then there’s the gymnasium with the AC in its favour, but the whole mentality of “if I pay $80 a month, it will make me exercise” seems like a self-imposed guilt trip, which is far too Catholic sounding for the heathen-likes of me.

Another suggestion was to try my hand at Kung Fu, but for a man who hasn’t touched his own toes in a decade or so, I might have to set my ambitions a little lower.

But as I’ve yet to find a Pétanque patch, or garden bowls outfit, I have to resign myself to sporadic bursts of exercise, which do happen from time to time, sometimes whenever I least expect it, meaning spontaneity is the key to my enthusiasm. Like the time I chased the shoeshine boy from Le Van Huu street all the way up Pho Hue to Hoan Kiem lake after he stole my shoe. The day I was crucified by a 65-year old man in a game of badminton (To make me feel better he let me play his granddaughter who beat me as well). The multiple occasions I’ve had to push my bike down the road when it ran out of petrol or got a puncture. The night I was drunk and swapped places with the Cyclo-driver. The impromptu game of football between myself and a bunch of foreigners against a town’s worth of barefoot 11-year olds in Mai Chau, (in a scene reminiscent of the film Zulu, they overran our midfield and annihilated us without mercy).

These little bursts of activity may save me, or they may not. For now, I’ll console myself with the words of my father Teddy senior, who never exercised a day in his life, and told anyone who asked him why he wasn’t out playing football, “Sure, I’m saving myself for the bedroom Olympics.”

No better man.

The one man travelling expat show part one

(This is perhaps the first installment of several
which are all based on the adventures of EXPAT MAN,
who dares to travel where everyone else is also travelling,
the only difference is he speaks 75 more words of Vietnamese)

Somewhere in Hoi An you sit in a café. It is kind of a boulangerie slash café. You spotted the Mille Feuille on the way in which will be complimented by a Café Macchiato. The waiter scoots past and a bunch of arms and eyebrows rise in an attempt to attract the young flustered man’s attention. You can’t resist a wry smile as you holler “em oi!” to which the young boy swivels on his heels and looks at you with a ready-to-serve smile.
“Cho anh mot ca phe va mot banh Mille Feuille,” you say with what you believe to be exquisite pronunciation.

As the waiter disappears, the other customers in the café are caught between resentment and respect. “Who is that man with such an alarming command of the local lingo? For he is no ordinary traveller.”

Yes – you are no “tourist” travelling through Vietnam from North to South, or vice versa, you are EXPAT MAN. You have no time for these trifling conversations about how to find the cheapest hotel in Hue or the price of butter in Laos. Would you be caught dead wearing a Red Bull T-shirt or fisherman trousers? Of course not.
Nor are you clutching “the Bible” (The Lonely planet) close to your chest. That is because EXPAT MAN knows where he is going. You have been here frequently. You have immersed yourself in the culture. In fact, this must be your favourite boulangerie in all of Indochina! You have no need for a trusty sidekick like Shoeshine Boy, who is giving the regular tourists the 20 question treatment. When Shoeshine Boy asks you from where you come from you scoff, “Vietnam!”

Earlier on perhaps the tourists saw you haggling in the market and although no one understood your Vietnamese the other tourists didn’t know that, they just looked in awe and admitted, “EXPAT MAN sure is one hell of a haggler.”

Back in the cafe as they admire your cultural know how, the waiter arrives back and serves you, with an honest effort of panache, a plate of fried bread with two poached eggs and a coconut shake.

“Xin moi anh (here you are),” he says with a big smile, before heading off to take the other customers orders in English.

Saying nothing, and too ashamed to look up as you realise your mangled Vietnamese phrasing is to blame, you begin to eat the eggs and sip your coconut shake and begin to wonder what will happen when you order the bill. Then again, perhaps you should just do the sensible thing and say it in English. Or at least improve your pronunciation in the meantime. Or perhaps you should try a bit of French as you are in a boulangerie, or is the right word patisserie?

Never you mind.

Get it while you can

Spoilt rotten and perfectly happy about it, Teddy de Burca Jnr explains why it would seem like too much hard work to go back home

In the past, which now seems so long ago I look at it as more like a previous life, I used to do many things. I used to cook regularly. I used to clean my house everyday. Lord – I even used to polish my own shoes and fix the punctures on my rusty old bicycle. What’s more, I definitely never paid anyone to shave my beard off or clean my ears.

But Vietnam spoils a man, and perhaps a woman too. Now, I am living in La-la Land. A sort of personalised Utopia, a place I always dreamt existed, but thought I would never find; where the lazy man lives like an idle prince, where the dishes can be left in the sink and be magically washed overnight, where you can go for a coffee and walk away with clean shoes. It is a land that positively encourages me not to lift a finger in the domestic sense. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that’s how it is.

Whenever friends of mine are packing up and leaving Vietnam they prattle on about what they’ll miss – the friends, the culture and the way she might look at you on a soft Spring day while hurtling through the traffic. And all of that is all very well, but let’s get down to the meat of the matter: what they will also miss, perhaps more at first, is having their shoes shined for VND2,000; getting their house cleaned by a maid for $30 or $40 a month; the fact that they cannot afford to have a slap up dinner (or lunch) whenever they feel like it.

In Vietnam, for people working full time with kids, there is the joy of having a nanny, a cook and a maid all rolled into one for a very affordable fee. The only drawback might be after spending so much time with the super-nanny your kid will pick up Vietnamese so fast you’ll come home one day to find the little whippersnapper gossiping with the housewives and maids down the street about how much you spend on take away pizza every month and you won’t understand a single word.

