Vietnam Markets - Not for the Squeamish

One of the things I've enjoyed the most about Vietnam is how different it is from my everyday life. I've traveled to some interesting places, and seen some crazy places, and some cool markets (especially in Italy and central America) but no place I've visited can compare to the markets I visited in Vietnam. I'm not talented enough to capture the experience with words. Too many smells and emotions and 360 degree movement. And all of the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and touches change SO damn fast. You'll be looking at an 8' live python while breathing in motorbike exhaust while smelling dried squid and durian while getting bumped into by some fast moving 80 year old woman with a bag of frogs while hearing some woman trying to sell you a shirt, and then everything changes the very next second.  I can't bring you the sounds and smells and bumps, but I do have a few pictures just to show how different.

Snake wine - I tried it. Not as terrible as it looks. Reminded me of vodka only sharper. Way too much alcohol for anything to live in, so it's not going to make anyone sick.

Yum. Squid and octopus.

A bag of frogs for you to take home.

All sorts of pig parts. I especially like the pig snouts in this picture. I'm sure I ate some at one point during the week. I had no idea what I was eating half the time, but it sure was good.

Take home a dried croc.

Pig head with skull.

Pig head without. Looks like someone popped him.

Never realized you could buy so many types of eggs. The fertilized ones with a fetus already growing is a real delicacy here. I never got to try one, but others said they were great once you got past the idea of what you were eating.

Sprinkled in between fish, pig, and vegetables you could find lots of fabric.

Despite all the dead animals I've shown, this is a paradise for vegetarians. Karen and I have never had dishes that tasted so fresh and lively. The way they use veggies and spices here is really an art form. It's worth visiting here just to eat, but there is soooo much more.

Veggies and motorbikes. Everywhere.

A little jackfruit to start your day.

Just a monkey hanging out. I don't think he was for sale, but I suspect everything has its price in these markets.

Just about everyone treated us with a smile. She wouldn't let me leave until I took a picture of her.

Dried shrimp, fish, squid, octopus and who knows what else. And some of it finds its way to my belly.

China. The good, the bad.

We spent a full week in China, with 1.4 billion other folks. China is a place with an amazing history - I'm not much of a history fan, but even I was fascinated by some of the things that have happened here. 

After a week, I'm hardly an expert. Not by a long shot. I do have some impressions though. This is a country with a lot of potential, but some huge problems. First, it has a shitty government. A bunch of paranoid military bastards that need to leave so that the people can determine their own fate. Their environment is just as shitty. Maybe shittier. It's horrible. The air and the water are so foul that you really could not pay me enough to live there. No amount of money.

All things Google, like this blog, are banned, but you can get them on your mobile device (they can't be that dumb, can they?). Facebook? Banned, but not on mobile device. Paranoid bastards. And the week I'm there the Chinese apparently hacked into Anthem's database back home and stole the privacy info for 70 million Americans, including me. No, I'm not a big fan of these folks.

There is a lot to like as well. The countryside is beautiful, some (not all) of the people are really nice, and the food is great. If someone paid my way I would go back in second if I didn't have to spend all my time in one of their overcrowded and foul cities.  If I had to spend my own money? Not a chance. The non-touristy parts of the Great Wall are really worth visiting, and many of our shipmates loved some of the other attractions and rural areas.

Hong Kong was beautiful at night.

Absolutely loved the food.

The Great Wall, especially the parts away from the tourist areas, were spectacular. We hiked 15 miles and saw no tourists. Easily the highlight of my visit.

Some of the people were so friendly. This was our guide, and one of my favorite parts of the trip was listening to her talk about growing up in China as a woman. The stories were terrible actually, but she was amazing. Growing up as a girl in China is a tough life, but used to be much, much worse.

One of the older parts of the wall, overgrown with vegetation. The sections we hiked were 1200 and 500 years old. There are parts near Beijing that are super crowded and that were redone in 2005 for the Olympics. Glad we missed that part.

The beer was surprisingly good.

Shanghai is a weird, dirty big city with aggressive mean people. But it has one of the most amazing skylines in the world, especially at night. Looks foggy but that's smog.

The Bad!

The air and water pollution are just horrible. Hard to even describe. The government will do anything to grow the economy, including let the country poison itself. The public bathrooms are the filthiest places I've seen anywhere on planet Earth. Everyone we talked to wants to see the environment improve even if it costs more, but the government is in bed with the rich who only care about development. Sounds a bit like what is going on back in the US actually. I think we should make every person who believes we should lower our US air and water quality standards live here for just a month or two, then report back...

