Booth Babcock’s blog

The Perfume Pagoda

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:16:17 -0800

On our last day in Hanoi, we took a day trip to the Perfume Pagoda, in some mountains maybe 2 hours from Hanoi. The Perfumed Pagoda is a significant shrine, and during the Vietnamese New Year celebration is a major pilgrimmage site (it was very quiet the day we went).

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Your 2 hour trip from the Capital is followed by an hour being rowed to the base of the Pagoda's mountain in one of these bad boys. Most of the rowers are women...strong, strong women. The experience did not make me feel very chivalrous.

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Snacks for sale at the base of the mountain. Mmmm, snake juice.

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Approaching the Perfume Pagoda. Yes, it looks like a giant uvula. The shrine itself is actually behind the uvula, I mean, rock.

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Mako covers up to show proper respect. I feel vaguely guilty about comparing the shrine to a giant uvula. No pictures were allowed in the shrine itself, so this is about as close as you can get...

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...except here's the same view from the way out.

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The setting of the shrine itself is quite lovely, if very, very hot.

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I'd say I look like I've had about enough pagoda at this point...which is good, because it was the end of our trip.

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Halong Bay

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:57:16 -0800

Halong Bay is THE big tourist site in Northern Vietnam. The Karst formations common to coastal Vietnam, Thailand, and parts of southern China come right down into the water, creating amazing rock formations jutting out of the ocean all along the coast around Halong City. Of course, there is every type of boat you can imagine just waiting to take you out to cruise, swim, kayak, hike, whatever.

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Boats ("Junks") awaiting travelers at the Tourist Docks in Halong City

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On the way into the formations in Halong Bay.

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Out on the water.

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Some of the islands have amazing cave formations you can wander around in.

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Halong Bay sunset

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Evening boat re-stocking.

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Mako demonstrates that she has no problem living the yacht lifestyle.

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Sa'pa

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:35:24 -0800

While we were in Vietnam, Mako and I spent a couple of days in Sa'pa, which is an old market town and French Hill Station in the far north of the country. Sa'pa is several thousand feet higher than Hanoi, and quite a bit cooler. Sa'pa spends much of its time buried in mists and clouds, so honestly, I don't think the pictures do it justice -- it's really very beautiful.

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On the sleeper to Sa'pa

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In Sa'pa, we stayed at the Topas Ecolodge (actually 18km from Sa'pa). Here's the view from the Ecolodge into the mountains...everyone got their own little cabin to stay in, it was very nice.

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Most of the area around Sa'pa is terraced for rice cultivation. This is the view from our cabin-

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Sunset over the mountains at the Ecolodge. The structures in the foreground are solar water heaters.

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There's not really all that much to do at the Ecolodge...fortunately, we had Travel Scrabble! Guess who's winning in this picture.

More views from Sa'pa...

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Nicest bus stop ever! Mako waits for the bus back to Lao Cai.

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Hanoi

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:12:32 -0800

Pictures of things in Hanoi, other than food.

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Hoan Kiem Lake is the physical and symbolic heart of Hanoi, and lies at the center of the old city. This is at sunrise...shortly after, the park around the lake will be full of joggers, walkers, and Tai Chi-ers.

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Fairly typical streetscape in Hanoi's Old Quarter -- some new buildings, lots of old ones, many with French architectural elements. Shops crammed into every possible space.

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Another typical Old Quarter streetscape. The overwhelming majority of traffic in Hanoi is on scooters, most of which park on the sidewalk, meaning pedestrians get pused out into the street.

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The Old Quarter seems like it is being slowly burried under power lines. How could anyone repair these?

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Hanoi's Opera House is one of the city's main landmarks.

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Vietnam seems to have completely embraced capitalism...Lenin doesn't cast much of a shadow over Hanoi anymore.

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Vietnam has a surprisingly large Catholic population. Here is the main cathedral in Hanoi's Old Quarter.

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Hanoi is notorious for its scooter traffic. Getting across the street is frequently a challenge.

