Ho Chi Minh City

I've just finally been doing my every-six-months update of my scrapbook and was going through all the 'scraps' leftover from my Spring Break vacation to Vietnam. Receipts, currency conversion tables, tickets, business cards . . . so many little bits pointing back to what was an amazing trip.

Ho Chi Minh is my kind of city - just enough chaos to keep you on your toes; packed with people, and yet full of quiet avenues; gritty and welcoming - like Cairo and Bangkok, only with its own special quirks. 

Quirks like motorbikes dancing around traffic circles in a choreographed symphony. I spent two mornings on the second floor of a Starbucks positioned over a big traffic circle, watching the motorbikes, lorries, busses, cars, and pedestrians whirl round and round.

Friendly faces were in every cafe and on every street - men smiling and laughing, sitting on tiny plastic chairs in groups on the sidewalk sipping sweet coffee much like men sat on plastic chairs in groups in whatever space was available sipping tea in Cairo.

As Vietnam is so big, and I'm getting too old to deal with the chaos of city bus terminals - of which I have never been a fan - this trip I booked a few day tours to mix in with the city wandering.

Les Rives took my friend and I on a fantastic tour of the Mekong Delta. The boat took our small group of 15 or so people down wide and narrow canals to a few temples, a market, a snake farm, and a few villages. The tour operators were especially keen on supporting the local people who live in the delta - passing out extra sandwiches from our breakfast to local children and families, paying delta families to show us into their homes or buying food from the families for our lunch or snack. The tour even included some local moonshine (which I sadly had to decline due to being sniffly) in a tiny shack-bar run by a little old woman.

Saigon Cooking Class took us on a Street Food Tour on the backs of scooters, which was both terrifying and amazing and included some of the best food I've ever had anywhere.

The tour also took us to a local flower market...

We also took a cooking class with the same group...with delicious results. I have a new found respect for Vietnamese fish sauce (but I still don't love Korean fish sauce, which is made with a different kind of fish and is quite fishier). 

There was also a bit of wandering around Ho Chi Minh - which is fairly difficult to just wander around - again, like Cairo and Bangkok, you sort of have to know where you are going and take a cab or walk with purpose and a map to get there because it's just so spread out. Of course, most wandering was in markets because FOOD!

I think Vietnam was one of the best vacations I have had in a long time and I hope to make it back to SE Asia at least once more while I am in Korea.

Mini-Escape to Busan

I'm doing these posts out of order. I should be writing about Mudeungsan National Park, which is amazing and will get its own post soon, but this weekend, I traveled from my home near the West coast of Korea all the way to Busan on the East coast - and I want to write a quick little post with some photos before I forget all about it.

Let me begin with the bus. First of all, Gwangju bus terminal was crowded (I departed the day before Chuseok - think Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Harvest all rolled into one) but clean, efficient, and easy to navigate. The bus ride (45,000 wan r/t - about $38USD) on a luxury bus with plenty of leg room, reclining seats, and a television playing Korean dramas and Chuseok specials for everyone on board, would only take three hours, including a stop at one of the fancy travel plazas that are dotted along the major highways in Korea. It was a pleasant, cheap, and easy way to travel from one side of the country to the other.

Busan is a port city, so it has all the attractions one would expect: beaches, seafood, large boats, and sea air. Busan had a bit of the port city grit that Baltimore does, but with much more upscale shopping and about 1,000 times as many tourists. The city itself is built on steeply sloping hills, so the landscape is beautiful.

The food is also amazing. Busan has daily ferry service to Japan, so there is a strong Japanese influence on the cuisine. My dinner at a Japanese restaurant included a seafood hotpot that contained a sea snail (a little chewy and flavorless), a giant scallop (deliciously briny and so very different from the sea scallops I've had elsewhere), cockles, clams, shrimp, crab, and a very large, very chewy squid. The broth itself was full of rich umami flavor, with a bit of an acidy finish (from all the greens, perhaps?).

These are the shells left over from the seafood hotpot.

There is also an abundance of street food in Busan (and in Gwangju, too!). The one my friend found too irresistible to just walk by were the little fried dough pockets. The dough was partially cooked, filled with brown sugar, cooked again so the sugar melted, and then opened and filled with shelled sunflower seeds. It was like a stuffed funnel cake and it was delicious!

Fried, stuffed dough

This vendor sold fried sweet potato sticks
and fried silk worms. I am not ready
to eat silkworms...maybe someday
when someone gives me a food travel show -
but that day has not yet come.

Because of the holiday, my friend and I were unable to eat at the Jagalchi Fishmarket, but we did peruse the stalls outside (twice, I was enthralled by the variety of seafood on display). The market is adjacent to the dried fish market - dried fish snacks being very popular in Korea. Side Note: I really want to like dried fish snacks - I mean, I love salt, I love seafood, I love snacks - but dried seafood is a taste I can't wrap my tastebuds around.

I was only in Busan for about 48 hours, and yet, in those 48 hours, my friend and I walked about 15 miles exploring the city and taking it all in - and I didn't even get to the beaches or the mountains (well, I climbed ONE hill up to Busan Tower, but that can't really count, can it?)! I can't wait to go back.

Chipinque - the last Monterrey Post

Just before leaving Monterrey, my friend and I  decided to revisit Chipinque, a park at the top of the mountains over San Pedro where we had our orientation when we first arrived in Monterrey. Neither of us had been back since orientation - partly because it has rained in Monterrey almost non-stop for two years, partly because it's a steep and fairly scary drive, and partly because I like roller-skating and my friend likes riding bikes, and we could do both at Fundidora, and neither at Chipinque (well, I've seen people mountain biking at Chipinque, and I think they are insane and also must be really really fit to bike uphill on rough terrain).