One friend of mine left Vietnam for a distant land called Japan. His life was pretty much turned back to front. From a huge cheap villa he ended up in an overpriced matchbox apartment. The price of coffee multiplied itself by about 20 times. Suddenly he didn’t have so much free time and he couldn’t afford sushi lunches (ironic eh?)*.
When I did a rapid-fire survey on friends it revealed a host of lifestyle habits that could not be realised back home: having a whole wardrobe tailor made clothes, getting a weekly four-dollar foot rub, being invited to drink with complete strangers (accepting is optional), never having to make your own bed, being able to afford, and find taxis, or if you can’t, at least a xe om (motorbike taxi).

Of course, we all have our paths to follow, and for many foreigners there’ll come a day when they head for the hills, but in the meantime, you should be savouring these moments and abundance of pleasures, because, I promise you, after you leave you’ll miss it all, or at least not be so happy about facing the housework back home.

If you still don’t believe me then I’ll leave you with my emphatic closing argument: imagine vacuuming the house.
A frightening thought, if I say so myself.

*Apparently that isn't true (see comments by Elliott). That character is sort of composite character of few people who went to Japan. One teacher friend who went to Tokyo thought naively things would work as easily as Hanoi - arrive, hang out, drink bia, meet folk, get work, stay - but he lasted 10 days, his meagre savings chewed up by the Tokyo prices and he complained he didn't even get a chance to eat sushi!

A very brief survey of reasons people like living in Vietnam:

From RR of England:
“The fact that I am relatively large here - get to feel like a big man”
“Lots of very pretty girls giggling and flirting with me in that very cute Vina way”
“The cost of living of course applies to a wide range of benefits beyond just eating out- eg. massages, weekends away”
“Random strangers will invite me to eat or drink with them (and the food is healthier and better)”
“I have never been ill in Vietnam”
“The weather, climate is of course infinitely better”
“I am much safer in Vietnam”
“Get to go to Model parties, parties at the Italian Ambassador's house”

From SJC of Australia

“Endless bia and bun cha and bun rieu cua”

“Never having to make my own bed (or clean the house!)”

“A vibrant food scene – street, other Vina, international … you name it… great food going on at all levels “

“Possibility of having my entire wardrobe custom made”

“Being able to drive from my house to Laos (or Cambodia or the northern mountains or … wherever)”

“Only a hop skip and a jump from Bangkok (where I hear they do quite good liver transplants at a fraction of the price in the west!)”

“My employer’s deeply relaxed attitude to results”

From PM of Australia
“Riding my motorbike around”
“Eating Vietnamese food nearly every day”
“Having massages whenever I want, without the fear of budgetary retribution”
“Paying double for a shoe shine, just to make myself feel like a responsible global citizen”
“Not paying tax...”
“Catching taxis, with the same freedom associated with having a massage”
“Watch the latest DVDs for nuthin”
“You can be sillier when drunk and not get punched”
“Shootin the shit with Jackie Chan”

Admit it - sharing is caring

When it comes to eating out with a group of friends, Westerners, or at least Teddy de Burca Jnr.’s family, could learn a lot from Asian style dining

When I go back to sunny, cosmopolitan Ireland and eat out with my family or friends, or when one ventures east to visit me here, while we collectively peruse the menu in a restaurant I often hear the line “I’m having the veal” or whatever dish tickles their fancy.

It always jars slightly; every year a little more. In fact, I’d go as far as to say after over half a decade in Vietnam, where sharing is indeed caring at the dinner table, it sounds downright selfish.

Sure, I know the norm back home is for everyone to choose their own starter and a main course. If someone makes too much noise about how good the dish is you can always ask for some, but all people do is cut off a little corner of the tasty morsel and pass it over on a side plate.

The attitude seems to be why share a dinner when you have exactly what you want in front of you? Get your own steak. After all, you’re the idiot that ordered the green bean salad.

Even at home plates are served individually with seconds left in the pot. It is every man and woman for themselves. The quicker you eat, the more seconds you get to shovel on your plate. The biggest pig gets the most swill, would say my uncle, who is a man that I should add outgrew his bed thanks to this belief. Every single one of us would eat with a protective arm curled around the plate lest someone try to pinch your last spud.

So what a relief it has become, and a way of life too, in Asia with everything in the middle and everyone sharing. Now, no matter what kind of restaurant I go to – Vietnamese, Japanese, Italian, Indian or Thai (Ok, I’ll admit this philosophy doesn’t wash with sandwiches, hamburgers or kebabs) everyone just orders a few dishes and everything is plonked in the middle to be tasted and shared.

Furthermore, new research by dieticians claims that sharing food means you eat less helping you stay trim and healthy, even though you might feel like you’re eating more. You naturally adjust your consumption to those who are eating with you.

Of course, there’s no persuading some people. Recently my old friend from county Fingal, just north of Dublin, came out to see what the fuss was all about in Southeast Asia and we went out with a group of folk to an Italian joint. People did the usual and ordered salads, bruschetta, pizza, pasta and a couple of carafes of wine to be shared around, but my dear visitor was having none of it. Slapping the menu shut and staring the waitress dead in the eye, he said: “I’ll have the beef steak and a beer” and the unsaid subtext was there for all to see: he wasn’t planning on sharing it. It was, I believe, his loss.

