Cinque Cento Fiat Nuova 500

Fiat Nuova 500

We are in the midst of a financial crisis. Hub after 2 consecutive Alfa Romeo 159s decided to go for the cuter and cheaper Fiat Nuova 500 - a modern car remodelled on the iconic Fiat 500 from the 1950s to 70s.

Passenger seat

It is cream on the outside, with a red leather interior, sunroof and surprisingly quite a bit of room for such a small car. I drove it for the first time today and it was comfortable and easy to drive. Needless to say, parking it was a breeze.

Sun-lit steering wheel

I want a Cinque Cento too!

Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Floating Food Stall

The Mekong Delta is a region in Southwestern Vietnam and as its name suggests is where the Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of tributaries. It is a very fertile region (e.g. rice fields, shrimp and fish farms...) that allows communities to work and live in it and is not to be missed when one is in Ho Chi Minh City. Some of its better-known towns include My Tho, Cai Be, Can Tho and Vinh Long. One could also enter Cambodia from the region and in fact many Khmer people historically live in the Delta.

We visited the Mekong Delta with Sinh Café. The coach left De Tham street at 8am with a guide whose English could barely be understood and a load of tourists from France, Spain, Malaysia, Singapore...and also Vietnam itself. And these Vietnamese would be the friendliest and most generous of us all on board, often buying fruit to share with everyone. Actually, I probably would buy something too if I could speak Vietnamese, had researched into the prices of pomelos and dragonfruit and were not afraid of being kotok (cheated).

Housing and shops in the Mekong Delta

The coach was airconditioned and quite comfortable. I slept all the way to the Cai Be floating market. Woke up to board a boat (took a pill to avoid being seasick) and prayed all the time I wouldn't fall into the water as it looked really dirty. Those people did everything in the water : wash their clothes and dishes, pee and poo, and even bathe in it. At the same time, they also throw their plastic bags and rubbish in it - even if most of the time the stuff won't even float away but will stay near the bank.

Making rice paper

Making rice puffs - with the silt from the Mekong River

One good reason to spend at least a night in the region is so that one would be able to visit the bigger floating market the next morning. Otherwise by the time one arrives from HCMC any floating market would be almost over and there wouldn't be much to see. We visited factories where they made rice paper, coconut candy, banana biscuits, rice puffs etc. Then we had lunch in a simple restaurant (with clean toilets - very crucial) in an ecological farm that you reach by boat, eating soup and rice with grilled pork, or at least I thought it tasted like pork. It was followed by 2 ladies singing a few sad-sounding Vietnamese songs to music pulled by 2 Vietnamese men on traditional instruments.

Vinh Long market

We had 30 minutes to explore a land market in Vinh Long which seemed very long in the heat and pollution. Throughout this trip we would be given a little time to explore other similar markets (all looked and smelled the same after a while) and we would all be waiting desperately to return to the coach. The fruits and vegetables in these markets looked really fresh and wonderful - but nobody could buy them since they were bulky besides I'm not sure one is allowed to import such things into another country.

Baguette

Our hotel Hoa Phuong (2*) in Can Tho was a basic no-lift 4-storey building. But the rooms were clean and had ensuite bathrooms and airconditioning. And a hot buffet breakfast in the morning.

Finding dinner was difficult though as we couldn't eat in the streets and couldn't find a restaurant either - at the beginning. After walking around for a few hours, we finally found a few beer gardens that also served food to a mainly local clientele. The food looked quite good, though we ordered the wrong things (language barrier) and ended up leaving most of the food uneaten. This reinforced Hub's desire to only eat Pho in the same restaurant a few days in a row when we returned to HCMC.

No matter where we went, the scooters and their honking followed us. No matter where we went, crossing the road was a hazard.

Sacks of pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes...

The next day, we were brought to visit the Cai Rang floating market in 2 motorised sampans. It was interesting seeing them work and live in their boats, including sending smses with no evident fear of dropping the phone in the water. We also visited a rice factory/husking mill, Vietnam being one of the most important rice exporters in the world. Then we visited an orchard and got to taste some fruit as well. It was a pity that our guide didn't bother to make much commentary during the trip, which probably also explained why nobody tipped him at the end - or it could be the reason why he couldn't be bothered to make any commentary in the first place (catch 22 situation). Our half-day HCMC guide on the other hand was very good and this guy was of course tipped quite heavily at the end of the excursion.

Mekong Rest Stop in My Tho - expensive one-stop for most Vietnamese souvenirs and imitation branded bags

We had enjoyed our excursion to the Mekong Delta though I suspect that it wasn't as colourful or busy as the floating markets in Thailand (from pictures I've seen). In any case, Vietnam is a really long and beautiful country which would merit another trip in the near future.

