11 posts tagged “mako”
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).
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.
Snacks for sale at the base of the mountain. Mmmm, snake juice.
Approaching the Perfume Pagoda. Yes, it looks like a giant uvula. The shrine itself is actually behind the uvula, I mean, rock.
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...
...except here's the same view from the way out.
The setting of the shrine itself is quite lovely, if very, very hot.
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.
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.
Boats ("Junks") awaiting travelers at the Tourist Docks in Halong City
On the way into the formations in Halong Bay.
Out on the water.
Some of the islands have amazing cave formations you can wander around in.
Halong Bay sunset
Evening boat re-stocking.
Mako demonstrates that she has no problem living the yacht lifestyle.
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.
On the sleeper to Sa'pa
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.
Most of the area around Sa'pa is terraced for rice cultivation. This is the view from our cabin-
Sunset over the mountains at the Ecolodge. The structures in the foreground are solar water heaters.
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...
Nicest bus stop ever! Mako waits for the bus back to Lao Cai.
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-
Pho 24 on the south side of Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi
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-
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.
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.
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.
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-
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.
<< 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.
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.
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.
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.
Here's the table o'skewers, ready to be picked through. I would say a significant portion of the animal kingdom was available.
Here's what showed up at our table...
Here's Mako going back for more...
...and here's what showed up. Yep, that's a pigeon head. No, we didn't eat it.
So Mako and I spent the holiday weekend in Vancouver, and were all excited to hike in the North Cascades on our way back. Of course, we're still not totally in synch with the Northwestern weather, and forgot that the North Cascades are still under much snow -- in fact, the hike we wanted to take (to Artist Point) doesn't get cleared until July!
So, we broke out the snow shoes and went thataway instead. So here's some pics from Monday in the area around the Mount Baker ski resort. The resort is done for the season, but there's still plenty of snow. I love being out on the snow when it's 60 degrees and sunny!
Mako looks extremely cool in front of Table Mountain...
Booth looks somewhat less cool...but enjoys rocking the JCI hat.
A nice (rare) clear shot of Mount Baker from the base of the hike.
Mako demonstrates the approved high-speed downhill snowshoeing technique.
Booth enjoys the traditional post-hike eating of the cured meats (from Oyama, in Vancouver).
Mako and I took advantage of some warm, sunny Northwest Spring weather to pay a visit to Little Mount Si over the weekend. "Little" Si is still like 2,000 feet, but of course, Seattleites look down on you for not attempting it's neighbor, "Big" Si, next door. Whatever, here's some pictures.
Here I am on the top-
Here's Mako in front of bigger Si-
Somewhat to my surprise, Playa del Carmen has some amazing places to eat! So I want to give a shout-out to four great places-
First is CH Super Carnes, a combination meat market and parrilla. You pick from their huge selection of meats and the platter shows up at your table with meat, sides, tortillas, salsas, etc. Awesome! It's stuck in a residential area of Playa a few blocks off the beach, but a doable long walk and worth the trip. The arrechera is the best...and for some reason, the avocados in Mexico are like a million times better than what I can get in Seattle-
The cow looks on approvingly as I polish off one of his siblings-
Next Stop: Carboncitos, right off Avenida 5. I don't have any pictures, unfortunately, but this place had maybe the best al pastor tacos I've ever had. Really, amazing.
Next: Dr. Taco, on Avenida 10. Basically, a bunch of kinds of seafood + chicken fried and dropped into a tortilla. Good enough, but where the magic happens is the well-appointed salsa and pickled veggie bar. Awesome.
Here, my wife demonstrates the sexiness that won me over- who can resist a beautiful woman with a taco in her hand? Not this man.
Finally, I'd also like to point hungry eaters to El Fogoncito. Right off Avenida 30, a couple of blocks from the beach -- this place is a nice mixture of locals and hungry tourists who know a good thing. Loud, crowded, and with an awesome arrechara...why can't we have these places in Seattle???
Pic 1 is the beautiful, yummy Queso Fundido with Chorizo-
...and if you survive that, then comes the main event-
Mako clearly knows how to enjoy herself on vacation!
Our final stop was Playa del Carmen, the formerly sleepy beach village south of Cancun that used to be best known as the place you caught the ferry for Cozumel. No longer, it's a pretty nifty beach resort in its own right now, but I think much nicer and more appealing than Cancun and many of the others. If you stay in town, you are a short walk from anything -- nice beaches, good shopping, and actually some pretty amazing places to eat.
Everything happens along 5th Avenue, the pedestrian street that runs parallel to the beach. Tons of places to shop and eat or drink (although the best food is another block or two inland in the dozens of taquerias).
We also made a stop at Chichen Itza on our way across the Yucatan. Chichen Itza is of course the largest, best preserved, most restored, and most well-visited of the big Mayan ruins in the middle of the Yucatan penninsula. I don't have much to add to that -- it's big, impressive, thought-provoking, etc., except to say that it would be cooler if you could still climb around on the structures (you can't climb anything).
Of course, any time I go on a trip, it's really all about the food. The Yucatan has it's own characteristic cuisine, including both well-known dishes like Pollo and Cochinita Pibil (meat marinated in Achiote and then cooked in a bannana leaf). You can get pibil anywhere; we had it at Los Almendros, which despite being in a hotel lobby is a decent overview of Yucatan cuisine.
But the best food local to Merida is the snack and street food. Local foods I hadn't seen before included Salbutes (sort of like tostadas, only with Turkey meat on them), Papadzules (kind of a turkey enchillada with hard boiled egg on it), and Huevos Mochulenos (Huevos Rancheros with ham). This food can be found anywhere; this example is from the food stalls outside Parque Santa Ana.
Another characteristic dish is Frijoles con Puerco, a kind of pork and black bean stew traditionally only served on Mondays. We had it at Restaurante d'Al in downtown Merida...unfortunately, we demolished it before I remembered to take a picture. By the way, I'm not crying because our food is gone, but rather because I rubbed my eye after handling the hot sauce. Yucatan hot sauce is the real deal.
Of course, Mexican street food always includes the taco, and I was happy to see the Pastor well-represented in Merida. This is from a street stall at the Zocalo; on weekends, they block off all the streets, and food vendors set up all around the main square. Check out the size of that Pastor!
...and here are the resulting tacos-
Finally, I want to give a shout out to La Casa de Frida, which was our favorite place to eat in Merida despite the brutal heat in the restaurant (just keep those beers coming!). A mixture of local Yucatan foods with those from elsewhere in Mexico. Good stuff.