A letter from Hanoi to no one in particular, somewhere else, on a late January day

The Lunar New Year (Tet Vietnam) approaches

Back in my hometown Dublin, people often complain about the pre-Christmas madness – a result of the annual hype, commercialism, wintry weather, frantic shopping and the obligatory drinking – but perhaps they should be thankful the city is home to a mere 1.2 million people.

In Hanoi alone, the capital of Vietnam and the second largest city in the country, the population before the Lunar New Year Festival, known simply as Tet, swells to well over 4 million.

As a result of a constant urban-rural shift no one is really sure of the exact statistic but at times it feels like every single one of them is driving down the same road.

Vietnam's Tet holiday is best described as Christmas, New Year and Easter all rolled into one. People must give thanks to family, ancestors, house spirits, cousins, colleagues, and last, but not least, their boss.

And now with an economy accelerating towards prosperity, for the first time in the country's recent history, people can afford to celebrate.

With seemingly the entire population out shopping, the traffic, normally obscenely congested, grinds to a halt all over the city.

Near Hanoi's West Lake, on the way to the Water Park, the streets are lined with Tet-decorative plants – kumquat trees, apricot blossom trees and cherry blossom trees – and colossal pots, large enough for a plump Ali Baba to take refuge in.

As folk stop along the road, to browse and haggle, sometimes while still driving, the traffic comes a cropper. The din of beeps, shouts and motors seems to affect no one.

Blocking a bus and a string of SUVs with NGO plates, a young boy ties a kumquat tree with thick-rubber strips on to a middle-aged woman's Honda Dream.

The bus, lurching inches behind him, seems to be growling and grinding its teeth, like a Miyasaki-cartoon creation. The boy, blithely unawares, skilfully completes his task in a minute.

Afterwards, with the squat tree wobbling in the wind, the woman throttles off into the traffic while her daughter, shoved on the pillion, wraps her arms around the rump of the kumquat-pot.

At night the trees and pots remain, and in the misty rain and chilly air, the sellers sleep on two plastic-chairs pulled together, or play cards with a co-worker under the nearest street light, while trucks steam roll down the open road.

The Year of the Rooster is about to end and after a year long battle with avian flu, chickens are back on the menu. The public at large seems to think the potential pandemic has been packed off, with a nice dollop of irony, to a distant land called Turkey.

During the day, on patches of green, groups of men on their hunkers gamble on fighting cocks. A passing Australian tourist doesn't miss the opportunity for an innuendo.

Near the old quarter, home to one of the highest population densities in the world, where houses sit behind houses and living rooms are on the pavement, children play football with plastic sandals ignoring the scores of motorbikes driving past.

Restaurants heave with punters winding up to the festival. From inside a goat restaurant – considered to be sort of a local form of virility therapy – the guttural cries of "1, 2, 3, drink!" can be heard at one in the afternoon.

Inside men are swigging shots of goats' blood and goat balls liquor with huge grins spread across their reddening-faces.

As they leave, they light cigarettes, check text messages, and disappear into the swarming traffic. Not one of them wears a helmet.

According to one locally based injury prevention centre, at this time of year in Hanoi there may be up to ten times the normal rate of deaths on the road.

In newspapers Western developers try to show cultural sensitivity by saying there is no better time than the Year of the Dog for investment and growth.

Meanwhile, foreign directors of companies resign themselves to dwindling productivity as staff rush off to pagodas and fortune tellers.

All year long people have been borrowing good luck from the spirits and gods. Now they must remember to say thanks.

Red flowers, incense, fruit and fake-paper dollars sit in piles by street corners near pagodas. Offerings are also made to the ancestors in family altars where cigarettes, whisky and oranges - any kind - seem to dominate proceedings.

Gift baskets have become popular in recent years in Hanoi. Consisting of Lipton tea, Nescafe, cigarettes, Milo, ABC crackers, Pringles and cheap Bordeaux; there is not a single authentic Vietnamese product in most baskets. Popular families will end up with 20, while thrifty families play pass the parcel with them.

Everywhere people window shop for decorations and food – dried fruit, candied fruit, traditional bean cakes, and sticky rice - while driving their motorbikes.

A husband and wife point at shops, bickering over prices to each other, with all four eyes looking away from the road they drive straight ahead.

Those running out of petrol are never far away from someone with a 2-litre bottle of fuel. But the price is hiked from VND22,000 ($1.5) to about VND30,000 or more. Why?

“It's Tet already,” a street side seller says with a cute smile a week before Tet. Everyone needs to make a little extra.

A 13th month salary, or Tet bonus, is common for Vietnamese staff. Though, it is said that employees, to maintain favours for the following year, buy lavish gifts for bosses, or even just pass them an envelope, as a goodwill gesture. What comes around goes around.

Soon the mass exodus begins. New Year falls on January 29th this year. Anyone from outside Hanoi makes their way home. Planes, trains and buses in every direction to the countryside are all booked up.

Many pay for the cheap seats and stretch out on the floor at night. Cabins are packed with a multitude of gifts, trees, liquor and the sounds of happy chatter.

Some will sleep, while others smoke, sitting over hot tea, their legs jigging with excitement. For Vietnamese people, there is no place like home.

At the airport Viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese) return for the holiday. Such the pressure to show they have prospered abroad it is said the less financially successful ones rent out expensive watches and gold ear rings for the trip.

