A Culinary Arts School for Young People Who Need a Future

 We decided to go to Vietnam rather impulsively.  We wanted to go somewhere warm in late February, when we could get free.  We had heard of the Streets International Project, because it was created by Neal Bermas, who was our son Asher's teacher in the restaurant management course that he took in New York.  Neal was very kind to Asher and was hoping that Asher would come to Vietnam as a volunteer in his project. If Asher hadn't fallen to his death in Peru, his next stop would most probably have been Vietnam, so our visit was also a tribute to Asher's memory.
This program takes young people from very impoverished backgrounds and teaches them both cooking skills and hospitality skills, as well as English, so that they can find employment in Vietnam's rapidly expanding tourist industry.

 This picture was taken in a classroom.  The students were waiting for their teacher.  Happiness and optimism glow on their faces.
No comment is necessary here.
The founder of the project, Neal Bermas, travelled to Vietnam pretty soon after the country began to welcome tourists, and he fell in love with it.  Motivated by the feeling that America had done so much harm to the country that it was only right for Americans to do some good for it, he took on this project with all his professional skills and intelligence.

 The school runs a fine restaurant in Hoi An, and we recommend it highly.
Eat there and make a contribution to the project, too.

Ordinary People doing Ordinary Things

A thoughtful customer in the restaurant at the Perfume Pagoda.

The traffic in the large cities is intense.  When the people on their scooters noticed that I was taking their picture, they smiled.  The motorbikes flow like schools of fish.  The Vietnamese have nerves of steel.

This was one of the boatwomen in the floating fishermen's village in Ha Long Bay.  We were taken on quite a few boat trips, and more than half the time, the people rowing were women.

A bride and groom preparing a photo album on a street in Hoi An.

The man in the yellow shirt is a member of a group of Korean cyclists.  The woman in the red dress makes a living posing for photographs with tourists at the Japanese bridge in Hoi An.  The woman taking the photograph shares the fees.  At least that's what I think is going on here.

Another bride and groom preparing for their wedding in Hoi An.

This young woman was working in a shop in Hoi An that raises money for needy people by selling handicrafts.  She spoke good English with an Australian accent, because she had spent a year in Australia learning how to sew wedding dresses.

Our boat trip on the Mekong included a fine meal in a restaurant on a local farm.  Among the attractions of the restaurant was a python, and this guide was showing off with it.

Water Merchants

Tourists are not advised to drink the water.

This boatman was glad to have me take his picture, with the kind of friendliness we encountered over and over again in Vietnam.

I have mentioned the floating market in the Mekong Delta in another post.  The people here are too busy buying and selling to notice that scores of tourists are taking pictures of them.

This man has bought pineapples from a middleman on a large boat or barge, and now he's bringing them ashore to sell them.  We ate so much pineapple on this trip that we almost got tired of them.

When this child's mother noticed that I was taking their picture, she withdrew.  Our guide explained to us that parents keep little children with them on the boats until they're school age.

Working People

The restaurant where we ate lunch at the Perfume Pagoda was huge and efficient.

A busy kitchen worker can still find some time to text.

We were taken to a family run candy factory in the Mekong Delata.  This young man is stirring some syrup.

At Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and his residence, the guards wore the cleanest uniforms I've ever seen.

This artisan is placing eggshells on a wooden plaque, in a lacquer-ware workshop in Hanoi.

This is one of our guides, Ha, in the cable car at the Perfume Pagoda.  He didn't want to take us there, because it's rather undignified: crowded, commercial, and totally not a show put on for tourists.  But for us it was one of the high points of our visit to Vietnam, because we saw the people as they are, eating dogs and porcupines, crowding into temples, and being themselves.

Back in the candy factory.

Some of the candy was made of puffed rice.  This young man is stirring the rice, mixed with sand, which they later strain out, to keep it from burning while it puffs up.

People Selling Things 3

The market is a place where people live.  Sometimes I did feel that I was intruding on their private lives.  We Westerners, used to our antiseptic supermarkets, are drawn to the markets because they are real, not packaged in plastic wrap, but we wouldn't be willing to pay the price of a reduction in our standard of living, so that markets would make a comeback.  Paradoxically, the abundance of produce in the markets in Vietnam are a sign of the country's closeness to a subsistence economy.  They're modernizing with extraordinary energy, but a lot of people are still left behind.