Saigon, Vietnam

Snack vendor by the road

I caught the Miss Saigon musical in London nearly 2 decades ago and have nurtured a certain fascination for Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. Then I met Hub who was among the 1st tourists to visit the city when Vietnam opened up to the outside world in the early 1990s. Finally, One Wheel bought me an ao dai from his trip to Hanoi a few years ago and of course I had to grow too fat for it since. I needed to go there for another one.

I didn't need a visa for Vietnam but the Hub yes. It was honestly a waste to just go there for 4 days, but he didn't have the heart to leave the kids (whom he had not seen for a month before that) for longer than that. Plus my mom's blood pressure probably would suffer from our prolonged absence, so we made the most of it with a 2-night stay in Ho Chi Minh and a 2D1N trip to the Mekong Delta in-between. On our last day, we also managed to squeeze in a half-day excursion within the city.

Scooter paradise (and if you need air for the tyres, they sell it on the pavements)

I was picturing rickshaws for some reason and got the shock of my life to find hundreds of scooters (some with up to a family of 5 on each scooter!) in the streets when I arrived. God they honk for no rhyme or reason all day long and could be found in every nook and corner. There are often no traffic lights for pedestrians and when there was any most of them wouldn't respect it anyway. Crossing the road was like playing Russian roulette - you just keep praying that it wouldn't be this time that you would get knocked down. And the pollution (both noise and air)...I was getting a headache within hours of my arrival.

The airport however looked newly built and was more interesting than the one at Bologna, for example. We stayed at the Metropole Saigon in District 1 and it was probably the only mid-price hotel with a swimming pool in the city. We paid for a deluxe room with airport transfers (I'm past the age of bargaining for a taxi) and had the pleasure of being upgraded each time we checked in (1st Senior Deluxe and then Suite). The rooms were clean and comfortable and came with a hot buffet breakfast which was quite good.

View of pool and streets from our room in Metropole Saigon

The pool was small but deep and tend to run out of clean towels, but it was a luxury to be able to take a dip especially in the evening (you'll need it). There was a gym next to it and a bar manned by slim and sexy Vietnamese beauties. Hub said that when he was in Vietnam 20 years ago, single men travelling on their own usually got prostitutes literally knocking on their doors when they arrived in their rooms.

We could walk to De Tham street where most of the backpacker hotels and travel agencies are. We booked our tours with the famous Sinh Café and they were really cheap making our nice hotel look too expensive all of a sudden. You do not really need alot of Vietnamese Dongs in Saigon if you do not eat too much in the streets or in cheap restaurants. The travel agency had a change bureau (they could even return your change in USD if you paid them in USD) and we withdrew a one-shot amount from the ATM machine located in our hotel lobby with our credit card - and used these Dongs to pay for our meals and small purchases.

Fruit stall in Ben Thanh Market

From our hotel we could also walk to the famous Ben Thanh market popular with tourists seeking local handicrafts, textiles, souvenirs and local cuisine. At 6 in the evening, the market closes its doors and the streets outside transform themselves into a night food market with many stalls selling grilled seafood. We chose to be taken in by this chain of Pho restaurants (Pho 2000) calling itself the "President's Pho" with photos of a visiting Bill Clinton hanging all over on its walls. I've eaten better Pho but we were really happy to have the soup plus the Cha Gio (fried spring rolls) and even returned a few times to try the rest of the limited menu (e.g. curry with baguette, seafood soup...). Guess we didn't have the courage to try street food and didn't feel like eating in chic restaurants either and just wanted to play safe and eat in a decent place filled with both locals and tourists.

Beef Pho in Pho 2000

Cha Gio Bun

Hub said that when he was last here, he really thought that the country would be developing very rapidly and was therefore surprised to see that except for more scooters and cars on the roads, things didn't seem too different from 20 years ago. But it mustn't be true since we did see huge new housing and retail developments in parts of Saigon a little further out when we were on my way to the Mekong Delta. I suspect that the country would be changing very quickly from now on. Singapore, according to our Vietnamese tour guide, is currently Vietnam's Number 1 foreign investor. But for the moment, one thing is sure, like in most developing countries, the women are the ones hard at work, the men usually hang around some form of transportation waiting for clients.

Lovely façade in Saigon

Heavenly Mother Temple, Saigon

During our half-day Saigon excursion, we visited a few temples, the wholesale market with its stalls selling sharksfin, birdnest etc in Chinatown (Cholon), drove past majestic colonial-style buildings and toured a crafts-making factory employing mainly Vietnamese suffering handicap related to gas poisoning that dates back to the Vietnam war. We didn't plan to buy anything but after seeing them painstakingly sticking tiny bits of egg shell to make vases or scrubbing wood till it shined (lacquering), we ended up spending nearly 100 USD on 2 objects.