On a sunny April day, we headed up the mountain. I couldn't figure out how to park 'up top', near the easier trails, so we took a hike on Brecha de Chile -  making it to the 2 km mark before turning around and heading back to the car. The Brecha de Chile is 2.5 km long and uphill the whole way - with over 1000 feet in elevation change from what I can gather from various websites.

The view of Monterrey from Brecha de Chile is amazing, and the hike is a workout. We returned two more times, once again on a sunny day (setting off early, because it gets very very hot on the trail), and once on a very misty/foggy morning, which was eerie and wet and beautiful in a different way.

The hike is best on a clear morning; it's best to start your walk by 7:30 - before the heat and the crowds hit. The park opens at 6 am. Parking is limited and costs 50 pesos.

A view of the valley I lived in

up and up and up

A view of La Silla, the saddle shaped mountain

Mountains continue on to the north

There are a few pretty railings on the trail. The orange
speck at the top is a hiker, which shows how steeply the trail
rises on this turn.

Looks can be deceiving. This is looking down a fairly steep hill.

wildflowers on the trail

Bird Watching

butterfly

Old and New - Barcelona

        

Inside the hobbit warren of a living room, on the first floor of the Casa Batlló, honeyed, undulating wood walls dance the perimeter of the room, oddly lit in lavender and blue from the bottle-glass windows that line one wall. The modernism is inviting, serene – part middle-earth, part Gaudi, part turn-of-the-century Paris; it is old and new. The room is a contrast to the balconies on the exterior of the building, which bring to mind the yawning maw of a lantern fish or the boney claw of death. A playful dragon’s back of a roof and mish-mash mosaic courtyard would be at home in a children’s museum, and the clay-tiled stairwell feels like a several-stories tall shower. The house is old and new, inviting and offending, whimsical and functional. The house is Barcelona.

This was my first trip to Spain, and only the second time I have spent an entire week in Europe in the same spot. I did not hop a train to France, or Madrid, or anywhere – my life, for a week, was Barcelona.

My friend and I rented an apartment in el Raval – a neighborhood much maligned by the writers of Lonely Planet, but which I found charming and comforting. Halal grocers, Arab pastry shops, Indian Restaurants, and bearded-hipster upscale restaurants (described by commenters on Trip Advisor as “hidden” gems) lined the few blocks around the apartment, just off La Rambla de Raval. The location could not have been more perfect. Off the tourist track, we got to experience a bit of Barcelona life without the crowds we encountered getting off the bus from the airport (whom we subsequently had to plow through, with our luggage, to find our rental agent and later our apartment).  We enjoyed pastries we hadn’t tasted since leaving Egypt, practiced a bit of Arabic, ate a huge Indian lunch of curries and samosas, ate amazing tapas inspired by Middle Eastern flavors we both miss (fried eggplant and honey – oh so good!), and found a little crepe bar which was unexpectedly filled with a crowd of expat teachers, near our apartment that was cozy, warm, and so inviting with its crepes and cocktails and comfy spaces to read and chat.

Octopus Salad with Baby Eels

Spinach and Goat Cheese Crepe with Honey

Left: Beef Carpaccio with Preserved Egg Yolk. Right: Mussels Casserole

Raval was also central. Walk just-so-far to the left and there is a metro station, or keep walking just-a-bit-further and there are the museums and parks. Walk just-so-far to the right and there is another metro station, or keep walking just-a-bit-further and there is el Barri Gotíc, where we ended up eating most of our meals in tiny bistros and spent much of our wandering time getting lost (on purpose) in tiny alleyways that twisted and turned back on themselves in a labyrinth of tall buildings and hidden treasures.

Beyond the food, which was delicious and affordable, the highlights of the trip were mostly the walks. On our first afternoon, New Years Eve, we walked around Montjuic and took the cable car to the castle. It was a sunny, chilly afternoon, and the track around the castle was busy but not crowded. The path circles the castle and overlooks the city on one side and the sea on the other. It was a perfect way to be introduced to Barcelona and to recover from planes, trains, and busses of the day before.

On a Sunday, we stumbled upon the Parc de la Ciutadella, alive with buskers, bands, balloonmen, and families. Lindy Hoppers occupied a tucked-away bandstand, parrots occupied tall pine trees, and I was occupied with my camera. It was sunny, t-shirt / light jacket weather and the city was turned out in the park, soaking up the sunshine.

Since it was a holiday week, the city was packed (I even ran into a colleague from Mexico at the Picasso Museum) and lines for every ‘attraction’ were long. In the end, we gave up on the Sagrada Familia and visited Casa Batiló instead. We walked the free pathways around the Parc Güell, but decided to forgo the timed entries and hefty price-tag that accompanied admission to Gaudi’s ‘neighborhood’ of tiny houses. (Pro Tip: Start at Vallacara Metro and hike to the top of the hill from there, as there are many escalators to help you; then you can walk downhill through the gently-winding pathways of the park and there are great views of the ticketed area from there). The museums and attractions all cost twenty Euro or more, so we tried to find free (crowd free and free free) things to do, preferably things that were not in the pathway of the dread tourist busses that were overflowing with people who just wanted to see the sites, and not experience Barcelona. Museums are great, but at street level, there’s just so much more LIFE.

Will I go back? I would love to go back. I would love to find a little hovel in Raval and settle-in for life; but the next adventure is blowing me across the Pacific to Korea, and I don’t think trips to Europe are going to be in the plans for a few years yet to come – and there is still so much world to see!