Banh mi Doner Kebabs, Hanoi

Over the last year or so, the Vietnamese banh mi sandwich has taken New York by storm, elevating the once humble pork and pickled vegetable sandwich to heights of gastronomic chic. In Hanoi, however, the typical banh mi (which translates simply as “bread” in Vietnamese and is written in English as banh my in Hanoi) is a pedestrian fried egg or pâté sandwich with a few slices of cucumber or a light smearing of chili sauce.

Banh My Van's baguette is filled with an array of fresh and pickled vegetables and tender pork flavored with Vietnamese spices, generously doused with both a chili and a creamy white sauce.

An unlikely variation on the sandwich is thriving in the Vietnamese capital: the banh mi doner kebab, which incorporates elements of a doner kebab, the Turkish staple, tucking shaved pork, pickled vegetables and chili sauce inside a warm baguette. Turkish doner kebabs are usually halal, meaning pork-free. Is this version culinary sacrilege? Perhaps, but a tasty one.

Hanoi unveils electric coach tours of old quarter

Hanoi tourism authorities have launched two new tours of the 1,000-year-old old quarter, home to 36 old streets named after guilds, by electric vehicles.

Coaches, begin rolling along Hanoi's old quarter Saturday, is a brainchild of the Hoan Kiem District People’s Committee and Dong Xuan Joint Stock Company.

They will use 20 battery-powered coaches, each of which can carry 12 passengers, on two routes around the old quarter.

One will take people around Hoan Kiem Lake, or the Lake of the Returned Sword, and the other to some of the guild streets, food courts, and historical relics.

They will leave at 20-minute intervals from 8:30am to 11pm every day.

A ride costs from VND10,000 (53 US cents) to VND30,000.

The old quarter, situated near the equally historic Hoan Kiem Lake, was created in the 11th century, when the 100-hectare area was home to 36 guilds, each of which gave its name to a street. Thus, there is a Hang Bac Street which was once home to silversmiths and a Hang Mam Street named for fish sauce.

There are 4,000 houses here, a fourth of which are more than 100 years old.

Ancient Hanoi recipe wins worldwide fame

A simple fish recipe, created a century ago, is drawing people from all over the world to the Hanoi family home of the creator of the dish.

Now a restaurant, Cha Ca La Vong (La Vong grilled fish) is run by the descendants of the dish’s creator.

The fish dish and the restaurant are named for a statue that used to stand in front of the house. The statue was of a Chinese general known as La Vong, sitting with a fishing rod.

Inside the house 100 years ago, the great-grandfather of the current restaurant owners dreamed up a new way to serve fish, with turmeric, green onion and dill.

In 2003, the restaurant was included in “1,000 Places To See Before You Die” by American travel writer Patricia Schultz. The MSNBC website later narrowed the book’s list down to the world’s 10 “must see” places, putting Cha Ca La Vong at number five.

The history of the Doan family is as colorful as the dish it’s famous for.

In the mid-1800s, the family began allowing Vietnamese soldiers, who were trying to oust the ruling French, to hide in their house. They served their guests their special fish dish, cha ca La Vong.

To raise extra money to fund their rebel-hiding activities – and provide a cover for the house’s mysterious comings and goings - the family opened a restaurant serving only cha ca La Vong.

The original recipe remains a Doan family secret but Le Thi Bich Loc, one of the current Doan family restaurateurs, told Vietnam News Agency the secret to cha ca La Vong was making it with quality ingredients.

To make the dish, Loc said fillets of catfish or snakehead fish are filleted and marinated for at least two hours with galangal, pepper, fish sauce and turmeric. The fillets are then grilled on a coal stove, turned frequently until each piece is a deep golden color.

The next stage of the cooking is done at the table, on a small pottery burner. The grilled fish is fried with dill, green onions and peanuts, a step that is believed to bring out more flavor.

The sizzling hot fish fillet mixture is then placed into a bowl with Vietnamese vermicelli, pickled spring onion bulbs and aromatic herbs. The finishing touch is a few drops of fermented shrimp paste.

The restaurant only buys shrimp paste from northern Thanh Hoa Province. This regional specialty has a light flavor and turns white when mixed with lemon juice.

Vietnamese wine is said to further compliment the taste of cha ca La Vong.

The dish became so famous that Hanoi authorities renamed the entire street Cha Ca Street (Fried Minced Fish Street). The restaurant remains in its original location, at 14 Cha Ca Street in Hanoi, and Cha Ca La Vong was registered as a trademark in 1989.

A guilded, gilded future beckons ...

If stakeholders prevent the promotion of craft villages from descending into crass commercialization

One of the most alluring, enduing aspects of Hanoi, for both visitor and resident, is the Old Quarter – a network of 36 guild streets that flourished centuries ago, and are flourishing today, retaining a lot of their original charm.

Now plans are afoot to highlight the attractiveness of guild villages, which are a traditional feature of Vietnam, particularly concentrated in and around Hanoi.

As the capital city prepares to celebrate its 1,000th anniversary, five traditional craft villages within the municipality are being surveyed to be built up as tourist destinations for a “Hanoi Traditional Craft Villages Tour.”

By reputation, these villages practically select themselves.

Bat Trang ceramics, Van Phuc silk, Phu Vinh rattan and bamboo, Ha Thai lacquer and Chuon Ngo Mother of Pearl are all famous products of the capital city, which have made these villages’ names well known for hundreds of years.

