pho 24 good

pho 24 is a small chain of "pho" restaurants (pho is a particular kind of noodle omnipresent here) and considered by some (or at least benny) to have some of the best pho ga (the noodles in soup w/ chicken) and pho bo (ditto but w/ beef) around. AND its principally a breakfast food!! Though I just had it for dinner like the foolio western that I am.

So the Dems control Congress, pretty rad. Read Krugman's and Dowd's column, cool cool. Still holding out for a Green President though.

Today was one of the 9.30am-9pm teaching days (yes, some breaks in there but for the most part its a pretty busy day) so am pretty tired. I'm able to give directions in Vietnamese now which helps a lot (Day la cai gi? = What is this? and is probably the single most useful phrase to know). At lunch we went to Cha ca Thanh Long, a restaurant my mom actually put me on to, which was pretty good. Their dish is this fish with dill cooked in front of you on your table. The original establishment of this nature (Cha ca Va Long) probably has better fish Caro and I decided (after having been there last week) but this place was very good nonetheless. Afterwards we went to another place my mom told me about-- this cafe on Hang Gai and it was very cool. At first you're like whaaat theres no cafe here its just craft shops. But then you see the tiniest of signs peering out from behind some paintings which says "cafe" and you skeptically dismount off your bike to investigate. After going back there is quite a large and cool cafe complete with the as advertised fantastic secluded views of Hoan Kiem lake.

There was some very high quality folk music/theatre for half an hour before we had to return to school from our lunch break but definitely will be going back.

So yesterday Annabelle and Mikhaila, two of the other volunteers who were living with us, left to go back home (Maine and London respectively) and it was v sad :-( The previous night we went out to Seasons of Hanoi, this nice Vietnamese restaurant across from our guesthouse that we went to on the first night but hadnt been back to since, followed by a bit of a cheeky at bia hoi viet ha, home of the high quality 7p beer.

Thursday we went to the Friendship Village just west of Hanoi about 40 mins away, to train/educate disabled Agent Orange victims, the kind of place (though not the exact one) we thought we would be volunteering at when we arrived but ended up not working there. It was very eye-opening. Equally eye-opening was all the building sites and development you could see on the ride out there (one lane roads being expanded into 6-lane highways, etc. etc.) and Suel, the very nice former Vietnam War vet who showed us out there, told us all about how when he arrived in Vietnam just 8 years ago everything was so much less developed and none of these sky-rises which stood before us existed. Where skyscrapers towered over us used to be rice paddies and grazing cows and just a few years ago. Amazing the speed of development going on here (which one is all too often reminded of when cruising through Hanoi with the thousands of "APEC" banners and paraphernalia)

Wednesday we went to Hung's (our volunteer coordinator) wife's family's village, Thuong Phuc, just outside Hanoi, which was very nice. See the photo album (link in upper right corner) on my photo webpage complete with captions for a better look.

Tuesday we went round to three villages around Hanoi, Van Phuc (silk village), Ha Thai (lacquerware village), and Bat Trang (pottery "village" but more of a town with ceramic factories) with a guide which was very cool. Highlights included getting invited in for tea by a family in Ha Thai (and it was damn good tea!) and taking the ferry across the Red river to save us having to bike 30km unnecessarily. The tea this family served us (Son and Tuan) was so good I asked if and where I could buy it for making myself. Son (the wife/mother of the family) produced three large bags each with a dried plant of some description (leaves, flowers, herbs, etc) and was so kind she took a generous sampling from each bag into smaller bags for us to take home. Just one example of how kind and friendly people are here! Anyway, for a more up close view of the Tuesday village crawl take a look at the handicraft village photo album (again, complete with captions).

Tomorrow is another long day of teaching followed by an early flight Monday morning to Hue, the old Imperial capital of Vietnam during the 18th and 19th centuries.