D-Day for helmet heads in Vietnam,

On 15 December Vietnamese will have to put on their helmets when riding motorbikes. All around town posters with the regulation family size smile above signs which proclaim "Lets get home safely", or "Helmets for your safety." Even neighbours in my Hanoi alley have got in on the act and are advertising and selling helmets.
Its hard to under-estimate the transformation of Vietnamese society from languid bicycle-riders to motorcycle-mad road fiends. Suddenly the family could go Sunday driving on the one small 'xe may'. Country people could transport produce further and faster, city people could get to work easily and on time. But the social costs have been high because road rules in motorised Vietnam are minus zilch. In fact if you tried to ride according to basic road rules in Hanoi you would probably be a death-risk. This week a friend and I were almost skittled by a motorbike bearing a boy who looked 15 and droved his machine as if he were in a computer game. Which he probably was. Online, you do not die, you just refresh the screen and start the game again.
In the real world so far in 2007 14,000 people have died on the roads and health costs for injuries have soared each year. But Vietnamese resisted the helmet. According to press reports, a decade ago women proclaimed helmets would interfere with their hairstyles. Men quickly agreed, of course. It is astonishing that years later the authorities, who can enforce most things, have not acted to enforce helmet-wearing. Authorised safe brands have been available at high rates of subsidy for some years. Of course, as Vietnamese friends point out, there is no point making people buy helmets if they don't care a fig about road rules. And there are the usual grumbles about what to do with helmets when you have to go to cafes, hospitals, offices. (This will spawn a new industry of helmet-minders). In a country where 76% of the population is under 25 - that ripe motorcyle riding age - I await the dawn of D-Day with a sceptic's hope.

YEP: THEY DID IT. Even at 8am on D-Day cops were pulling over the handful who had not converted. I could not believe the sight of thousands of helmet heads - in Hanoi, Haiphong, Cat Ba. Frightening. But there were a lot of helmets that were probably bought at a kids' toy shop. And my xe om (moto taxi) driver probably summed the change up, he gave me a cap, put on his own - but didn't bother fastening it.

Eating, eating, its all about eating

Ah its a story to chew on. Vietnamese food is a mix of remarkable influences from over the millenia - Indian, Thai, Cambodian, Chinese to name a few. But the country's regions have developed a distinctly Vietnamese culinary style. And there is no better place to try it than - everywhere - on the street, in small cafes, a lakeside eatery, in elegant colonial houses and in friends' houses.

So here's a (continuous - so come back) menu of recent taste sensations:
The best pho ga (chicken noodle soup) in Hanoi at 34 Le Van Huu street, opens for breakfast to around 1pm, and still presided over by matriarch May Anh. In Australia we are used a chicken noodle soup south Vietnamese style, with lots of aromatic herbs. But here in Hanoi its the REAL deal: a rich chicken broth filled with rice noodles and spring onions, chewy beignets on the side, to which you can ask for an egg to be dropped in. Then add lime, chili or garlic as you wish. And a beer or water if its lunch time. All for around .75 cents. I was lucky, the youngest of the family still recognised me after a decade!

Au Lac House in a renovated French villa in the city's centre and a large spin off from the owner's Au Lac Cafe on Ly Thy To Street. Its a place to celebrate the new life of a Vietnamese Australian friend who has come back to Hanoi. We try soft shelled crab in tamarind sauce, banana flower salad and Hue specialty rice cakes stuffed with shrimp. And there is a remarkable range of international wines on offer. We try (at last!) New Zealand Cloudy Bay Sauvignon which, at current US/Australian dollar rates, was pretty good value. All in all a great place to try good Vietnamese food in a great location.
Au Lac House is centrally located at 13 Tran Hung Dao Street, Tel (84) (4) 933 3533.

The West Lake (Ho Tay) has a slew of restaurants on the water.
Recently, city authorities extended the lakeside road so it now rings the entire lake and a public walkway built. Gardens have been planted along the wide footpath on the south-western side.
In the construction boom starting in the early 1990s houses were illegally built on the road to and around the lake.
A Vietnamese friend and I note the illegal fishermen on their jerry-built piers already hauling in fish whilst at the northern end local authorities are just setting out to inspect their domain. We settle in at a local eatery and order chewy steamed water snails, susu leaves from the hills of Tam Dao or Sa Pa in the north, grilled soft shelled shrimps (to die for) - all with their distinctive dips based on salt/pepper/lemongrass/fish sauce. The staff are attentive and thoughtful - even offering us a fresh table whilst they clear up the detritus that is the sign of a Vietnamese meal that has been enjoyed.
At around Aust$3-4 a dish this is great value.

Speeding on Vietnamese coffee

Stock markets can rise and plunge again while you wait for coffee made Vietnam-style. Easy to forget in modern Vietnam that coffee-drinking is not just a sensory experience, its still considered a social ritual to take time over.
In my friends’ house in Ba Dinh in Hanoi’s north western area near the Ngoc Khanh Lake I wait for my first coffee. Vu places a small aluminium dripolater with pin-size holes on top of a demi-tasse cup. In goes the coffee – top quality Arabica Robusta from the Central Highlands -and he adds boiling water.
Then we practice Tieng-Anh– Vietnamese to English conversation.This is the deal my friends and I have struck.
I will converse in my poor Vietnamese – forgotten after a decade’s non-use, and the three 'young ones' in the family will speak in English. An English-Vietnamese dictionary is permanently perched on the refrigerator in the kitchen where we eat and chat.
Ah, now the first cup of coffee is ready. But the boiling water has got lost through the pinholes and the coffee is cold. We add more hot water and I drink it too fast.
"How much coffee did you put in?" I ask. "Five teaspoons," Vu says. Kaboom goes my head and I'm speeding already. Probably the only way to face my first day in Hanoi, now a city permanently on the move on motorbikes.