The reputation has, of course, been economically beneficial for residents and craftsmen and craftswomen of the village.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of most of the 256 craft villages in the capital city that are mired in all sorts of difficulties and need serious support in order to preserve and develop their traditional crafts.

The Hanoi Craft Villages Tour program is expected to address their problems.

The tour is part of the second “Hanoi Craft Week, held from August 4 to 9 by the city’s Department of Industry and Trade.

According to information carried on its website (www.hanoicrafiweek.com) the tour will be designed and organized by experienced travel experts and famous craftsmen, and will offer practical experience with the crafts apart from sightseeing beautiful, historical sites in the vicinity.

Luu Tien Long, director of Hanoi Department of Industry and Trade and also director of the exhibition organizing board, said the five villages chosen met all the criteria including history, location, occupation of residents and expressing the “quintessence of Hanoi”.

Hub of traditional crafts

After the erstwhile Ha Tay Province was merged into Hanoi, the capital city has become “the land of a hundred traditional crafts” about one fourth of which are more than 100 years old.

In fact, work to exploit the potential for tourism development in the traditional craft villages began almost 10 years ago, but has not made much headway.

Apart from the big names like Bat Trang and Van Phuc, many villages still remain unknown.

Local authorities have identified different problems and acted on them, but to no avail. They have blamed the situation on inconvenient location or poor infrastructure and invested more in upgrading roads, building exhibition houses and setting up shops.

At the Phu Nghia Rattan and Bamboo Village in Chuong My District, money was invested in an exhibition center, but only 30 foreign visitors have been to it over the last eight years. Many other villages are conveniently located on the way to famous spots like the Huong Pagoda, Duong Lam Ancient Village and the Ba Vi National Park, but there are still very few visitors.

Bui Thi Linh, owner of a workshop producing hats in Chuong Hat Village, Thanh Oai District, says improper investment is an obstacle to tourism development. “It usually takes too much time to carry out a project,” said Linh. “For example, the trade center in our village has not been completed after almost ten years, and no one knows when it will be finished. Besides, we are not instructed on how to provide tourism services properly.”

Sarah, a tourist from Australia, had just returned from the Ha Thai Lacquer Village in Thuong Tin District.

“After reading an article about Ha Thai, two of my friends and I decided to discover it on our own on motorbikes. The artisans in this beautiful village were doing great work but to our disappointment, there was nobody who could help us understand more about their products.

“They live very close to the capital and there is great potential for developing tourism but there was no local guide and it was difficult to find anybody who could speak English,” she said.

Marianne from England followed a tour to the Quat Dong Embroidery Village last month and did not have a better experience. She was rather annoyed when asked to buy an embroidered handkerchief at the village at a very high price.

Luong Thu Hoai, a tour guide with the NTT Travel Company, said many local artisans charge very high prices for their products from foreign visitors.

“They do not deal with foreign tourists frequently, so they do not understand these customers,” Hoai said. “I usually advice the local villagers not to do it but many of them just want to fish in troubled waters.”

However, Hoai reserved praise for the Bat Trang and Van Phuc villages for their “sharp mind” in dealing with the modern tourism market. “The artisans in Bat Trang Village have introduced many new products to attract visitors like the buffalo cart ride or the “Play with Clay” service which has visitors make their own products under instructions from artisans.”

Nguyen Van Hung, chairman of Van Phuc Silk Collective, said the village receives some 100,000 visitors every year. “Visitors make up 30 percent of our customers,” he said, adding cooperation between travel companies and artisans made this success possible.

Travel agents should also share some responsibility for the lack of tourism development in Hanoi’s craft villages. Many visitors have criticized local travel companies for their repetitive itineraries and poor products.

Bare necessities

The experiences of tourists in Hanoi and elsewhere in the country make clear some of the basic necessities to make tourism succeed and be sustainable, experts say.

There is a clear need for good guides who are fluent in English and also well informed about the history and cultural traditions of a place. Tourism must be perceived as a long-term benefit, and the temptation to sell substandard products at high prices should be resisted firmly as the villages’ reputation is at stake.

The tendency to set up similar “modern” facilities everywhere, like exhibition centers, or hotels, end up destroying the traditional, unique charm of a village. This should be a avoided at all costs, because visitors have already complained about the excessive commercialization and monotony of many tourist spots in the country.

If they do not find genuinely unspoilt places, visitors will stop treating Vietnam as a serious destination. And Hanoi’s craft villages will cease to be a tradition that the capital city can take pride in.

Photo contest to feature dynamic and friendly Vietnam

The third “Vietnam Today” photo contest themed “Dynamic and friendly Vietnam” was kicked off in Hanoi on June 15.

Editor-in-chief of The gioi Anh (World Photo) magazine Pham Van Hien, who is also head of the contest’s organising board, said that entries would depict the beauties of Vietnamese land and people, business activities and the national economic development in global integration.

Addressing the launching ceremony, President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Vu Tien Loc said that the contest - a playground for local photographers to show their skills - will help illustrate the capital city’s historic traditions on the occasion of the 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi.

The contest is a biennial event held by the World Photo under the sponsorship of the VCCI and the Vietnam Association of Photographic Artists with the two previous contests attracting more than 10,000 entries.

Colour and black-and-white photos should be submitted prior to November 30, 2010. An award ceremony and photo exhibition will be held in Hanoi in December 2010.