Non la, the distinctive conical palm hat, has always been a symbol of Vietnam, closely linked people & their daily lives.

When discussing this hat, constructed of dried palm leaves, thin bamboo strips curved into rings & gut, Vietnamese & foreign tourists talk about the central city of Hue, famous for the image of a young lady wearing a violet ao dai & a non la. High school girls in their pure white ao dai with non la on their heads or in their hands look lovely & charming. If shy or embarrassed, they tilt their hats to cover the faces. How beautiful that is!

The Hue hats are elegant & many are fashioned as “poem palm hats.” Hold one against the sun to reveal an illustration of Thien Mu Pagoda or Trang Tien Bridge & some line of verse woven into the palm leaves.

This is the reason why they are popular among many tourist, to wear or as souvenir. Non la can protect them from the sun & also serve as a fan. In a Pinch, it can become a basket to carry rice, fruit or even water for a short period of time.Together with nem (sour pork hash), pho (Vietnamese noodle soup), the miraculous monochord, & the butterfly-like lissome ao dai, the conical hat has become an expression of the national spirit.

Ben Duc, Yen Spring & Huong Pagoda

From Hanoi, visitors can reach the Huong Pagoda by taking a car to Ben Duc, the entrance of Huong Son Range in My Duc District, Ha Tay Province. From there they take a boat along Yen Spring.

If you travel in the early morning when there is still fog, you feel as if you were in the paradise.

It is interesting that the water of Yen Spring is very clear but its wharf is named Duc, which means muddy. So when the tourists ask why, residents explain that their ancestors wished to allude to their belief that before starting the trip to pagoda, the souls of visitors are muddy. They become clean during the boat trip to the pagoda.

During the trip you can see Yen Spring with the green of rice fields on both banks, trees that provide a blaze of red flowers, & the twinkling mountains & hills beyond. Along the stream are mountains with the shape of the mythical dragon, kylin, & tortoise. This way leads to Cho Quay, the waterway’s terminal, where Cho Pagoda stands. From the quay, pilgrims can walk about 5km on a mountain path to Huong Pagoda.

The Hong Pagoda Festival, Vietnam’s biggest religious festival, lasts from the sixth day of the first to the third lunar month.

Cham Tower, a world heritage

The World Heritage Road in central Vietnam has been talked about, far & wide, especially by international tourists wishing to explore the unique character of the region’s heritage site.

When visiting Quang Nam Province, you can explore the My Son temple ruins.

Just up the road lie the ruined temples & towers of My Son, which were registered as a world heritage site at the same time Hoi An. Here the Champa people worshipped their Hindu deities in elaborately carved temples. Erected from the 4^th to 13^th centuries, My Son lies at the heart of the Champa Kingdom & still bears signs of foreign influences, especially from India, & the Kingdom’s impact on Southeast Asia.

Lying in a seemingly timeless valley, My Son exerts the aura of the once magnificent culture. Visitors can feel the power behind a civilization represented by ruins & the extensive group of temples that remain standing with an inner sanctuary to Shiva.

The first serious archeological work was conducted by a Frenchman in 1898, & these days many of My Son’s ornate temple carvings are housed in the elegant Champa Museum in Danang, safe from looters & the ravages of time & weather.

Dong, delicious but endangered

Dong is a lizard like reptile species. You can find them around sand dunes, especially in coastal provinces of Phu Yen, Khanh Hoa & Binh Thuan. The reptile runs away very quickly when faced with danger, so people call it dong, which in Vietnamese means “to sneak out”.

When walking along the coast in Nha Trang or the sand dunes in Phan Thiet, you can see the reptiles run after the steps of tourists & then creep into small caves on dunes. What a beautiful sight!

Dong is a special there, featured in many different dishes ranging from baked dong, steamed dong, grilled chopped dong to dong porridge. Currently, there is an increasing number of small restaurants, especially in Tuy Hoa City, Phu Yen Province, & Phan Thiet City, Binh Thuan Province, that offer dong dishes.

To meet increasing demand, many dong have been caught & sold at markets. In the near future, tourists may not be able to see the reptiles running on the sand dunes because of overhunting.

Because of this, authorities must now create practical plans to protect the reptiles & their local habitat.

