My Eating Job

Working as a food tour guide, I have so many chances to meet different people from different nationalities everyday which makes me feel like I'm traveling around different parts of the world daily and also learning so much from my clients.

It's so hard to nominate my favorite clients or my favourite nationality because most of the people who make a booking with Hanoi Street Food Tours are food lovers so we have an instant connection. It's like we speak the language of food. I would never say that I teach my clients about food but I do show them what is special from the city I love, Hanoi, even though I'm not from here. I suppose I'm the one who helps them to understand more about Hanoi food. I enjoy working everyday and I'm pretty much always excited about going to work.

Many people think it is a very easy and relaxing job where I simply eat, drink and talk to earn some money. But from my experience, you need to have a genuine love for people and food, plus a determination to keep every tour upbeat and special for every client. The tours are not only about eating around Hanoi, but also is about the culture around the food. In Vietnam, we love to eat but we eat in a very healthy way! My clients regularly ask me "Why are Vietnamese people so skinny because it looks like they eat and drink all the time?" The answer is that we eat healthy food with lots of herbs and veggies. We are also meat lovers but we always balance meat with steamed or sir fried veggies and pickle fruits. And another very important factor is we do heaps of exercise everyday.

For my job I frequently work 3 to 6 hours a day, 7 days per week and sometimes, I have to walk around the city eating for 9 hours a day. For exercise, I do a bit of running around the tennis court trying to use up the calories and maintain my weight. At the end of the day, I have to admit that I love eating and I would never complain about hard work. I am a very lucky guy to be able to work in my desired field compared to million of people around the world without jobs or un happy with their jobs. I try to live by the saying "Work Hard, Play Harder".

Finally, I am back!!!!!

Sorry readers that I have been slack at posting new articles. But I am back as I have a bit more time to write about Hanoi and other destinations that I have been to lately, also ocassionally about one of my favorite topics, food.

It's winter now in Hanoi and it's really cold. I don't particularly love winter but Hanoi winter is special as you can see beautiful flowers everywhere along the roads. There are so many yummy winter specialties to try. I'm going to write about some of these delicious dishes and my own experiences of winter.

Saigon, July 2010

I'm in Saigon for a few days before taking some members of my family to Bangkok for a short vacation. The weather in Saigon is a bit different to Hanoi but I like Saigon as it always cool from 4pm which is much better. At the moment it's rainy season which helps keep temperatures down a bit.

Yesterday, when I wandering around the market in the afternnon when I realised my Iphone had gone. I'm very upset with myself for not being more careful with my bag. Normally in Hanoi I know exactly what's going an around me and where my phone is. I just lost concentration for a second and it was gone!

I'm trying not to let this incident ruin my holiday but it's hard. After trying to call the phone a few times I gave up and went back to the hotel. Later in the evening I went out for some snacks, including duck eggs and crabs with tamarind sauce. This made me feel better but I'm still thinking about the phone.

I was trying to take few photos of the food but I couldn't get them in focus, which I hate. There must have been something wrong with me at the time. I decided to walk back to the hotel for an early night. The next day I returned and had more success taking photos of the food. I really love eating from this old lady who has quite a striking face. She is quite a character, smoking, swearing and laughing with all of her customers. She rocks everybody who comes to her stall.

I also went to my favorite Hu Tiu vendor for breakfast. It was great to see she remembered me and what I normally order as extras such as fresh beanshoots, a bit more dried onion... The only thing that she doesn't know is that I don't eat lots of meat and noodles now because I am trying to loose some weight and workout on my belly. Anyway, I went back to her shop for every breakfast and the day I left early for Bangkok, I got up extra early for another serve of noodles.

A smile and a wave from her was a great start to my trip.

I'm On Twitter

A couple of my friends signed up for this website and keep telling me to be part of it. Finally, I'm came on air last week but there are so many things I need to learn especially how to link to my blog...but I almost have, I think

Follow me as vietnamesegod.

Just a quick note and hope everyone has a great week!!!

Birthday Party

As some of my good friends went back home during my birthday in December, I decided to celebrate instead in January. We prepared Italian winter food as the winter weather was still around but unluckily, the weather changed on the day to such a beautiful sunny and quite warm day. We even had to switch on the air-conditioning, which is really unusual for Hanoi at this time of the year.

We served some cheese, bread, marinated mushrooms and wine to welcome everyone and for the dinner, we cooked Italian soup called minestrone, roasted chicken with with lemon zest, olives and tomatoes. For the side dishes, we cooked roast potatoes, and made a beetroot salad and pan-fried asparagus with parmesan cheese.

Thanks to my good friends for coming and making it such a great fun night.

Vote For My Photos

I was in Australia last month for 5 weeks holiday based in Melbourne. But I also managed side trips to Sydney and Tasmania. I took lots of photos when I was in Tassie and I sent some of them to the Spirit of Tasmania website for a competition. I hope I can win a free trip to Tasmania again next year with your help voting for my photos.