Old Chinese men, in general, are a bunch of freaking pigs. They treat women terribly. Do not hold doors, make women walk behind them, take seats from them on the subway. Spit everywhere (it's supposed to be a sign of being healthy, but it's just plain disgusting. No wonder Singapore banned them from doing it). The young guys are much better though.

Many people are downright mean. We had several of our students poisoned at bars intentionally (happens every year, and we warn them, but they don't always listen), both guys and girls. I had a guy trying to use his kid to distract me so he could pull my wallet, but just stared him down so that he knew I was on to him. Piece of shit.

The smoking is horrendous. 70% of adult Chinese males smoke, and mostly US products. They smoke everywhere, and have few manners.

It's not a country made for anyone over 5'5". I hit my head on everything imaginable.

Their history is more horrid than most. The worst story we heard is about the poor concubines. In addition to the horrible physical pain most Chinese woman had to endure, the concubines who did not provide the emperor a child were tossed alive into his grave when he passed so that they could bear him a child in his afterlife. The families (men) of the concubines were given a higher status after however. Being a woman is really hard in some everywhere, but some places are much worse. This is one of the worse.

Bottom line - I'm glad to have had the opportunity to visit, but it's probably one and done for me. Go to Japan and Vietnam instead!

Tough place to be tall

Hard to see across the river in Shanghai, and this is an average air quality day.

The Forbidden City is cool to look at, but with such a weird and awful history it's hard to look at this and get a good feeling. The women were treated bad, and so were the men. Look up "Eunuchs" and see if you want to sign up for the job.

Hiroshima - ugh...

It will take me a long time before I will wrap my head around the happenings of Hiroshima. Actually, I doubt I ever will. How two countries can such horrible things to each other, and then move beyond with so little judgement, is really a contradiction and a testament to how human and inhuman we can really be.

The day after visiting Mt. Fuji we took the bullet train to Hiroshima, and had some free time in the evening (a nice part of these trips is that many leave time for exploring on your own). Karen and I found the highest rated restaurant on Trip Advisor and decided to give it a try. Then we found out it was all the way across town, so we made use of the local (and cheap) local buses and cable cars to get there. When we arrived, it really didn’t look like a restaurant. It was small and looked like some sort of fishing shop. When we went in, it was tiny! Seats maybe 20 total, and had one person who acted as hostess, server, and bartender. She spoke some English, but the menu was completely in Japanese, so we simply asked her to recommend some dishes and drinks. 

Students diggin' the bullet train.

Snapper

Wow, what amazing food. Fantastic sashimi, salad with an anchovy dressing (best salad dressing I’ve ever had), baked snapper that we cleaned to the bone, and then she just kept bringing different drinks for us to try, on the house. Then dessert. This went on for a couple of hours. The bill? Under $50 US for the two of us. I actually felt bad paying so little. Coming on the heels of our Tokyo trip with Hisao, I was worried that our expectations for food might be impossibly high, but this place really unique and the food was outstanding. There are few things I like more than hanging out with Karen, laughing and eating. My kind of night.

The next day we went to the Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum. I will tell you this up front – I simply don’t have the literary skills to describe what it was like to walk through the park, watch the cutest Japanese kids in their school uniforms laughing and waving at us, and then 10 minutes later stare at pictures of the burned bodies of kids the same age from the same place in a time in the not too distant past. The park and museum are amazing from the standpoint that they are done in a completely non-judgmental way – no mention or no blame. The US isn’t mentioned. Japan isn’t mentioned. Only people. I felt pretty lousy being a people that day. In fact, I joked with Karen at one point when I really couldn’t stomach any more death and destruction and said “How bout lunch?”. So, we had lunch. Seemed like an inappropriate reaction to have, but I just wanted to feel something other than lousy.

School kids waving at us.

Charred tricycle of a child who didn't survive the bomb.

So, we went to restaurant that specialized in the local specialty – okonomyaki. It’s a unique dish where they take tortilla-like breads and put all sorts of stuff in between, add some sauce and egg and cheese and let it get nice and hot and gooey on the grill. It’s hard to describe but wonderful to eat.

Karen waiting for our okonomyaki.

Preparation of our okonomyaki. Good stuff!

