Winter in Hanoi – Food and Football Hooligans

Sunday, 4 December 2005

(Suzi, Lien and I, December 2005)

It started getting cold here a few weeks ago, when I returned from Thailand, but now winter has truly settled into Hanoi. Every night, I can wander around the streets and buy roasted potatoes (2000-3000 VND per piece), grilled or steamed corn (2000 per piece) or roasted chestnuts (3500-5000 per 100g). They roast chestnuts in a wok over a small cylindrical cast-iron brazier here. In the search for protein sources to replace eggs and chicken - which are no longer eaten here - I eat chestnuts every couple of days. There are a couple of places where you can buy certified avian flu-free eggs, but they are expensive and rare.

(Koto staff at Christmas lunch)

Yet we can still buy tropical fruits that have been trucked up from the south. Mangos, pineapples. dragonfruit, even tiny longan. I've also seen mangosteen (my favourite fruit), custard apples (my second fave) and rambutans. We can also get the more temperate fruits, such as passionfruit (a steal at 13000 VND per kg), tiny delicious mandarins, and strawberries (30000 VND per kg). My housemate and good friend Suzi, who has been coming to Vietnam regularly for the past 9 years, welcomed her parents on a 10-day trip to Vietnam on Friday. It was their first visit, and important to her, as Vietnam is so much part of her life. She hunted around for a variety of fruits for them to taste (some for the first time, even though they are from California). And we had a gluten free pancake gluten free to welcome them on Saturday :-)

(Christmas tree at Athalia, Maarten, Sarah and Tara's house 2005)

My other housemates, Lien and Jackie also attended, and we ate cinnamon and vanilla silver dollar pancakes (known as pikelets in Oz) with fruit salad, nutella and pomelo jam. We accompanied it with freshly brewed Vietnamese coffee, imported expensive pink grapefruit juice and banana smoothies. It was a lovely morning, and not too cold.



(dancing Koto staff member, Christmas day lunch)

The previous night, Hanoi had erupted in a frenzy of national pride as Vietnam advanced to the finals of the U23 mens soccer at the South East Asian Games, beating the Phillipines. People took to the streets on their motorbikes, cheering, waving flags (red with a yellow star in the middle) and trailing red banners and ribbons. Sitting at Dragonfly bar exploring the 205 cocktail menu with my Danish friend Mette, I was fairly well insulated from it all, although even we were scared to cross the road with so much traffic. But as other expats. came in, they complained of the incredibly long travel times, and showed me their wild photographs. It made Grand Final Night in Melbourne look incredibly tame. I got my camera ready for the final last night. But unfortunately Thailand (reigning champions for the past six years) won, so Hanoi was silent. But there'll be other matches, other festivals. There's always something going on in this town.