The city will empty out in a matter of days and the mood of the country will be transformed. An American writer, Dana Sachs, said for the best part of the year the Vietnamese follow the Western calendar, but for one week they follow the moon. Everyone is blissfully distracted.

After the intense build up every single one of them deserves a break. Throughout the year many Vietnamese have no leisurely Sundays, bank holiday weekends or summer breaks to the seaside.

So as the country finally puts its feet up and dreams of the year ahead, with all the trimmings, the streets of Hanoi are as close to deserted as they'll ever be.

Who would expect the Year of the Dog to begin with the all too unfamiliar sound of silence?

From the archives, if you miss or remember the kumquats

A crash course in tightening your finances
If you’re suffering from empty-wallet syndrome because you blew all your cash over Christmas and New Year and need to tighten up the finances before the Tet (Lunar New Year) holidays take note of these classic thrifty tips for tightening up your personal finances
1 Water: Don’t be fooled by companies or restaurants that expect you to actually pay for a substance that fills most of the earth. Hark back to the day when you first heard that people in France paid for something called “Perrier” and scoffed over your glass of tap water. Since then events have spiralled. Now mineral water is the norm – at home, in work and in most eateries. But why not just boil up tap water or bring other people’s empty bottles to work and fill them from the cooler? Or, when you’re in a restaurant just ask for a “glass of iced water” or “mot coc nuoc loc”. None of that bottled stuff which costs a dollar. The average recommended daily intake or water is 3 litres, while the average cost of water is VND5,000 per litre so your annual savings by not buying any could be, on average, VND5.79 million ($365).
2 Food: Even if you don’t particularly like socialising, parties, soirees, opening nights and dos are happening all the time and are a great way to eat and drink for free. That’s right. It’s a no-hands-in-your-pocket bonanza. You don’t even need to think of elaborate ways to avoid the bill. The main tactics are a) getting invited b) if not invited, finding someone who is c) if you don’t know anyone, just turn up anyway d) coming early and getting stuck in e) fasting for a day prior to the event to maximise eating capabilities. Annual savings: incalculable.
3 Transport: This is a tricky one. You have the option of just not buying a motorbike, but how do you get to work? How about moving house to your colleague’s neighbourhood and get them to drive you. Or move next door to your office, or better still, work from home! Taking a xe om can be pretty cheap on a one off basis, but using this service on a daily basis you’d be accruing losses of VND3-5 million per annum. Now, a true grandmaster of thriftiness would find out which of their friends is going home for three months and just borrow their motorbike. A classic skinflint move and not as hard as you think to pull off. Expat communities are a constant “who’s in-who’s out” situation. One Australian, who shall remain nameless, but his name rhymes with Ball Mavis, lived in Hanoi for three years using other’s people’s bikes the whole time. Hat’s off Mr. Mavis – you were titan of tightness!
Bonus Tip - Celebrity technique: In general, in bill paying situations there are innumerable ways to avoid forking out cash. Some people are fond of the “leave first and drop VND20,000 on the table” tactic, even though you had six beers, three plates of squid and bought a pack of cigarettes. But, we’d like to introduce you to the Rod Stewart manoeuvre, patented by the tightwad Scot millionaire rocker himself. First, make sure the group you’re drinking with are aware you’re in a buying rounds situation. Even prompt people – “what are you having?” Get the ball rolling with the waiter, “So that’s three gin tonics and…” Then you simply slip away to the toilet! By the time you come back, freshened up and relieved, the drinks are on the table and the bill has been paid. Repeat until drunk then leave, preferably on someone else’s motorbike to someone else’s house.

TAY-SPOTTING

A popular sport amongst Vietnamese children seems to be spotting a foreigner and although admittedly it doesn’t take much to see Teddy de Burca Jnr. coming, he’ll happily play along

Outside the traffic swirls past. Bao ve (Parking attendants) sit on customers’ bikes smoking cigarettes and picking their noses. Inside the crowded restaurant, amongst the clatter of plates and happy chatter of customers, I push away my just finished-bowl of banh cuon and lean back, blithely unawares to the world at large. It’s one of those moments where you’re happy to be thinking about nothing whatsoever and feel you have at long last blended into the Hanoi tapestry.

Then I hear a young mother, sitting opposite, say to her child, who is reluctant to chow down his fish sauce-soaked pancake, “ai day? (who’s that?)”.

I glance over my shoulder, expecting to see the child’s aunt or uncle, but there’s just a 2002 World Cup Pepsi poster pinned to a grimy, greasy wall. I realise that the “ai” in this situation is none other than myself. Suddenly, it seems the restaurant is collectively staring at me, in a nice way, and I can’t help feeling a little oversized for the wee plastic chair I’m perched on. I imagine this is how Gulliver would feel in a café in Lilliput.

With his mouth agog, the kid stares at me like I’m the man from the moon, as though disbelieving I could be that pasty skinned or have such an enormous hooked-nose. I smile as nicely as I can, in a sort of “look – I don’t bite” kind of way, while wondering, “how on earth would this child know my name?”

Then panic strikes – perhaps I know the mother. Is she an old colleague or the employee of an old café I used to frequent, per chance?

Quite often I’m spotted around town by such people. Just the other day a motorbike sidled up to me in the madness that is Dai Co Viet street, on the outskirts of town, and just as I prepared to swivel in my seat and growl – “what the hell are you looking at?” I heard him say “Teddy Chicken Curry Coca Cola”.

I realised it was the delivery boy from a sandwich shop, and no, he hadn’t anticipated I needed a sandwich, he was just thrilled to see me and remember my regular order. I guess I’m hard to miss.