It has been known for years that streets popular with foreigners often  house famous snail eateries, but many snail establishments have scattered over the downtown and other districts as snails have become a Saigon specialty.

The most well-known snail eateries and streets are in downtown. The very notable snail street is adjacent to Food Center Restaurant on Tran Hung Dao Street, District One. This snail street has been known for years as there are many snail shops on both sides of the street. The prices arte reasonable and the dishes are delicious.

There also are Ky Dong Snail Eatery and Nguyen Thien Thuat Night Snail Street in District Three. These familiar places are frequented by both young and old, from students to middle-age women. Large group fill these places in the evening to eat and drink beer late into the night.

If diners prefer high-end restaurant, Ben Thanh market, District One offers many high quality snail dishes. “Cheap things are no good”, is the slogan at Ben Thanh, where many actors and actresse gather at their favorite snail shops to fill their stomachs after long hours of working. Hot-cheese-fried snail dishes are made with snails so small that it’s hard to tell whether you’ve gotten at all the meat or not.

Most of these places are open late. At the beginning, they aimed to meet the demand of beer-drinkers, but now they serve all people as snail dishes are preferred all over the city by all classes. As snails are rick in vitamins and minerals and low fat, people can eat as much as they want without being afraid of getting fat.

Each eatery has its own alluring features to guests. In addition, these eateries always offer other foods like shell, shrimps, crabs, and the like. Thanks to their unique taste, Saigon snails are bound to hold their reputation for a long time to come.

In Vietnam, bean sprouts are used as popular additive food in meals and can be found in all markets and supermarkets. They can be eaten fresh like other vegetables or used as an ingredient in dishes like cha gio (Vietnamese spring rolls), banh xeo (Vietnamese crepes) or canh chua (sour soup). Bean sprouts dipped in hot water are an essential addition to a bowl of pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) or mi Quang (Central mixed fried noodles).

During Tet (Lunar New Year), this simple vegetable is used in many more dishes, including dua gia (pickled bean sprouts) eaten with Chinese braised pork.

Cha gio and banh xeo are two popular dishes using bean sprouts. Cha gio is made from pork, vermicelli, young bean sprout, balck mushrooms, crab or shrimp, egg, and rice paper. It is served either as an appertizer or as a main dish with rice vermicelli or rice. Cha gio is often accompanied byaromatic vegetables and fish sauce. Banh xeo is made from rice soaked overnight, coconut milk, egg, shrimp, pork, and bean sprouts.

Bean sprouts are rich in essential nutrients for humans, like vitamins, minerals, amino acids and proteins, all of which are necessary for a germinating plant. However, many people advice that one shouldn’t eat large quantities of raw bean sprouts on a regular basic, no more than 550g daily.

After their first sips of Vietnamese coffee prepaired in a local coffee shop, many foreigners exclaim, it’s so strong!

That’s true if the coffee drinker is, like so many from the West, accustomed to using sachets of instant coffee, which have their drink ready in a wink. But despite the invasion of instant coffee in recent years as a result of more industrialized lifestyle, Vietnamese mostly still prefer to have filtered coffee, cà phê phin, as they call it.

A cup of filtered coffee can be stronger than two or three sachets of instant coffee. The secret lies with the amounts of ground coffee and water put in the filter pot. Serveral teaspoons of ground coffee are put in and less than a cup of boiled water is added. To get a delicious cup of coffee, boiled water is used, preferably water that has just boiled. Water that is not very hot will spoil your coffee.

The poiled water permeates through the ground coffee and drips into the cup under the filter. The slow drip of boiled water makes the coffee atrong. The more teaspoons of ground coffee you want to add into the filter spot, the stronger coffee will become. Using less boiled water will bring about a similar effect.

If you are familiar with the Starbucks kind of coffee, try something different in Saigon. This time to avoid luxurious bars; choose a coffee shop at the entrance of an alley instead.

A coffee shop of this category often welcomes customers from dawn still dusk although it is most likely to be frequented in the morning. Inside the typical shop, three by four meters wide, several sets of wooden tables and chairs are placed. You will see the wooden counter where coffee is prepared as you enter the shop ot it will be towards the rear of the house. On the counter will be dozens of small aluminum, or sometimes stainless steel, filters.

