OurManEverywhere has snapped a great shot here of some pond-like body of water reflecting a bright yellow house somewhere in Hoi An, Vietnam. This picture wouldn’t be near as perfect without the imperfect little ripples upsetting the water ever so gently. Great job!
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Here’s a good Vietnamese word I ran across recently. Just make note that I hadn’t all the proper accent characters for some of the letters. For instance the ‘d’ in dô should have that line that crosses over the top portion. If you’re familiar with Vietnamese at all you’ll know what I’m talking about. If not, this is great opportunity to get familiar with the lang!
Today’s word is a Vietnamese word used in Vietnam:
bàn dô – map
To continue learning Vietnamese online start with phrase list found at the NY Public Library. This Wanna Learn / Geocities page has some free words and phrases listed. It was one of few I could find online for free though you won’t get far. Rosetta Stone offers audio and web courses for a fee and there’s always the opportunity to take a Vietnamese language class in Hanoi, Vietnam with CIEE. For those flying through the country for just a few short days pick up the phrasebook.
Past Vietnamese words: Xe Ðap, xinh xinh, cam hut thuoc, tam biêt
A friend recommended an adventure that I’m dying to do: a week motorcycling throughout Vietnam. He’s done it two years in a row, and recommends an outfit called Explore Indochina. The outfit is apparently run an Aussie and a Brit that act as tour guides and speak fluent Vietnamese.
They host a couple of rides each month, and cover different areas of the country (as well as Laos and Cambodia). They put together only small groups (5 or less).
Picture this: 6+ days straddling a 125cc two-stroke Belorussian motorbike, rolling through the beautiful scenery of Vietnam. It’s muddy, it’s wet, it’s real. That’s my idea of cruising!
Makes me want to dust off that copy of Jupiter’s Travels.
Thanks to a tip from Willy regarding yesterday’s Burning Man photos, I popped over to check out the Flickr site of Lou Piote. His Burning man photos are pretty cool, but I was quickly distracted by his “Markets of Vietnam” category.
I love foreign markets and Piote so perfectly captures their bizarreness and beauty that we are therefore honoring him with Photo of the Day status for four of his shots–although I could have included nearly every one of them.
Chickens for sale at Sa Pa Market
Live eels. Mmmm…..
Okay, I stole the catchy headline from the post I’m linking to, but it was so brilliant I couldn’t resist. Thanks go out to the culinary adventurers over at Deep End Dining who were inspired enough by the recent Snakes on a Plane movie to seek out “snakes on a plate” and eat them.
The location, no surprise here, was a Vietnamese restaurant in Rosemead–a suburb of Los Angeles that has a very large Vietnamese population. Phong Dinh Restaurant caters to this population by bringing a bit of Asia to mainland America–the strange bits of Asia, mind you. Indeed, food critic Eddie, describes how the restaurant’s “menu reads like an inventory list for a small zoo.” In addition to snakes, the restaurant offers Kangaroo, ostrich, alligator and numerous other two- and four-legged animals for your eating pleasure. Yum yum!
Eddie, however, stuck with the snake theme out of homage to the film. He ordered “charbroiled, grounded snake in la lot leaves” and was woefully disappointed by the overpowering flavors of the dish. Hoping for a better experience, he switched to a close cousin to snake and was equally disenchanted with the over-seasoning of his “eel with lemon grass and chili” entrée.
Sadly, it can be said that the food was as much of a letdown as the movie which inspired it. If you really want good snake, get on a plane and fly to Vietnam where there is plenty of “mother****ing snakes!”