There is always bewlidering activity in the markets, motorscooters pushing through the crowds, people moving in every direction, and sounds and smells.

Three cyclo drivers ready to transport people home from the market with their purchases, while a woman has set up a tiny stall in the middle of the street.

What are the men in her family doing while she's selling in the market?

Here's óne man, pressing the moisture out of some sort of foodstuff.

People Selling Things 2

We spent a morning hour in the market in Hue, along the riverbank.  The vendors are evidently used to tourists, and they ignored us, so I was able to take a lot of pictures without feeling intrusive or self-conscious.  I don't think of these people as picturesque, but as hard working women (mainly), living without much of a cushion between them and the hard places of life.

This hat stall was at the Perfume Pagoda.  The people selling there seemed more affluent than the people in the agricultural markets.

She is selling things to be offered at the various shrines of the Perfume Pagoda.

 It's not easy to take care of an infant and sit at a stall in the market all day and hope to make some sales.

 

Another woman in the market who has not had an easy life.

People Selling Things 1

 At the Perfume Pagoda there were hundreds of stands, selling things to eat and to offer to the monks.  These teenagers are selling sweets.  I think there may have been a dozen stands selling exactly the same product, and at every one of them stood an energetic (and noisy) band of teenage salespeople.

In markets, everything is out in the open, though this woman seems to be creating a private space of her own while she has her lunch.

 This woman is making rice noodles.  She takes thin sheets of dough and runs it through a pasta machine.

 This woman probably got up before dawn and laboriously brought her produce to the market.

It was a pleasure to see the vegetables displayed so neatly, with clear pride.

Animals

 We felt sorry for this porcupine, kept fresh, as it were, before pilgrims to the Perfume Pagoda ate it.

These chickens at the market in Hue were also on their way to people's kitchens.  As were the ducks in the blue basket.

 We took a boat trip in Hoi An, and on the way we saw a duck farm.  At least the animals had a happy life before they were eaten.

 These wild birds, hovering over a rice paddy, will, presumably, not be on anyone's menu.

 Many of the temples we saw had pools, and in many of the pools were happy turtles.  At the entrance to this temple in Saigon, people were selling turtles to be placed in the pool as offerings.  Our guide told us that the salesmen simply caught turtles from the pools at the end of the day and sold them again the next morning.

At the citadel in Hue, we saw a pair of elephants grazing in an enclosure.  No one was selling tickets for an elephant ride, but that's what they were there for, I guess.

Music in Vietnam

 Our first exposure to Vietnamese music was in the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, where a group of musicians performs and demonstrates the instruments as tourists wander through.  This woman is playing a T'ru'ng, a xylophone made of bamboo and suspended on strings.  It is tuned to a Western chromatic scale and the musician played it with great brio.
We enjoyed the music that we heard.  It was pleasantly melodic and often highly rhythmical.

 At the Reunification Palace in Ho Chi Minh City, we attended a short concert.  This drummer was excellent.

He also played a kind of xylophone made out of bars of volcanic rock.

 This musician, the leadere of the group, Dinh Linh, is famous, a true master.  He has a website, mainly in Vietnamese, Truc Mai Music.  As it happens, we were just about the only people in the audience, so we had a chance to speak to Dinh Linh after he played.  His English is excellent, he is friendly, extremely knowledgeable (not just a fantastic and versatile instrumentalist), and he explained a lot to us.  He also let us try some of the instruments.
Just by watching him I learned how to produce a sound on the flute that I bought.

 This instrument, which we saw back in the Temple of Literature, is a hammer dulcimer very similar to the Persian santur.

 We found a musical instrument store in Hanoi, and I bought a Chinese flute there.  Here a violin, a ukulele, a mandolin, and a guitar are displayed along with traditional Asian instruments.

 Here are a few more of the instruments they had on sale there.  A web site about the instrumental music of Southeast Asia is a good place to begin finding more detailed information about them.

 Here are two more traditional fretted string instruments, showing the influence of a thousand years of Chinese domination.

 I love musical instruments, and it's clear from the way these instruments are displayed that the owners of this store also love what they sell.

 I guess this temple bell at the Perfume Pagoda qualifies as a musical instrument.

 These drums, hanging in a temple, are apparently taken out and used for various ceremonies.

Here is Judith standing in front of the biggest drum we have ever seen, at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi.  According to our guide, the drum heads are made of elephant hides.