Cha Ca La Vong

Hot pot! With oil! And delicious fish.
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Shoot!  I wrote an entry earlier this morning and then I accidentally navigated to another page and lost all the text that I had written.

So I'm going to try to rewrite most of it now.  We've had many flights that have been delayed and our flight today to Siem Reap (in Cambodia, near Angkor Wat) is one of those delayed flights.

There is also no designated order for who is supposed to when. It's just a mad rush.

Crazy streets. Do you see how people are going different ways in the same intersection at the same time? Try walking here with that!
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Hanoi is supposed to be famous for this fried fish, called cha ca.  There's this one particular restaurant that has been open for over 100 years where this is the specialty.  This is the only dish they serve - they try to make that clear to all the foreigners with lots of signs.  I prefer it this way, one restaurant one dish, I mean.  I'd rather have a restaurant get really good at one dish and then when I want that dish, I know where to go.  Since this restaurant has made quite a name for itself, it's more expensive compared to other food in Vietnam.  But I feel like if you've only got 1 chance to eat this food, you've got to go to this place and not one of the other places.

So what's this dish like?  It's basically like hot pot, but with oil instead of water.  You get a saute pan filled with oil and the seasoned fish.  It sits on top of this mortar-like thing filled with hot coals.  And then on the side, you get dishes of green veggies (dill, green onions, and something else - morning glory?  kong xin tzai?), peanuts, fish sauce, rice noodles, and more herbs.  Watching others, we figured out that you're supposed to put the veggies in with the fish.  Then you get some noodles, some fish and veggies, and put in some of the other things, and then you eat!  It was really delicious.  And fun.  I like being able to put together components of my own meal.  It's like you're cooking, but not doing any of the prep.  They should have more places like this in the US.

The fish was very tasty - firm but delicately textured.  There was turmeric in the seasoning.  And I couldn't figure anything else out.  I think not being able to figure out how your food was put together makes it more delicious.  Maybe because it's less obvious?  More magical?  And the dill fit very well here.  I've never seen dill in Asian cooking before, and I've seen it a number of times here in Vietnam.  I like the dill with the seasonings here.  It seems like a better fit than the way you see dill used back at home.

The setup of the tables was like the bun cha place - everyone sitting together.  I wonder if in the past, the communal tables resulted in people talking among the different groups more often.  Or maybe in the past, people went to restaurants by themselves so it was good to have other people to talk to?  Cause these days, the different groups don't interact together and sitting together at the same table seems like it is either a remnant of a different era or it's a space saving thing.

Everyone being so packed in made it easy to see what other people were doing... I peeked at other people's bills because I wanted to see if everyone was charged the same amount.  Yep, everyone was charged the same amount.  Maybe we were wrong about the previous bun cha restaurant.  Maybe not.  I don't want to point fingers if I'm wrong, and I don't want to not express my concerns.  I'll just leave it like that.

Another example of Lonely Planet being lacking in accuracy.  I have a Lonely Planet food guide for Vietnam.  So far, mostly no problems there.  I vaguely remember seeing an ingredient described inaccurately, but I'm not sure.  But in the regular Lonely Planet Vietnam book, the writers describe cha ca as "little fish hamburgers."  Now given my description, and the photos, does this remind you at all of hamburgers?  Not even vaguely like Filet-o-Fish from McDonalds.

My heart will be much calmer leaving Hanoi.  The streets are so unimaginably crazy.  The sidewalks are filled with parked motorbikes, people eating, cooking, cleaning dishes, giving haircuts, fixing things, everything.  So there's no room to walk there and pedestrians are forced to go to the street to walk.  But the streets are filled with bicycles, motorbikes, cyclos (tuk tuk like things), cars, women walking with yokes carrying baskets, plus the pedestrians.  And there are no designated lanes or anything.  There is also no designated order for who is supposed to when.  It's just a mad rush.  At intersections, everyone just goes and tries to stay alive.  So it is impossible to have a relaxing walk in Hanoi, at least the Old Quarter.  In fact, if I weren't sitting here at the airport, I would think it would be impossible to get out of such a situation alive.  Plus everyone honks!  I guess it's to let people know where you are, which seems reasonable if you're going to have no order to who goes when.  But it adds to the stress level.

Another crazy thing about Vietnam.  The exchange rate is 15,000 dong to 1 dollar.  It makes it quite confusing for negotiating and interpreting prices here.  They have lots of denominations in their bills - 100000, 50000, 20000, 10000, 5000, 2000, 1000, plus lots of coins.  So it's hard to keep the different ones straight.  And I'm always worried that I'm going to give 100000 instead of 10000 because I can't keep track of so many zeroes.  A lot of the people who interact with tourists also accept US dollars.  So when I've negotiated prices, they'll switch between giving numbers in dollars and dong.  It makes me very confused to have to negotiate prices with two different currencies.  I think they may do that to make people think that they're getting a better deal when they're not.  Okay, you won't take 30,000 dong?  Then how about 2 dollars?  Also, when people here say 15, it often sounds like 50.  And 16 like 60.  This has led to confusion as well, where we think we've agreed to pay 15 but they expect us to pay 50.  Or maybe they take advantage of these language confusions to try to get more money?

See you in Cambodia!