Former colleagues and students always appear out of nowhere and greet me in the same way, “Do you remember me?” Why of course, I say, dismissing the notion of forgetting them with a laugh. As if. So naturally they follow up with, “What’s my name?”
“Something beginning with ‘t’ or ‘h’, right?” I say edging away. “Definitely one syllable, anyway.”

But no, this woman is no colleague, or former student. Why I wouldn’t know her from Eve. So why is she asking the child who I am? Then the penny drops, for the child that is. His eyes twinkle and he gurgles with pleasure before exclaiming, “Tay (westerner)!” much to the mother’s delight, who rewards the kid by shoving food in his mouth.

Of course, there is no denying it: I am a Tay. But that’s no reason why I should try and be funny or sarcastic, but foolishly, just as everyone goes back to eating and chatting, I blurt “dong”, as in ‘east’, while pointing at the kid, but the mother just stares blankly, and the restaurant goes completely silent again, like in the Wild West Saloons when the stranger walks in and orders Soda Pop. I guess it’s probably because I’m pronouncing it completely wrong, and out of paranoia I’m worried “dong” might be a swear word with the wrong tone, so I simplify, to try and dig myself out the hole and point at the kid again, “Vietnam”.

The mother claps, the child laughs, the woman behind the counter chimes in, and shouts out to everyone, “Vietnam! Tay noi ‘Vietnam!’” And everyone in the vicinity seems very impressed that the foreigner not only spoke but knows exactly what country he’s in.

I admit I’m not quite ready for Ai la trieu phu? (The local Who wants to be a millionaire?), but as I leave I am patted on the back, greeted by beatific smiles, three fine looking young women bat their eyelids, two men shake my hand and the bao ve invites me one cigarette. Getting on my motorbike feeling like a minor celebrity, I decide it’s not so bad sticking out like a sore thumb after all. Certainly beats being completely ignored, doesn’t it?

How I learnt to "have a good appetite" and love food on planes

Teddy de Burca jnr. has a good appetite, so maybe that’s why he’ll eat anything, even airplane food

As I strolled outside the office, my colleague must have thought I was heading for lunch, even though it was only 10am.
“Have a good appetite,” he said cheerily, walking in the door.

I didn’t bother pointing out in English we don’t say that, we might say, “enjoy your meal” but as we weren’t even in a restaurant, we would be more likely to say, “where are you going for lunch?” As for pre-meal encouragement, face to face with your food, we all have our own way of egging each on. I might say, “dig in”, my mother would say, “There’s plenty more of everything.”

My hairyback cousins from the backwaters of county Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, considering dinnertime to be a form of combat, often used to say “good luck” before demolishing the table and asking for seconds.

Anyway, presuming my colleague might be the victim of Franglaise, translating “bon appetit” into English, I forgot all about it, until an hour later when I did go for lunch and an elderly kind-hearted smart looking man beside me smiled as I picked out my chopsticks. “Have a good appetite,” he said, almost whispering, as though the subtle joys of English were just between the two of us.

But how odd, I thought, the same mistake within an hour. Perhaps, I speculated, it was the Vietnamese being translated into English. But Vietnamese people say “Chuc an ngon”, which is more like, wishing you a delicious meal, or else they would “Moi anh/ chi (invite you)”, on more of a par with the Dutch “alsjeblieft” or French “s’il vous plait”, which is why sometimes Vietnamese, French or Dutch, people might offer you food, or an ashtray, or even money, and say “please”.

Then later that week I happened to be on a domestic flight from Hanoi to Nha Trang and there I discovered what I believe to be the culprit – a small cardboard box containing my inflight meal, a flimsy, tasteless sandwich, with a bit of ham, sticky cheese and a single shred of lettuce and a mouthful of water on the side. Written across the box in large easy-to-read-font is – “Have a good appetite”.

Now, considering there are thousands of foreigners travelling in the country everyday, not to mention teachers, editors and trainers abound, why didn’t the company in charge of printing the boxes ask someone if that was the correct English expression? The boxes will presumably stay for a while, I doubt anyone will crack out the red pen and start crossing all the ‘appetites’ off and replacing it with ‘meal’, but that means non-accomplished English speakers, of which there are many, travelling on the short domestic flights in Vietnam would be potentially picking this incorrect expression up along the way. Not the end of the world I admit, but still, not the greatest advert either.

Trying to forget about it, with a rumble in my stomach, I got on with the basics of life, eating and drinking that is. I opened up the wee box and plucked out the soggy bread and wolfed it down before washing it away with the mouthful of water, and when I closed the box after my “mot-hai-ba” banquet it suddenly hit me: Airplane food, as we all know, isn’t the Mae West, so if you don’t have a good appetite, more than likely, you won’t eat it at all. So perhaps “Have a good appetite” is just another way of saying “Good luck”.

The 36-hour Christmas

Never a believer, but happily a receiver, Teddy de Burca Jnr. feels right at home with the short and sweet Vietnamese Christmas

Even when I was a knee high to a grasshopper I never believed in Santa Claus. My older brother took me aside and broke it too me bluntly, before telling me where the presents were hidden by our charlatan parents.
Somehow, my brother had been a non-believer of universal creed since the day he was born. Famously, he stood up in junior infants, aged 5, and coldly announced to his peers there was no such thing as God, Santa or the Loch Ness Monster before dismissing the class.