Then, off to Miya Jima, which is a wonderful and beautiful island just off the coast near Hiroshima that is home to many Shinto shrines. We spent a few hours walking and learning about the differences between temples and shrines, and the basic tenets of Buddhism. Pretty dang cool actually.

Myajima and a party crasher.

And believe it or not, there’s more. After Hiroshima we spent a night and two days at a mountaintop Buddhist temple. This was a trip I really wanted to do, and it was so different than anything I’ve done before. After arriving, we checked into our room – a true Japanese-style room with rice paper walls. And 30 degrees when we walked into it and dropped our bags. The monks live like this year round, but they were nice enough to provide us with a kerosene space heater, which worked wonderfully until about 4 am. We laughed, dove farther under the covers, and stayed warm until we had to be in the temple at 6 am to watch the monks go through their morning chants and rituals.

The real treat was a cool fire prayer that they only do once in a while. Fire, chanting and drums. For me, that’s a combination that is hard to beat. I absolutely love drums – not really sure why – and the odd rhythms between the drums and chants were really different than anything I’ve heard before.

Next stop, China! In 2 days....

Hakone and Mt. Fuji

When we reach a port, we have the option of traveling on our own (many students and faculty with families do this to save $$$), or going into port each day and then staying on the ship, or doing planned “field programs” that Semester at Sea organizes in each country. Since I was so busy last fall, and since I spend all of my time on the ship preparing for class and visiting with students (seriously, this is all I do all day long, and it’s a blast), Karen and I signed up for as many field programs as we possibly could. I actually spent every dime that the University of Virginia is paying me on these trips, so I truly am teaching in exchange for traveling the world. Not a bad gig.

Our first overnight field program of our voyage was from Hakone to Hiroshima overland by bus and bullet train.  

Some observations - my own facts/opinions/observations here after a week in Japan:

Mount Fuji is difficult to see in the winter because it likes to hide in the clouds (“it’s a shy mountain”, says our guide Myumi) but when it comes out it is spectacular.Really easy to see why the people here find it so special. I look at it as a volcano first, but it's breathtaking in a way that few volcanoes can match.

The food continues to be amazing. Anything with noodles and broth is fantastic.

Japan is one of the cleanest countries you will ever visit.

It's very frowned upon to walk around and eat and drink, and you will get a lot of funny looks if you do. Even if you try to hide it, they will spot you and give you that disapproving eye. I never realized how much I eat while I move. It's even tougher here too because you can't find a garbage can anywhere outside (because they don't eat and walk, there is no need) so you end up carrying your wrappers everywhere. 

The toilets in Japan are engineering marvels. Seriously, they are the rage of our trip. People are still talking about them (especially now, after visiting China, where the bathrooms have been hideous). They are heated, play soothing sounds. Blast your ass with nice warm water if you wish. I want one for home.

The food is amazing. Oh yes, I already mentioned that. Even on the bullet trains.

After riding the bullet train, it’s now the only way I want to travel. I cringe to think I will have to keep flying to visit things in the US. I wish we would get our shit together and embrace this form of travel. Faster (if you figure in total travel time), easier, safer, and FAR more comfortable. Flat out enjoyable.

The people here are so warm and friendly. And helpful! For people from two countries who have done some of the worst acts towards one another in all of human history, it makes you feel happy to be a human when you get to experience how American and Japanese people treat one another. I know there are problems that lie beneath the happy faces, but the degree to which they try to make visitors welcome says a lot about their culture.

The country has spectacular scenery.

Oh, and the food is amazing. Did I mention that?

The first day we spent traveling around Hakone, which is a mountainous area of recently active volcanoes, hot springs and views of Mt. Fuji when it cooperates. We spent the day sightseeing, learning about the local history and geology (which was cool for me). We stayed in a very nice hotel and had the best buffet that I’ve ever had – wall to wall Japanese dishes. 

This was one of those easy sightseeing days where we really took in the very best of the people, the culture, and the natural beauty. The next day we headed off for Hiroshima, where some of the worst humankind has to offer is on display with reconciliation. But that's for another day.

Go to Japan

I first visited Japan 20 years ago. I enjoyed it, but found it a very difficult place.