If you guys have time, please click on the following link and choose RANKING. My photo is on the first 3 pages: just look for the Stanley Pine Tree photo under my name Tu Van Cong. Your time and effort is much appreciated.

Here is the link : http://www.capturethespirit.com.au/gallery/45/

My Sport

I always dreamt about being a tennis professional. I love playing tennis and it's the only sport I play. I'm lucky to be able to play almost everyday. Thinking back to 20 years ago, Vietnam was very poor and I knew my dream couldn't come true. I was born in a working class family and we couldn't afford to play tennis as the time I was growing up. Tennis was considered a sport only for rich people. I remembered going to the tennis center in Yersin Street in Nha Trang and watching from outside.

I started playing tennis when I was 20 after I started working. It was tough to manage my time as I had to go to school every day in the afternoon, evening classes in the evening and working in the morning. But I promised myself to give tennis a try. I played with my own coach three times a week at noon between my work and school commitments. In fact, before I started working, my father wouldn't allow me to play. He thought that it would reflect badly on the family.

It's now 12 years since the first day I hit a tennis ball. Since then, I have actually played in a few tournaments but never make it past about the third round. The first time I ever played in the Hanoi Open, I couldn't sleep for the whole night and keep going to the bathroom every half hour. By the time I played I was so nervous and exhausted that I could hardly get the ball in the court.

I love watching tennis too and I have stayed up all night long just watching Hingis and Federer playing their matches. Maybe you guys think that I am crazy but I just love them and I was really sad when Hingis retired then happy when she announced her comeback but truly sad when she retired last year. I hope Roger Federer will retain his old form and break the grand slam records of Sampras.

Guess who is going to win Roland Garros? I hope Roger will win this time.

Alez Roger !!!!

Turning 30+

It's nice to be 30+ but from now on, I think I will get older and older quicker than I thought. When I was a little boy, thinking about turning 30 years old, it seemed a really long way to go. Looking back from yesterday, Oh my, I'm a few years over it now and it is starting to get scary! Que sera sera is one of my favorite old songs and I suppose there's not much I can do about it.

Anyway, I made a nice beef hotpot with some different mushrooms at home with my close friends for lunch. My friends seemed to enjoy my cooking and we took a few photos at home. I appreciated their coming and some gifts which I told them not to bother about. It was very nice of my friends Sam, Cong and Khai.

In the evening, Viola, another friend who lives near me in Hanoi invited me and some friends over her house to have home made Canadian food for my birthday. It was really nice and quite a surprise for me. I received some gifts and Viola brought a very nice birthday cake and sang birthday songs in different languages. I got a happy shock as I didn't expect that much of a big deal. Thank you very much for making my birthday even more memorable with great food, excellent company with funny stories. I had a great evening.

I was spoiled a little bit but I love that!!!

Holiday Visa

Finally, after a few days running around to make new passport, I've got my visa for Greece!! Oh my gosh, I am so excited about that and I also have the tickets now even though I had to pay almost $500 more due to crazy increases in taxes and petrol while I was going through the visa process.

Thank you so very much to the Greek Embassy and their great staff that helped me heaps during my visa application. I am sure I will have the best 5 week holiday in Greece. If anyone has some tips on cheap accommodation and good places especially off the main tourist trail in Greece, please leave a comment. I would appreciate it.

Greece Visa

Holiday is coming and I am so excited about that. I have been planning this trip for quite awhile and Greece is my next destination. I went to the Greek Embassy this morning to apply for my visa. I am a bit worried even though I shouldn't be.

I met a Vietnamese member of the embassy staff and she's a really nice woman. She showed me how to prepare all of the papers and introduced me to the visa officer. I have to wait for a few days before they call me for an interview. I hope everything goes well and they will accept my visa. Wish me luck !!!

Perfume Pagoda Feb 2008 Part II

Finally, we arrived at Thien Tru Temple( God's Kitchen). The rules of Thien Tru Temple don't allow visitors to put meat on the offerings tray and my friends had to remove the huge chicken and replace it with some more beers, cokes, square cake, flowers, sticky rice, money some fresh fruit and and lighted incense. This is such a busy destination as most people come here before heading to the top of the hill then down to Huong Tich Cave.

Devotees spend billions of dong here at this festival in the form of fake money, and fake holy stuff which is then burnt in giant incinerators after 15 minutes of praying and offering. People satnd in queues just to burn these papers and the ash flys around in the air, into everyone's hair like a volcano has just erupted. This is a tradition that should remain but people shouldn't burn so much in the hope that they will get the same in return. It's all very superstitious. I only spent about 300,000 dong on the whole trip including food, drink and transportation but many people spent millions of dong for the same thing but with the burning of the fake papers.