The shopkeeper may know some of the customers so well that he or she knows exactly how many spoons of ground coffee and sugar or milk should be used to satisfy that person’s taste.

So, just sit at your familiar place on your familiar chair, read your favorite morning paper and wait for your cup of coffee to be brought to your table. You don’t have to wait long, just two or three minutes, for the cup of coffee with a filter to be served.

After getting the cup you have to wait for the boiled water to run through the ground coffee in the filter. It will take another five minutes before you can take the first sip.

Many “alley” coffee shops use transparent cups or glasses. This practice lets drinkers watch the drops of black coffee falling from the filter.

At Starbucks coffee shops around the world, you have many different types of coffee. But this coffee seems to come of a product line. You can’t simply add half a teaspoon of sugar or a little milk or a bigger or smaller amount of coffee. It’s different at small coffee shops in HCM city where you can order your “tailor-made” coffee cup at only VND5,000, or 30 U.S cents.

Yet drinking coffee is just part of the cultural asset one can find in an “alley” coffee shop. The other half is formed by the clientele at that shop. They are people who know one another, and are sometimes neighnors. With the habit of visiting the familiar coffee shop, what the customers, especially elderly people and retirees, share each morning is a wide range of stories, from world news, sport events, scandals of famous stars to corruption cases featured in the morning papers, or the news of a neighborhood fire breaking out the night before.

If you aren’t used to drinking strong filtered coffee the way Saigonese do or if you find your cà phê phin too strong, don’t worry. Just ask the shopkeeper to spare one or two spoons of ground coffee. If you find the coffee too sweet, ask them for less sugar or milk. It’s coffee with difference, but that difference makes it worthwhile.

Coffee Tips : These are the words used to order coffee at alley coffee shops.

• Đen: black coffee (with suger)
• Đá: iced coffee (with sugar)
• Sữa nóng: hot coffee with condensed milk
• Sữa đá: iced coffee with condensed milk

If you visit Tam Dao you’re to hear of this Kinh and San Diu legend in which a young girl of the wild became a Vietnamese herione as well as pioneer of women’s rights.

Legend has it that by the end of the Sixth Hung King’s reign, in the Tam Dao Mountain by the left side of the Do River there was a holy bamboo tree that gave birth to a girl from a bamboo shoot. She was as beautiful as a fairy, so the locals called her Mang Thi Tien (Mang means bamboo shoot ang Tien means fairy).

As she was born into the wild, she had no clothes. She used leaves to cover herself and made a nest to sleep in. She could jump from branch to branch like a bird and shot down animals with stones, or else picked fruit from the trees.

Then came the time when the An army (from present day China) attached the capital city of Van Lang (now Viet Tri city) in Vietnam. The Hung King’s messengers broadcast the bad news by banging on bamboo tocsin.

As a bamboo tree was her mother, Mang Thi Tien immediately heard the news and left to appear before the king. Knowing she was talented, the king granted her the right to guard Tam Bao Mountain.

When the enemy’s army flocked to the capital city, Mang Thi Tien used large stones, bamboo spikes and javelins to fight. When they ran into retreat, she used trees to sweep them away.

Thanks to Mang Thi Tien and other heroes like Giong from Phu Dong village, the battle was soon over.

After the war, the Hung King nominated Mang Thi Tien to be Tay Thien My Nu Son Than (The Beautiful tay Thien Mountain Genie), like Tan Vien, the Genie of the Ba Vi Mountain.

Despite her new role, Mang returned to her natural life as a bird would returning to the forest. But sometimes, she went to Phong Chau capital city to join in the festivals, which is how she met a handsome boy. She caught a five coloured ball from him when they played a game called nem con (throwing cloth balls among boys and girls to express their hopes and wishes for good luck & prosperity).

She hurled the ball back to the boy & it flew past him glancing his chest. When he looked back she had disappeared lind a wind. The boy was Lang Lieu, the youngest son of Hung King, and he had instantly fallen in love with her. He asked the king to allow him to go find her but the king was not impressed. But no one in the royal court could talk the boy out of this perceived folly. Worked up into a frustrated rage the king expelled his own son from the capital city.

So Lang Lieu went to Tam Dao, though he was not familiar with life in the wilds. But with a determined will, Lang Lieu managed to grow rice to eat while he tried to find the girl. In fact he did not like weapons or hunting, so all year round he ate only rice & vegetables.