Riding the Tiger

Singapore Airline's baby, Tiger Airways, is now operating from Darwin and Melbourne in Australia and fares are falling as this new cat on the block goes head to head internationally with Australia's JetStar - and domestically with Virgin as well.
Its a midnight run from Darwin to Singapore's and it looks like a packed plane of returning Singaporean students and holidaying families as well as travellers from Australia. But a system failure means we are delayed three hours at Darwin, not the best airport to hang around after midnight. We finally shuffle sleepy-eyed onto a jet with upright seats, no reclining here, and a South African pilot is apologising for the delay. The hostess is determined the ensure my handbag is stowed in a locker during takeoff, then I doze - off and on - as passengers are given the opportunity to buy drinks and snacks. Arrival at Singapore's Budget Terminal is smooth, Immigration processing rapid - and there's sweets on the desk for you - and baggage unloading is fast. The entire terminal looks like an empty aircraft hangar and, unlike Changi airport, just a 5-minute shuttle bus trip away, there are no on-site rooms to hire or large massaging lounge chairs to sink into if you have a long wait between flights - just pull up an empty space and unroll your sleeping bag or sit in another upright chair. Retail shops include 'adventure' gear, including tents, packs and clothing/boots, 711, travel accessories, down-market gift shops and the usual run of so-so food/drink. My first experience on a Tiger is no frills and fine, but I suspect in the larger world of aviation the claws are out in Asian budget travel.

Suicide Season hits Darwin, most survive

Images by Jan Forrester

I hit Darwin for a quick stopover near the end of the build-up (humidity builds, no rain), just before the monsoon season. Its also known as Mango Madness or the Suicide Season. Time was when local journalists struggling for a real story at year's end, made news of the first unfortunate to top themselves. The buildup is is like walking and breathing under soup. The humidity doesn't hit you, it devours you. This visit I bunk down at my mate Chris' flat near the city centre. Lushness surrounds the block of flats. (The blocks on Darwin's waterfront are, on the other hand, full of 'apartments'). Possum boxes festoon trees in her courtyard. "It keeps the critters out of our roof," Chris says. These flats are 1960s vintage and survived Cyclone Tracy in 1975. This time I ask Chris to show me the block's cyclone shelter on the ground floor; its chock full of furniture. "That will will be shoved against the wall so the bar can be set up in the event of a big blow", Chris says. Darwinites always have a fluid set of priorities. Dusty TV and radios are read to be connected to batteries lying somewhere under the furniture. I'm surprised to hear Chris say that the skyline full of contemporary apartment blocks in Darwin are not required to have cyclone shelters. I guess everyone will get in their cars and head south to the desert, or drive to the giant Parliament House shelter??.

The high humidity and 28-degree heat is bearable. But, after a morning wander along the beach at Fannie Bay I'm ready for a shower and the horizontal position under a fast fan. But we head to the Roma Bar in Cavernagh Street for coffee and Serial Thriller - a mix of Darwin humour and muesli, fruit and yoghurt. Three years between coffees at the Roma Bar. It has moved - across the road and into upmarket digs, with an outdoor balcony, fans buzzing overhead. Owners Patty and Paul changed the coffee scene in Darwin forever when they moved up from Melbourne twenty years ago.

We head off to the Northern Territory Art Gallery to dip into the treasure of bark paintings, pandanus creations then a drink at the open-air Ski Bar next door. After another loll under fans back at the flat we head off into the mildly cooler evening to the Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Club in Francis Street. Unlike the Darwin Sailing Club patrons are allowed to wear shorts and thongs. There are over twenty ships perched on dry land, or 'on the hard' as we walk through to the cavernous, open club facing the Arafura Sea. The fish and salad is a good buy, the live music, open sky and lights on the ocean all add up to a laid back day in Darwin. I've passed through the Suicide Season for one sweaty day and am a thinner person for it.

Burek heaven is a bite away

Just 18 miles south of Sydney's CBD Rockdale's main drag is a hotch-potch of car smash repairers, retail shops - and a little family-owned Macedonian bakery serving up bureks and breads. Its a yeasty smell as a friend and I walk in. The owner gently eases from the oven a side of lamb that he's roasted for a customer; it happens regularly he says. But we've come for bureks, filo pastry filled with spinach and cheese, or ground beef, or aromatic cinnamon-topped apple, cooked Macedonian style in big round pans. The local Macedonian-Australians are eating them with buttermilk but we wash a plateful down with coffee. On the way out we resist the super-sweet baklava but buy a crusty loaf of bread, one of several varieties in the basket. A family member is happy to give us the lowdown on the bread spread but customers are lining up behind us waiting for their slice of heaven.

Alexander's Bakery Cafe, 494 Princes Highway, Rockdale, Sydney. Phone 956796
Image from Wikipedia