Making lacquerware

If Hub weren't around I probably would have shopped, but as it was, not much hope of doing so. Every time you touched something he would ask if I really needed it. I may not need it indeed, but I may need to buy it. Why couldn't he understand the difference? Only managed to grab a little ao dai for Baby Girl and have one tailor-made for me but it was such a rush job it wasn't properly done.

Eating out in Saigon

It was an interesting first visit to the country for me, though I suspect that I didn't look at things with as great a fascination as Hub did - because while most Europeans have probably never known similar poverty, most Singaporeans my age could possibly still remember what it was like using dirty toilets and eating in the streets about 25 to 30 years ago. As such, it was like a bad memory for me and I didn't find it so funny seeing that they are still living like us a few decades ago.

At the airport in Ho Chi Minh, we had dinner at...Prima Taste. 8USD Ba Kut Teh and Fried Sambal Kangkong and 3USD cans of Yeo's soy bean milk. That was expensive but I was really quite happy not to have to eat another Pho. But I'll be back in Vietnam. I was told that the centre and northern parts of the country are lovely and very different from one another. And I still need at least another ao dai.

Korean Drama Couple or Trouble

Couple or Trouble

I am into Korean drama. And I know that I am repeating myself. But what you may not know is that I only like Korean drama with handsome Korean leads. Haha.

I caught 2 drama series when I was last in Singapore.

One of the series Couple or Trouble is based on the 1987 American movie Overboard. Anna Jo (Han Ye Seul) is a rude, confident and audacious American-bred heiress who can never be satisfied. She returns to Korea to the horror of her cowardly husband, Billy Park (Kim Sung Min). A series of misunderstandings with local handyman Jang Chul Soo (Oh Ji Ho) added him to the number of people who hate her. Later, after a quarrel with Billy that threatens to end their marriage, she herself gets drunkenly pitched overboard and falls victim to a bad case of amnesia. Jang picked her up from the hospital intending to make her repay him by doing chores in his home (he singlehandedly looks after his 3 nephews after the death of their parents) but of course they fell in love blah blah.

I've always enjoyed foreign language movies and dramas. I love seeing different people, landscapes, cultures, architecture, costumes, cuisines (though Korean food looks quite horrible in general to me) and wherever possible I would prefer to watch the show in its original language and subtitled in English. And nowadays, I like watching shows that wouldn't require me to think. No need to analyse, re-write scenarios, research history etc. Just sit back and enjoy.

And know what? Just found a site where you can watch Korean movies on your PC. My oh my, what will this mean?

Adventure in Singapore

Flying across Bedok Reservoir

I was a latchkey kid. And even now I'm perfectly fine just staying in a small room watching TV, writing or reading - for hours and hours. But latchkey kid met Itchy Backside, the sort who left home at 17 and who could never sit still. Even when the sun has set, the crickets sing and the mosquitoes start to sting, he would insist that we dine out in the garden - so as not to be inside. Even if you couldn't see what you were eating.

At Club Med Bintan, our friend looked around the whole compound for his family - looked everywhere for us but never thought of checking out the rooms. Couldn't imagine that you would come to Club Med and stay in the room...

Orchid Country Club

Why not? I couldn't imagine paying so much and not stay in the room. That bed was really comfortable and they had 24-hour KBS. I am so into Korean drama.

Baby Boy Bowler

All this to say that I didn't get to see much of my old room in Hougang when the Hub arrived in August. Everyday we would be out doing something : bowling, Wild Wild Wet, cycling at East Coast, swimming in pools stretching from Sengkang to Yishun, climbing trees at Bedok Reservoir...exploring the Mekong Delta, but that would be another story.

East Coast Park

As such I bowled for the 1st time in my life. I discovered that East Coast Park has been transformed, with nice sandy beaches and lots of activities being proposed along its coast. The parks are now connected allowing one to walk or cycle for long distances. Sengkang has a new swimming complex with water slides, and Orchid Country Club (OCC) has a very nice golf driving range. We set out to do the Tree Top Walk at MacRitchie Reservoir but the storm arrived. That left us with only the trees climbed at Bedok Reservoir - with Forest Adventure.

Spiderman @ Forest Adventure, Singapore

Baby Boy was really excited at the thought as climbing trees is in his (Chinese) horoscope. Only catch though was that he was never tall enough most of the time. At Forest Adventure you need to be at least 1.1m tall and he is just almost there. But I sold them the fact that he had already done it in Italy and they bought it - whew!