A mortified parent phoned my father, later that evening, and told him she didn’t mind so much about the other two but asked could my agnostic brother be told to lay off Santa. Somewhere a mum and dad were obviously left with an inconsolable child robbed of their true religion – the cult of gift giving Santa Claus.

Now that the Loch Ness Monster has been scientifically discredited, Santa it seems is even further ahead in the polls for Christmas popularity. The festival has become more universally celebrated and as a result has strayed far from its original plot line. Less Bethlehem babes in a manger, more wrapped presents under a Christmas tree. In multicultural societies it’s a festival to be celebrated by all religions, these days, even Judaism. And why not? It’s a national holiday with a universally appealing concept – no one has to work, everyone gets a present, eats until they’re stuffed, before watching The Raiders of the Lost Ark, or these days more likely a stack of DVDs, while slumped across the couch.

In America, where admittedly political correctness has always shot for outer space, the holiday is already being repackaged. In Wal-Mart there are no Christmas trees, just holiday trees; there are no Christmas presents, it’s just a holiday shop. The employees are not even allowed to say Merry Christmas lest they offend some sensitive soul of another creed.

Back in sunny Ireland, no matter what you believe, the biggest gripes people have are Christmas starting too early, office parties, the melee in every shop, the twee carols and the never-ending obligation to drink until drunk. Everyone turns into a bit of a scrooge, cursing at the commercialisation and forced tomfoolery. It is much more commonly referred to as silly season. And for good reason.

Which is why I love Christmas in Vietnam – with the exception of missing my family back home, not to mention my mother’s turkey stuffing and Teddy senior cracking out the good stuff. There is no office party, Christmas only lasts half a night and a day, (the Vietnamese only really celebrate Christmas Eve, I suspect looking at it as a sort of New Year’s Eve with less fireworks and more red hats). I can shop in the same chaotic streets I shop in every day. Carols are thankfully confined to very specific designated areas.

For me the “holiday” has been reduced to its core attractions: spending a day relaxing with friends, partners or family, toasting and dining to your heart’s content. Giving presents. Getting presents. Basking in the warm glow of contentment and drunkenness safe in the knowledge that it’s Christmas so you have nowhere to go.

And it doesn’t matter what you eat – in five years of Vietnam I’ve had vegetarian lasagne, bia hoi hot pot, roast duck, a slap up in an Italian restaurant and green curry on a Thai beach for my Christmas dinner.

So chuc mung Giang sinh dear readers: may you celebrate this Christmas in Vietnam with the holy triumvirate of eating, drinking and merry-making, whatever way you want. Just watch out for the traffic on the way home. It’s silly season out there, too, in it’s own spcecial way.

Buy a Connla Stokes short story in a book of other short stories alongside illustrations, and poetry, called Total Cardboard, No.7, at the following addresses: Dublin - Anthology Books, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Red Ink Books, Temple Bar. London - Housman's Books, King's Cross, Broken Arrow Books, Streatham. Melbourne - Greville Street Books, Greville St., Prahran. Readings Carlton, Lygon St., Carlton, Sticky, Flinders Station Arcade, Melbourne, Polyester, Brunswick St., Fitzroy, Cosmos Books and Music, Acland St., St Kilda, Rathdowne Street Books, Rathdown St., Carlton North, Collected Works, Swanston St., Melbourne, Paperback Bookshop, Bourke St., Melbourne, Brunswick Street Books, Brunswick St., Fitzroy, Friends of the Earth, Smith St., Collingwood. Sydney - Pulp Books, 83 King St., Newtown, Berkelouw Books, 19 Oxford St., Paddington, Abbey's Bookshop, 131 York St., Sydney. Or from the World Wide Web at total cardboard. And remember if books like this didn't exist, neither would our stories.

Winter Snaps Back

Shivering in his winter woollies Yorkie Pittstop admits he feels the Hanoi cold, but insists he’s not a big girl, it’s just the humidity that makes him cry

Visiting foreigners walking around often chortle to themselves looking at the locals, including myself, driving around in Hanoi in wintertime dressed like they’re off to climb K2.

Of course technically, last week it was only between 12- 15 degrees, I mean, let’s face it, the North of Siberia it ain’t. It should have been my time to shine, to show my durability, my youthful vigour and non-tropical cold-compatibility. But, alas, no – during summer I melt, and in winter I freeze.

One winter I met a man from Alaska, and as I sat with shivering hands and chattering teeth over a piping hot coffee on Hoan Kiem Lake, he stood boldly on the pavement in a T-shirt and shorts and waxed lyrical, describing it as the “perfect summer’s day”.

So why is it the expat residents – from cold spots like Canada and Northern Europe – lose their winter mojo in Hanoi? The general consensus is the cold gets into your bones. Especially at home, where the high humidity means it sort of rises, like the fingers of an aggrieved zombie, straight through your floor. So in tiled houses you get cold just walking around.

There is also no tradition of fires, and most foreigners refusing to believe how cold it gets, never bother to buy heaters, until it’s too late, hence Hanoi is the only city I’ve lived in where I’ve seen people walk around their house wrapped in blankets with scarves and beanies.

Another problem is most people continue to travel by motorbike, which multiplies the chill factor. The foreign tourists in their shorts are walking around keeping the blood flowing while we’re motionless and exposed.

My friends in Ho Chi Minh City are always slagging off the Hanoi weather and telling me to move. But expat Hanoians would never admit defeat. Sure, down south, the sun shines all year around, but up north there’s the natural cycle of the seasons. We have an autumn and a spring, and although somewhat fleeting, I love them both.