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You can purchase just about anything on the sidewalks of the Old Quarter...including a shave with a dubious looking razor...

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...or, um, the inside of a chicken...

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...or the outside of a chicken.

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Things to Eat -- Bonus Korean Airlines edition

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:38:32 -0800

I also want to give a shout out to Korean Airlines -- who served us bibimbap (sp?) on our flight between Seattle and Seoul! So much better than the airplane food you'd expect-

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The airline also put us up in a hotel in Incheon during our layover on the way home...great opportunity to sneak away for some Korean food!

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Things to eat (& drink) in Hanoi

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:08:36 -0800

Mako and I just got back from northern Vietnam! We eat tons of Vietnamese food at home, so we were really excited to be able to get the real thing. Here are some of the highlights from Hanoi!

For the sake of simplicity, I'm just going to string these along in the order we ate them.

Day One

Breakfast / Lunch -- thanks to jet lag, we slept in too late for real breakfast, so we brunched it. Pho (beef noodle soup) is a breakfast staple in Vietnam, and Hanoi claims to be the origin of the dish, so we were excited to get to try the ur-Pho. We decided to ease ourselves into eating in Hanoi by having our first meal at Pho 24, which is a chain restaurant. As it turns out, Pho 24 wouldn't be out of place in a strip mall in Bellevue. The Pho was good, but not much different than what we could get at home-

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Pho 24 on the south side of Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi

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The Pho itself. Note the Vietnamese coffee brewing in the foreground. Mmmmmm, Vietnamese coffee...

Happy Hour - A Vietnam phenomenon is Bia Hoi, which means "Fresh Beer" -- as in, unpastuerized beer. Anyone with a little money and some plastic chairs can set up a drinking establishment on the corner...and many people do. Beer is about US$0.25 a glass. Whole ecologies develop around these corners, as the bia hoi attracts drinkers, who attract snack vendors, who attrack more drinkers, who attract cabbies... The intersection of Pho Luong Ngoc Quyen and Pho Ta Hien is Bia Hoi Junction, with places on all four corners. I couldn't get a good picture (too dark, too busy), but here's Mako doing as the locals do-

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Dinner - Since we ate late, we didn't strike again until dinner. A NYT article had highlighted the excellent work that Vietnamese chefs were supposedly doing on reimagining classic Vietnamese dishes, so we wanted to check out one of their recommended "fancy" places so we tried Wild Lotus. It was good, not great. A pretty good deal for such a fancy place, though VERY expensive by Vietnamese standards. Here's some of our food -- this is duck rolls and beef egg rolls, these were followed by 7-spice beef, and an eggplant / prawn / pork dish.

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Day 2

Breakfast - we got up early enough for real breakfast, so we decided to do Pho again, this time maybe at a more "local" place. A Chowhound posting recommended Pho 10, so we checked it out. Good, spicy, cheap. I could really get behind eating Pho for breakfast at home.

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Lunch - Bun Cha Dac Kim -- another Chowhound rec, this may have been my favorite place I ate in Hanoi. Sooooo good. You sit down crammed into a tiny table, plates of food arrive, you eat. No ordering required, they only serve one thing. Some assembly is required, you have to put together noodles, sauce, meat, eggrolls, greens into a little bowl to slurp through. For both of us, like US$5 for twice what we could eat. Awesome.

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Happy Hour -- Hanoi is HOT, we needed a cool respite. The lakeside bar at the Intercontinental was recommended by both the NYT and Lonely Planet, so we cabbed out to the Westlake to sip some cocktails. Very classy hotel...check out the drink set-up-

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Dinner - Sorry, no pics -- we had uninspiring "French" food at Paris Deli...NYT liked it, but we were underwhelmed. The lesson -- stick with the Vietnamese food.

Day 3

Breakfast -- ate at the hotel, nothing too exciting.