Babies quite high up

Forest Adventure in Singapore has a short course for children. It is easy in that the kids are hooked just once to the line and could move around the whole course like that; but their course is also much higher than the one at Zocca, for example, and is a little scarier as there is usually nothing to hold on to on both sides. In fact, the Babies were quite frozen the 1st time they went on the French-designed Singapore course and took quite a while to thaw after which they decided to go on it a second time. The adult course meanwhile is interesting because part of it takes place over the Bedok Reservoir and climbing over it would therefore be an experience.

Walking on a tightrope

Tarzan act

A new adventure park is opening at Sentosa Island and that would be followed by the Warner Brothers Park next year. Just when you think that there is nothing more to do in Singapore, they always manage to come up with something.

Red Panther Barber Shop, Singapore

A wall at the Red Panther

It has never been my fantasy to have my hair done by celebrity hair stylists. I know I lack ambition (especially for my appearance) but for some reason, I'm fascinated by your neighbourhood barber shop and HDB flat hair stylist - and that not just for the price. Though S$10 for a haircut instead of S$50 at Jean Yip probably did have something to do with it.

I've always had my hair cut at some place all aunties go to. While they get their (often thinning) hair permed, I would have my hair cut and listen to all the neighbourhood gossip, and once even got to enjoy a marvelous exchange of ghost stories. For a few years now, I go to this young lady living opposite my parents' block and I do so because she's the only one so far who knows how to cut my hair. I don't have much of it and I like it simple.

Barber at work

I send the boys to this Muslim barber called Red Panther at Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre and these guys are amazing. They are very fast with their scissors and shavers and could also trim your eyebrows at no extra cost. In their shop they have an interesting collection of movie posters, car number plates and other signs and have probably cut the hair of generations of males from the area. Even Hub goes to them each time he visited Singapore.

In Singapore they have imported this Japanese concept of cheap and quick haircuts that could now be seen all over the island - but this looks so impersonal to me it has never once crossed my mind to try it out. I like going to a person who remembers what my last haircut (and tummy size) was and who could tell me about the last conversation she had with my mother. Age does weird things to people, I agree.

Coriander Leaf - Vietnamese and Singapore Cooking Classes

Making peanut sauce

Coriander Leaf is an award-winning New Asian Restaurant and Cooking School situated in Clarke Quay, Singapore. In July this year, I attended 2 cooking demonstrations at the school : 1) Vietnamese Flavours and 2) Streets of Singapore.

The Demo Kitchen

I have been cooking Vietnamese and Singaporean for a number of years now though I have never been taught how to do it. I wanted to attend a class to make sure that I've been doing it right. Plus it is always interesting discovering how other cooks work and learning something new from them. Though I have always said that cooking is a personal art and general science and that there is no one way to do any given dish.

Grilled Shrimp on Sugar Cane

Grilled Beef and Chicken

Ginger Chicken with Caramel Sauce (my version is usually darker)

After attending both classes, I can safely say that I know how to prepare both cuisines. And I would still prefer to do certain dishes the way I've always done them.

Steamed Sea Bass with Soy, Ginger and Scallions

Spicy Lemongrass Tofu

Starfruit and Lychees in Ginger Wine

The kitchen was airy and there was room for everyone to sit around the demo hub. We were served ice water and a hot drink upon arrival and given a recipe booklet and a pencil. I much prefer this class to the one I attended at Shermay's last year for the simple reason that we were not crowded and for the same price also got to taste everything that had been prepared.

Meat Satay with Spicy Peanut Sauce

Tauhu Telor

Something though was missing from the classes e.g. a bit of culture and history. I like to know how a certain dish came to be, why it was created in the North or Centre or the South, what are its main ingredients and how they may be substituted, how they compare to similar dishes elsewhere etc. I am interested in learning more about cooking techniques and very much enjoy anecdotes about the dishes which Samia Ahad (Celebrity Chef and Pakistani owner of the restaurant) did sometimes provide.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Most of the clients were tourists or expats, with the occasional one or 2 Singaporeans thrown in. And most of them sounded like the debutant or occasional cook.

Singapore/Hong Kong Fried Rice Noodles

Each class contained between 6 to 8 dishes including a simple dessert. She had 2 assistants help her prepare the raw ingredients and from time to time they would get a scolding for not getting the measurements right :-).

Singapore Chilli Crab and its winning Harissa-Tomato Chutney version

I would still prefer a hands-on cooking class or at least a half hands-on half demo one like @ Sunrice. One of these days maybe I'll have the chance to attend a semi-professional cooking course - especially to work on the techniques from food preparation (I am very bad at peeling or chopping anything) to the actual cooking. Until then, these once-off cooking lessons were a good way to spend time and even better when spent with a friend or spouse. Meanwhile, Samia Ahad also owns Screening Room which seems like a really cool place where you could chill out, eat and catch a good movie.

Clarke Quay, Singapore