A Whole Lotta Love and Pics from Vietnam
Categories: Vietnam
The cuisine of any respective country, for me, is one of the most important things to experience as a traveler, right behind getting to know the local people. So, when my Hospitality Club hosts Thanh and Nhung offered to take other HC member Andy and I out to a traditional Vietnamese dog restaurant, both of us let out a bark of joy at this great opportunity in front of us.
The four of us and two other Vietnamese friends all walked up the narrow staircase and found ourselves combining two of the restaurant’s four tables to make room for us. Besides for the tile floors, this place really reminded me of a quaint traditional Vietnamese living room, with the little Buddha statue, ancestral family alter, and two cats roaming around.
The food was brought out tray by tray, in which we would all dig into the respective dish until the next one was brought out that caught our eye. All in all, we tried six different dog dishes, all prepared very differently, from dog leg meat wrapped in leaves, sesame dog in a seaweed shell, teryaki dog, to doggy stew. The only dish that all of us didn’t gobble all up was the ‘hot dog’, which had a quite harsh and unsavory flavor in my opinion.
In addition to taking Andy and I to the dog restaurant, Thanh and other friend Le, both reporters for Vietnamese television, took us to this Vietnam culture festival–pretty much a string of singing dancing performances with a lot of fireworks and music in an effort to try to evoke an image of a positive united Vietnam and to muster patriotism among its people for the upcoming WTO meeting in Hanoi. 
Andy I and our other Belgian friend Franklin where the only Westerners at the festival and we received a grand red carpet welcoming, in which we walked through two rows of Vietnamese models/performers dressed in Traditional Vietnamese attire. While strolling through the corridor of beautiful faces, I was giving my best high and mighty Miss America hand wave impersonation to the onlooking masses of spectators and the flashing cameras of the paparazzi. 
After sitting through the two hours of festival performances, Andy and I were both interviewed by TV stations–Andy on the local Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) station, and I on one of the two National Vietnamese stations. My interview wasn’t really too demanding, basically just a few questions about my views about Vietnam as a Westerner traveler, and what I thought about the festival etc. A pretty soft ball interview. Andy on the other hand, was asked such fun and challenging questions as: “Do you believe that Vietnam is ready to join the WTO and do you see any possible obstacles/hindrances?”. 
The next day Andy told us that he saw his interview on TV and it was dubbed over in Vietnamese by a women. The local station also showed us all walking down the welcoming strip, but unfortunately they cut out my incessant Princess Di waving. Thungh said that my interview can be accessed on the internet, so Ill put up a post with that link as soon as I get word from her.
Now I’m in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penn, and then I head up to Laos, both of which are countries where a descent internet connection might not be the easiest thing to find. I will try to put up some pics from here at the next available opportunity, but who knows when that time may be, as now remote villages and jungles are what’s on my mind.
6 Responses to “A Whole Lotta Love and Pics from Vietnam”
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November 23rd, 2006 at 3:47 am
Hiya Tim!
You are much braver/more culturally independent in regard to food-choices that I was when I was when I was travelling! I remember the usually-skinned dogs hanging out in the butcher-shops and restaurants in Hong Kong, waiting to be chosen for someone’s dinner… When I travelled, I learned early-on NEVER to ask what I was eating until I had finished the dish- and often not even then, for fear of the reply! I knew that I would have had trouble finishing a dish- no matter HOW good it tasted!- if I KNEW that it was dog or cat or monkey or cockroach (etc) that I was in the process of eating… My cultural food-biases couldn’t go through total amelioration in such a short time-period….
Your photos are WONDERFUL as is your description of your experiences…
I can’t wait until you post the website where I can read your TV interview… Too bad you didn’t get to see yourself on TV… I saw myself on Danish TV once, for a short interview I had while I was working in Tvind- It is WEIRD seeing oneself on TV!
I’m interested in understanding more about the cultural differences- and the differences in the ways of living- in the people of Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos/etc… Do you stick around long enough to be able to absorb the differences?? Of course, within each country there are cultural differences between people of different parts of the country, too….
I enjoy your blogs SO much! Looking forward to the next one when you emerge from the jungles and reach your next computer!
Love from Nita
November 23rd, 2006 at 8:21 am
I don’t think bravery is really the right word to describe my culinary ‘adventures’. It seems to me more of just not really buying into our cultrually imbetted irrationalities when it comes to our perceptions of food. Yea, dogs are really so gosh darn cute, but you know, so are cows or pigs or chickens if you come in contact with them on a regular basis, like we do with our pets. Look in a cows eyes, I mean IN their eyes, and tell me they’re any less worthy of appearing on the main dish of tonights dinner than any other animal. Since we don’t have cows and chickens running around our homes, like dogs or cats, their deaths that we cause by our consumption feel a lot more distant and their pains so much more remote. Fact of the matter is, there are very compelling arguments for not eating meat at all, but if you are going to go down that carnivore path, it makes no sense to seperate some types of meat as being worthy for our almighty consumption, and others not. It’s all just our self-constructed biases…
Of course though, I am being a big fat hypocrit, because although I have no problems with eating other mammals, fish, reptiles, or amphibians, the idea of insects is a personal stigma that I am trying to battle, unsuccessfully right now. Here in Cambodia, street vendors sell all types of fried exoskeleton goodies, but I haven’t been able to bring myself up to the plate to taste yet. There’s just something that makes my skin crawl about the thought of spiders or cockroaches.
Ill be here in Phnom Penn where descent internet access is available, so Ill put up some pics within the next couple of days, and hopefully answer your cultural questions, if not this entry, then one soon to come.
December 11th, 2006 at 11:56 am
When I had my first bowl of dog stew, everything was great until I saw the bones. They were too small to be cow bones and my imagination started to run away from me. That’s the only time (in my adult life) that emotional affectation has made it difficult for me to eat something.
I can’t agree more that cuisine is a look into culture. What people eat and how they eat it is an adventure in history, economics, geography, sociology, religion and many other forces that shape a people and make them who they are.
And how they eat it too . . . In Taiwan one toasts everything and everyone at a nice meal. I’ve counted over 25 separate toasts at a single meal. In Ethiopia, everyone under the same roof always shares their food . . . always no matter how many people or how much food there is. A friend that didn’t know this brought a big-mac to an Ethiopian household. He skipped lunch and figured that he would eat the big-mac at his friend’s house. How naive. The big-mac was cut into eight pieces. 1/8 of a big-mac isn’t a very big lunch . . . Live and learn.
June 25th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
[…] In addition to taking Andy and I to the dog restaurant, Thanh and other friend Le, both reporters for Vietnamese television, took us to this Vietnam culture festival–pretty much a string of singing dancing performances with a lot of … …more […]
June 26th, 2007 at 3:15 am
[…] In addition to taking Andy and I to the dog restaurant, Thanh and other friend Le, both reporters for Vietnamese television, took us to this Vietnam culture festival–pretty much a string of singing dancing performances with a lot of … …more […]
July 4th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
[…] In addition to taking Andy and I to the dog restaurant, Thanh and other friend Le, both reporters for Vietnamese television, took us to this Vietnam culture festival–pretty much a string of singing dancing performances with a lot of … …more […]