Moved by his sincerity, Mang came to him when he was eating a bowl of rice. She wore flowers and leaves and carried a fox on her shoulders. Meeting him, she placed the fox before him and bent her head in a shy gesture. That meant she was prepared to be his wife.

Lang Lieu asked her if they needed to return to the capital city to have a wedding or not. She said no, explaning that on Tam Dao Mountain a girl had the right to ask the boy to be her husband.

Of course, this went againts a ruling ordained by King Duong Vuong, the Grandfather of the first Hung King. So the couple decided to continue living in Tam Dao and in following generations where they settled developed into a large village on one side of the mountain. Today, if you visit Tay Thien tourist side, you will see many temples built worshipping the Genie.

For me the best place to find a locksmith is in Vu Huu Loi street. If you’re really in trouble, you can even invite the locksmith to your house and within several minutes, i guarantee, your door will be open as quickly as Alibaba could say “open sesame!” three times.

Tran Quang Dung is the street locksmith who cut keys for my grandfather for nearly 20 years. Dung was born in Ngu Hiep village in Thanh Tri district of Hanoi, as well-known village for its “Golden Handed Locksmiths” who can make, repair, adjust or install any kind of locks or make any kind of key.

In just 5-10 minutes, the most modern of locks on a motorbike, car or house can be opened wide. In under 90 minutes, top notch safety boxes can be violated. It seems nothing can thwart Dung’s talents – not even locks produced by Germany’s Zikon, America’s Yale or Italy’s Solex.

His tools are simple – a tiny machine to copy the form of the key, a bunch of draft keys, a steel file, a nipper, a hammer, and several bike spokes or iron wire.

Bikes spokes and iron wire are used as skeleton keys to open doors with the help of just a delicate touch and hearing.

One day, my two-year-old daughter locked herself in in my bedroom, a room for which we had lost the keys for.

I drove over Dung’s workshop, where a crowd had gathered around a hip young man sitting on a fancy motorbike worth nearly $6,000. The young man bet Dung couldn’t open his lock which was produced and insured by an international company. But only 10 seconds later, Dung had made VND200,000. Easy money.

My bedroom lock wasn’t even a challenge. With a prick or two from iron wire it opened instantly. Inside my daughter was still happily playing.

After dropping him back to his workshop, I decided to stick around to see what kind of clients he served on a normal day. He tells me he’s been asked by banks to open safety boxes, and police to open cases concealing evidence. He even claims the police offered him a job, but he refused.

“I like this job and I love the freedom of being a street vendor. I’m very happy to earn my living here,” said Dung.

For each new key, he earns VND5,000 – VND10,000. To open door locks it costs around VND20,000 – VND50,000. For top security locks, it costs at least VND200,000 and the same for opening cars.

As I chat to Dung a man in smart casual cloths jumps off a xe om. Rather flustered he tells Dung he’s left his keys inside his brand new Lexus.

The man’s carelessness is Dung’s fortune. He quickly says goodbye, grabs his bits and pieces and jumps on a xe om to follow his client.

Possibly the greatest film, fondy remembered by almost every Vietnamese is Dang Nhat Minh’s When the Tenth Month Comes. (Bao Gio Cho Den Thang Muoi, 1984).

When the Tenth Month Comes is a touching spychological drama about Duyen, a young mother whose efforts to shoulder the burden of her husband’s death alone lead to unforeseen complications.

Her responsibility to keep the news from her ailing father-in-law forces her to recruit the local schoolteacher into her plans; to forge letters from her husband. Embroiled in this subterfuge, the teacher and Duyen discover a love that, because of the circumstances cannot be acknowledged.

It is during the tenth months of the little that wandering souls return to comfort the living, and Duyen searches the temple grounds nightly to try to find her husband’s ghost. The outcome of the film blends an overwhelming desire to remain human and promote kindness during the tragedies of war. Director Dang Nhat Minh captures the essence of the Vietnamese soul; the love of family, responsibility, sacrifice and the warmth of the common people. This is a film that allows to a peek in to the culture. Even if you’ve seen it before, after living in or traveling around Vietnam and learning about Vietnamese traditions, see it again. Layers of meaning constantly unfold.

Review by Lucia d’L