Lunch -- Tried the highly recommended Cha Ca La Vong. Venerable restaurant that only serves one thing, a fried dish dish. The meal is prepared at your table, and consists of fish, stir fried greens, and the usual assortment of sauces and whatnot. Mako reports that it was very good.

Snack - Random fried things -- the streets of Hanoi are filled with people selling random fried things. If you can imagine it, it is probably for sale deep fried on a corner somewhere in Hanoi. Here's an example; this is from a street vendor on Pho Nha Chung, very good area to prowl for street food.

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<< Interval while we were traveling to Sa'pa and Ha Long Bay >>

Day 8

Dinner -- We got back late from Ha Long Bay, and were feeling pretty uninspired, so we took a hotel recommendation and went to Hanoi Garden. This places is in a courtyard adjacent to the lobby of a fancy hotel, so it definitely caters to tourists. But the food was quite good and not expensive (well, maybe by Vietnamese standards). We had some veggie spring rolls, beef fried vermiccelli, and drinks for about $10.

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Day 9

Breakfast -- Hotel

Lunch -- at a place called KOTO, which is an acronym for "Know One Teach One" -- it's run by a charity group that trains Vietnamese youth for jobs in food service. The place itself is beautiful, very well designed, if completely touristy (I'm pretty sure I saw no actual Vietnamese people eating there). Oh well, it was nice anyway; we enjoyed some lemon grass tofu, an appetizer sampler, and a couple of lassis.

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Dinner -- I eat Bahn Mi sandwiches like twice a week, so I was looking forward to trying the real deal in Hanoi. On our second to last night we finally had some, from a street vendor calling herself Bahn My Pate Ha Phong -- once again, on Pho Nha Chung by the Cathedral. It was pretty good. Not for everyone...let's say they aren't shy with the mayo.

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Day 10

On our last day in Hanoi, breakfast and lunch were on our tour to the Perfume Pagoda, but for dinner we hit Thai Dat, a true street food place on a corner near our hotel. We walked past it every night, and Mako had been dying to try it. They basically set up a table in a storefront with a bunch of skewers...you picked what you wanted, then sat down on a plastic chair somewhere. Then by some magic, once your skewers were cooked, they found there way back to you. This place was absolutely packed, and extended half a block in either direction from the corner. The food was just kind of OK, but the experience was great.

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Here's the table o'skewers, ready to be picked through. I would say a significant portion of the animal kingdom was available.

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Here's what showed up at our table...

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Here's Mako going back for more...

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...and here's what showed up. Yep, that's a pigeon head. No, we didn't eat it.

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Mowich Lake

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:43:58 -0700

One last hiking trip for the Fall before the clouds roll in and the snow starts...at the end of a 20 mile unpaved road is the Mowich Lake Campground at Mt Rainier. So nice...see you again in the Spring, Mt Rainier.

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Lake Wenatchee State Park

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:02:22 -0700

More clearing out old pictures...this is from another camping trip Mako and I took last month to Lake Wenatchee State Park (near Leavenworth, WA).

Lake Wenatchee from the campground

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Lake Wenatchee from the Mountains

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Brrrr cold water

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North Cascades National Park

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:43:36 -0700

As long as I'm posting some out-dated pictures (where did the summer go?), here's some from Mako's and my camping trip to North Cascades National Park.

Mountainwoman Mako

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Yay! Nature!

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Uh-oh...bad weather creeping in from the other side of the mountains-

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Happy Campers

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Fathers Day in Denver

nobody@vox.com(Booth) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:35:12 -0700

OK, there are really out of date...Mako and I spent Father's Day Weekend with her folks in Denver. Are their mountains better than our mountains? No way! But you can drive all 14,000 feet up to the top of Mount Evans, which is a crazy idea but we did it anyway. I'm pretty sure that's the highest I've been not in an airplane.

Here's Tim & Yuki atop Mount Evans-

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Just what you want to see as you crawl up the narrow road at 14,000 feet...animals in the road!

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Mako shows off her "mountain wear"

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