In the event this winter does get too cold, and they say it very well might, there is, of course, always a happy medium. In this case it’s referred to as Hoi An.

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind.

Think you can balance a basket of bread on your head for a 100 metre dash?
Fix a puncture in under five minutes?
Pedal a cyclo around Hoan Kiem lake with 200 kilos aboard?
Well then you could be a serious contender at the ...
The Steet Life Olympics

The skill, athleticism and hard work seen daily on the streets of Hanoi should not just be acknowledged, says Yorkie Pittstop, they should be celebrated in a competition

Watching the coverage of 23rd SEA Games in the Philippines is all very entertaining but I can’t help feel that life in Southeast Asia isn’t completely reflected through these sports.

Many of the events – not including the proliferation of martial arts – seem quite incongruously Occidental with a roll call that includes baseball, fencing, golf, snooker, beach volleyball and lawn bowls. There’s even a game of petanque going on somewhere in Manila.

Of course, the SEA Games is a wonderful opportunity to advance each countries sports development programmes to compete on the international stage, and so on so forth, but don’t you think a Southeast Asian Street Life Olympics would be just as much fun?

Perhaps, if one were to be organised in Hanoi it could inspire other places to follow suite. There could be street badminton with OAPs, U-12 football with one of those VND1,000 balls that levitates no matter how hard you kick it, xich lo races around Hoan kiem lake, plastic stool juggling, a 100m dash with banh my baskets balanced on people’s heads, puncture repairing time trials and instead of weightlifting you could have people tugging carts filled with sand or bricks, or women carrying those dual-baskets of bananas.

Many of the above events would be a tremendous way of promoting and rewarding all of those countless workers and low-income jobs that are the unsung heroes of daily life in Hanoi. Others would just be great fun. And anyone could join in any of the events.

Personally I’d be signing up for the bao ve (parking attendants) steeplechase. In this event, you get a ticket and one by one and competitors have to jump over the row of parked motorbikes, find the correct bike, squeeze it out from the tightly parked pack and wheel it back to the owner. Marks would be given for speed and presentation and there would be time deductions for dropping or scratching the bike.

If you think that sounds incredibly boring, or just plain silly, head on down to Dong Xuan market on a Saturday afternoon, pull to the side of the motorbike park and watch the parking attendants do their thing. Their showmanship, grace and effort really have to be seen to be believed. From dawn to dusk, they are hurdling bikes, snatching the handlebars with one hand, twirling the bikes on the kickstand and rolling it to the toes of the customer in the direction they’re about to be travelling.

Of course, it drives the middle-aged women waiting for their Honda Cub bananas, but that’s part of the fun. And perhaps the women wouldn’t be annoyed if they knew that the cheeky boy fetching her bike was no less than a bao ve gold medallist.

Yes, I can see it now, the Street Life Olympics. It’s not as silly as it sounds, you know.

It's a dog eat dog world (so who's guarding the dogs?)

Vietnam probably isn’t the best country for a dog to live in, but any country that ate you wouldn’t be on your shortlist either. So says Teddy de Burca Jnr.

Fido the dog, if he had a brain, and given the choice, probably wouldn’t bee line for Vietnam or Korea, or wherever else roasts, minces and devours our faithful canine friend. But then, I’m not one to go looking for cannibals.

But besides being on the menu, or being the possible victim of dog-napping, it is still far from a dog’s life in Vietnam. You don’t often see dogs bounding around parks, playing fetch, or rolling around with their owners like young brothers wrestling for fun. Or someone scratching the hairy one’s ears, and saying in a Muppet-styled voice, “Oh, you like that, don’t you boy? Yes, I know you do.” There are no kennels. There’s no culture of people cleaning up after them (ah the poop-a-scoop), pampering them, spooning out chunks of oh-so succulent Pedigree Chum. Dogs are usually treated, well, like dogs. What would Barbara Woodhouse think?

In fact, outdoors, away from houses, I only seem to see dogs being dragged mercilessly down the road with a rope for a leash, as the owner hurtles up the dyke road (Tran Nhat Duat) on his moped. Distressingly for the poor dog, doing its best to keep up, the dyke road leads straight to Au Co street, home to innumerable Thit Cho (Dog Meat) restaurants. One man’s kitchen is another animal’s abattoir.

The restaurants are famous for serving up seven dishes, from boiled dog cutlets to fried bowels, or plain old roasted meat. The dishes are to be downed with strong spirits – ruou (rice wine) or vodka. The executive chefs of the dog world can allegedly cook the seven dishes on one stove.

The simple stilt-house style restaurants are usually roaring with customers from halfway through the Lunar month till the end, as during this period eating dog can, so they say, help you “giai den” (erase bad luck). After the 1st, it is therefore bad luck.

You may not be tempted, but the meat won’t bite. It is however, as a protein-filled meat, an overwhelming taste but known for its invigorating qualities.

Perhaps, again only if you were a “thinking” dog, you might try your look in Ha Tay province, where there is one village that is said to worship dogs as a deified animal – could it be the Mecca of the Mutt? Where dogs are glorified, petted and cherished?

Not really, the village is home to plenty of popular dog restaurants as the locals believe eating the godly canines only helps them stay in spiritual tune – the local Holy Communion,
I suppose.