I was living on my horrible South Dakota professor salary, and everything was SO expensive. I remember buying an apple for $5 and thinking I would never be able to afford to come back. English speakers were almost non-existent, especially in the far north (Hokkaido) and south (Kyushu) where we were staying, and I didn't know a single word of Japanese, so getting around was challenging. I remember standing outside a set of bathrooms just waiting for someone to walk out so I wouldn't go in the wrong one. I got horribly sick (I think I caught some bacterial thing in one of the onzens (hot tubs)) and had to leave a day early, which also happened to be my birthday. I then got stranded in the Tokyo airport for 24 hours because of a flight cancellation or something (I was so sick I don’t remember much). The food was great but I didn't know what I was eating half the time, and I didn't know enough Japanese to even ask. I was able to visit a couple of amazing volcanoes, but all in all it was just plain tough.

Sitting on Mount Unzen during my first trip to Japan in 1995.

Through the years, I've found it hard to recommend it to my non-wealthy friends because I had such a rough time. Since signing up for this voyage and realizing I’d get another chance to visit, I've been very curious about how things might be different.  I have three words of advice for all of you after our week there.

Go to Japan.

Wow. What a spectacular place, and wow have things changed. Let’s start with the food. Hell, let’s end with the food too. Luckily, the prices for things in Japan are very similar to what we would pay in Colorado, so we could afford to really enjoy ourselves this time. And even though I know the same amount of Japanese as 20 years ago, luckily the Japanese are better with languages than I am, so English can get you by.

Hisao...

Hisao, Karen and some old guy.

This is Hisao Fukuda. He is one of my Newt (Phi Kappa Nu) brothers from college, and I haven’t seen him since we graduated 30 years ago. We reconnected by Facebook, and when I found out we were visiting Tokyo I asked him if he had time to get together. I’m still shaking my head at the day we had with him and his family.

Hisao knows about food. Man, does he know food. He worked for the USDA for a while, and then the US Embassy in Tokyo, and now he is back in the food industry there. I knew he did something with food because he is always posting these ridiculous pictures of food on Facebook. He met us the morning we arrived in Yokohama at the port with his daughter Michelin.

Michelin is a chef, and apparently a damn fine one as well.  She just left New York, where she worked for Morimoto. Yes, thatMorimoto, of Iron Chef fame. We first went to Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji fish market. Michelin showed us all of this amazing seafood, and so much of it wasn't really recognizable to us in its most primitive state. One of the coolest things I would have never noticed is how different Japanese wasabi is from some of the stuff we normally get in the states. More fragrant, and to me a little sweeter. Then we had a “snack” of tuna and rice from one of the local vendors. Sooooo good.

Michelin pointing out some of the tasty morsels
in the Tsukiji fish market.

Then it was off for a tour of Tokyo. A subway ride, a visit to the top of Tokyo Tower, some pastries, a visit to one of the local theaters, a visit to Asakusa to visit local markets and Shinto shrines, some great snacks from the supermarket, driving past the Emperor’s grounds, wandering through Shibuya (busiest intersection in Tokyo), and a tour around downtown Tokyo including the neighborhood he grew up in. Before we knew it we had blown 8 hours.  But in many ways the day was just getting started, because the real food was still to come.

Enter Nobu’s.

Dessert. Three kinds of creme brulee, and a chocolate cake 
oozing chocolate

If you are into food, you know that name. If not, I sincerely hope that one day you will first hand. When we returned to the ship the next day and told folks that we went to Nobu’s for dinner, one of the “life-long learners” (ie. Wealthy folks who pay big $$$ to join our voyage) almost fell out of her chair and asked me “who is this friend of yours?”. She said it takes months to get into his Honolulu restaurant. Not only did we have amazing food with Hisao and his wife Norma, we got to meet and talk with Nobu’s daughter as well. Karen and I did taster trays of sake, and were able to try a bunch of different dishes. Hisao then picks up the tab over our protest, as he did all day. The most gracious and generous host I could imagine. Even on the drive back to the ship, we stopped for more local fare. I don’t think Karen and I have ever devoted an entire day to food, but it was definitely the most amazing day. I finally get to the point in life where I can afford to enjoy the food in Japan, and a friend I haven’t seen in 30 years picks up our tab. Yes, I really do live a blessed life (and I do fully intend on repaying the favor, Hisao!).

Once Newt brothers, always Newt brothers.

I just wrote a whole blog about one of 6 days in Japan! I guess I’ll have to do a second…

Oh, and go to Japan.

Tuna goodness.

Can't. Stop. Eating.

Happy, and full, couple in Shibuya

Oh, and go to Japan.