Khai, my friend, had to bring the tray inside and the rest of us took a rest to take photos around the complex. I tried to get inside to take some photos and give a wish but I couldn't as too many people were praying and reading their wish lists at that time. We left the Kitchen God's temple for Huong Tich Cave which took us about an hour. It was a pleasant climbing trip as we could see the scenery around and also hear the crazy music and look at the souvenir shops along the way. People were selling all kinds of goods, from sugarcane juice to toilet services. The toilet service is popular and you can imagine what the experience was like with all those people on the mountain!!! We decided to stop for lunch on the way up at one of the relaxing areas which had mattresses. We laid out all of the food which had been offered to the gods and tried to finish it all. Some of my friends felt a bit drunk after a few beers. We ate two big chickens, two square cakes, lots of fresh fruit, pork rolls and two plates of sticky rice. I felt sleepy after all but we had to finish our trip up.

Eventually we arrived at Huong Tich Cave and my friends repeated the same procedure with the tray and more food! This time our tray was topped with a special fake money tree. Hoang, one of the boys on the trip took them deep inside the cave which has the main altars of the whole complex. We had to be really aggressive to get close to the alters to pray. This is a huge cave packed with people inside praying at the same time. Most people touched the rock called 'the golden tree' wishing for a lucky year. They also stood around waiting for water drops to drip on their hands in another place called mother's breast for the same reason.

Thanks to Khai and his friends for inviting on this journey and, even though I'm not a very religious person, I really enjoyed the cultural experience and hope that everyone who believes gets what they prayed for!

Saigon Dec 2007 - Part I

I always wake up a bit late on my holidays and it's no different today as I woke up at 11 Am. After a few minutes washing up, I started my day with a bowl of Saigon hu tieu. There's nothing better than that and a beautiful sunny day. I wandered around for a few hours before stopping at Sasa Cafe in Bui Vien Street for lunch.Walking the whole morning is hard work. The food isn't bad here with the high light being the spanish fried rice with chicken, seafood, sausage and vegetable, fresh spring rolls and cold beer. What I always notice in Saigon is the friendly service, which is one of the differences between the north and the south. In Hanoi, sometimes the service in restaurants can be not very welcoming.

Later in the day, my sister and her friends invited me to Hoang Ty restaurant for dinner. This is my favorite place in Saigon which serves great steamed fish and deep fried fish with lots of different vegetables and herbs, rolled in special Trang Bang rice paper. We ordered these dishes plus Cu Chi beef which was recommended because it was very tender like western beef. We also ordered boiled pork, crab and prawn noodle and pig feet noodles. It was enough food for a whole army and we couldn't actually finish it all.

After dinner, we headed off to play tennis and we were all too full to play and not surprisingly, we couldn't move well to hit the ball!

To be continued.

Three Nagas' Birthday

My good friends Eric, Mark and I were born under the same status of dragon year but in different years. As we are all going for our holiday next week, we decided to catch up with a group of good friends at Hoa Vien restaurant. Hoa Vien is huge restaurant with outdoor seating and 3 storeys inside, located at 1 Tang Bac Ho street. The great thing inside is that you can pour your own fresh Czech beer at the table. This is a fun thing to do and they also have a very good atmosphere with great staff.

When everyone arrived, we ordered some really good prawn spring rolls, grilled prawns with bacon, Thai salad, susu vegetable, a seafood hotpot and some other dishes which I can't remember and of course the tall 4 litre glass cylinders of black beer, which are also tapped at the table. It was a great combination for talking and eating over a few hours.

We had a fabulous evening with good friends and interesting conversations. Congratulations to my dearest friends Mark and Eric, also myself:) A great year is coming with many good things Also thanks to all of our friends for coming.

Hoa Vien is a great place for a special celebration with a big group of people.
1 Tang Bac Ho
Ha Noi

Toys to Eat

I remember very well these flour toys because they belong to my childhood. When I was a little boy and I used to see many old people making these beautifully shaped toys to sell in front of my school and in the market. During my years at elementary school and maybe secondary school, the sellers were always around but they seemed to disappear when I went to high school. Maybe I grew too old to notice them?

I hadn't seen them for such a long time until last week in front of the Ethnology museum. I was really nicely surprised, and it brought back a lot of fond memories from my school days. Because I took quite a few photos, I bought several toys from the seller above but I didn't eat them like I used to do when I was a little boy. I remembered when we finished our classes, we usually bought at least one everyday and asked our mothers to put them on the top of the cooked rice for about 15 minutes then we used to eat them. They didn't have much flavour but that's the way we did at that time.

The man told me he spends less than 10 minutes making each one. They all look gorgeous, colorful and only 5000Vnd. If you ever see this man, buy some to help him out. Nice thing to keep even though it's another dust collector :)