Of course, back in the city, the culture may be changing. More and more families seem to be in the market for a dog, as a pet. Two years ago, on my street, there was one. It was so irritating (it never stopped barking at night) that everyone immediately followed suite.

In the absence of house alarms, I suppose they were bought for security reasons. But now at night the whole neighbourhood lies in bed listening to a cacophony of woofs. You might think some man is scaling your gates or prising open the door with a crow bar, but actually the dogs are barking at, well, pretty much anything – passing bikes, crying babies, slamming doors and, worst of all, themselves.

Once one begins they’re all at it, like a pack of boisterous men at a bar, barking till the cows come home, or perhaps more precisely, dawn approaches, and the engines start up and the horns begin to beep, and after another sleepless night, between the dogs and the motorbikes you wonder which one you will exact your revenge upon.

Of course, you can’t eat a motorbike.


Quotes on man's faithful friend

“I have caught more ills from people sneezing over me
and giving me virus infections than from kissing dogs.”
Barbara Woodhouse

“To his dog, every man is Napoleon, hence the constant popularity of dogs.”
Aldous Huxley

“It’s no coincidence that man’s best friend cannot talk.”
Anonymous

“Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive
evidence you’re great”
Ann Landers

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.”
Rita Rudner

“I can train any dog in five minutes. Their owners take much longer.”
Barbara Woodhouse

Don't be a chicken - feel the fear but eat, read and write anyway

Teddy de Burca Jnr. isn’t panicking about the bird flu, he’s too busy planning what to eat, read and write this winter

As the Avian Flu pandemic looms over Asia, fear ye not, and never mind the irony, as the bi-lingual edition of Chicken Soup for the Soul is to be released this month by Tri Viet publishing house. Phew.

And there was me, contemplating taking on Gabriel Marcia Marquez’s One hundred Years of Solitude while I sat in self-imposed quarantine. Now, I can happily loll around the living room reading self-help books and, as is the book’s intention, “make [my] spirits soar and broaden [my] perspective of what it means to be fully human”. (Maybe learn a bit of Vietnamese while I’m at it, which makes me wonder how they translate the title, “Pho ga tot cho suc khoe cac anh chi” per chance?)

But of course, people do need to be reassured. Just look at my friend who bought a giant astronaut suit on eBay, as well as my colleague who’s stockpiled enough Tamiflu for an elephant. In fact, I wonder if I should write to the Chicken Soul publishers and pitch them an idea, Chicken Soup for People Terrified about Avian Flu. (Bit of a mouthful, but then one of the US editions is called Chicken Soup for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing Soul.)

The back of the book blurb could read – “assuage thyself with comforting pop-psychology mumbo-jumbo and quasi spiritual quotes from God knows where, which may or may not give you an “I’m ok, Avian flu’s ok-approach” to the possible/probable pandemic. For those out there who are still eating lots of poultry – hello Hue city! – I could work on drafting up Chicken Soup for People Who Still Eat Chicken.

And in the event of being holed up at home, what would I eat? Strolling around the supermarkets I can’t help but stare at the tins of Campbell’s chicken soup and fantasise a highly marketable scenario the papers back home would surely snap up – “the man who lived through the Avian flu crisis in Vietnam while eating nothing but Chicken soup while reading the bi-lingual version of Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

Lest we forget that chicken soup is the all-time best remedy for colds and influenza. The Vietnamese have their very own, called Ga Tan – a medicinal broth with chickpeas, garlic, spinach and herbs and, well, chicken, of course. Perhaps, I could ask for a bucket of a “ga tan khong co thit ga” and stash it in the freezer.

In Korea the secret remedy to fight a cold, and some say also Avian flu, is Kim Chi and in America it’s Sauerkraut. Both are just pickled cabbage, but I suspect that the garlic and spiciness is what makes them so potent against illnesses. An old Chinese proverb says – “eating garlic is better than an army of mothers”.

So with my shopping list complete – I didn’t mention the large quantities of beer, scotch, crisps, cigarettes, beef jerky and instant noodles – my only dilemma is how to stay fit with running up and down the stairs the only solution. But then, putting on a few pounds over winter is normal for a man of my age.

Why deny it? I’ll be flopped across my couch and watching any number of the 172 DVDs in my house or mindlessly surfing the net (thank the lord for ADSL) while spending some quality time with the missus. Why it’ll be just like Tet.

So my advice, feel the fear but eat-drink-man-woman anyway. Let that be your motto this winter and I’ll see you on the other side, along with the joys of Spring.

Drive thru concept arrives in Vietnam
by Teddy de burca

I heard about the capital city’s first ever “drive thru” bun cha restaurant and wondered had fast, convenient, modern dining for drivers finally arrived? But it wasn’t quite what I had imagined. Outside, on the pavement large signs said “no parking” and standing happily directing moving traffic inside stood a bunch of bao ve (motorbike security). And when I say directing inside, I mean, waving everyone in with the engines running. So I followed by swivelling through the door, not much wider than my handlebars. Not sure what to expect inside, I looked to my left, while driving at about 15kmph, and the “big momma” was sitting there frying up the pork, and whacking out plates of noodles. She smiled and waved me on, past the girls preparing the drinks, and all of the diners, all tucking into their tasty lunches, into the back which serves as a makeshift garage. I was then directed to sit back out in the front room, right by the “indoor road” where I ate lunch amidst the sound of traffic and a faint whiff of petrol. And there you have it – Vietnam’s first “drive thru” restaurant where take away is highly reccomended.