Hot Pot, Bát Tràng and the Almighty Clusterfuck
Ok, been a couple of days so I’ll backtrack. *cue Wayne’s World Flashback Noise With Finger Rain* doilduyp, doilduyp, doilduyp, doilduyp.
Right, well I’ve fairly successfully avoided what local Vietnamese class as food since… approximately the same time I stepped foot on Vietnamese soil. All until a few nights ago, and I gotta tell ya, THAT’S SOME EATING! (ok, that’s a lie, I still think it’s utterly horrible and fairly sure it’s toxic, but I really want to like it.)
It was Mushroom hot-pot, which is actually pretty nice, if you like boiling string mushrooms, lettuce and corn in a communal soup and serving yourself. There’s a novelty to the food, there’s no doubt about that, and it goes well with the 30 Vietnamese girls huddled around a kindergarten table on kindergarten tables, squabbling over these meals like a hermit crabs to a bloated seal corpse.
We had a vegetarian hotpot, which was pretty rare in time and space, and shared it with Ms Ha. Was pretty fun, but it’s hard to count something as really vegetarian when you have three serving trays mounded with raw meat and offal resting against your bowl which you’re reaching over to get your morally well adjusted, ooh-so-smug boiled tofu.
Of course, I took photos and video of all this stuff, but the photos will have to wait to be uploaded upon my return. The night was great, and it was lovely to be the only westerners to be invited (except Chris K, who is a much better avoider of social stuff than I am, and didn’t show haha).
Yesterday, Ms Ha took us to Bát Tràng, which is a pottery village on the skirts of Hanoi. It was really nice to spend the day with Ms Ha, and we bought a whole bunch of stuff. A kick-ass tea warmer, tea set, couple of rice bowls and that kinda stuff. Fairly limited on what we can bring back, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have problems with the tea-warmed at customs as it’s bamboo and wood. We’ll see.
The traffic here is fucking mental and it just takes so long to get anywhere. We visited at an odd time, in retrospect. It’s the Tet windup which means, it’s the storm before the calm. Everyone is on their motorcycles riding to get supplies for Tet including strapping several 6ft trees to their motorcycles and buying various cakes, drinks and so forth. Unfortunately, we will be leaving just as the nice chilled part of Tet, the actual holiday begins!
One of my favourite students, Ky Nam, has been very sick and not at school. I called his Mum yesterday to enquire if he’ll be at school and I think she had just decided he didn’t have to go back, as there was only a few days of school left before holiday, which is fair enough because there’s fuck all happening at school. Aaanyway, he’s better and he’ll be at school today so I’ll see him, which is awesome. He’s an absolute dude.
I called Loan yesterday and asked if I can hijack their Vietnamese lesson to watch a fish documentary and play games, to which she heartily agreed with no protest hahaha. So I’m heading up there this afternoon to take their last class of the term. I foresee some gags.
We have a game where we ask what things can do, and ask stupid questions such as “Can an elephant fly?” and a favourite one is “can a fish fly?” which the kids think is hilarious and scream “NOOOOOOO!”. It’s going to completely fuck with their heads in 3 hours when they learn, yes, indeed fish can fly. There’s a section early on in the doco about flying fish and they’re in slo-mo-melt-your-5-year-old-mind-video.
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