On the muddy and foggy road

I was surprised by the cold and humid weather in Sapa, closer to zero degrees. I was wearing four layers of clothes to keep me warm (my bed in the hotel had an electric warmer just like in car seats but that didn't help much when electiricity was cut). The season was absolutely wrong for seeing the beautiful rice terraces as they don't even start the cultivation before June in this Northern part of Vietnam, high in the mountains. The fog was so thick that on my last day I could barely see 15 metres ahead. I however enjoyed the encounter with the local ethnic minorities during my 2 day trek. The road was so muddy that all the tourists adopted one or two local Hmong women to help to get down the hills (those who didn't most likely fell over into the mud), I also borrowed rubber boots from the hotel. I was escorted by two ladies as well (photo above). The friendly ladies spoke with broken English they had learnt from the tourists. Some children replied: "no honey", when you refused to buy anything with the excuse of "no money". Men were working with their buffalos in the villages and took care of the babies while women communicated with tourists and tried to sell their handicrafts. I was obviously forced to buy something from my women but the deal was clear from the beginning.

While the first day of trekking was very touristy and the village roads were lined with handicraft shops and farm animals at the same time, on the second day my guide took me off the beaten track and took me also to a house of another ethnic minority (characterised by their red hats). I ate with the family some rice and cabbage while the communication was limited to a lot of smiling. The food was cooked on an open fire but as in all the houses I had seen along the way, you could find a TV in the largest room of the house.

Eating Animals

Being vegetarian is not impossible in Vietnam but it is slightly challenging. A couple of times in Hanoi, I ate in a veggie restaurant for tourists but also tried the classic pho (noodle soup) with beef from a street stall. While I've abandoned sea food to great extent in Europe and I'm very conscious of the sad truth about over-fishing, by-catch that is thrown back to seas dead and extinction of many species, I allowed myself the culinary experience of sea food in Hanoi and Halong Bay where it was indeed an amazingly delicious experience: various types of fish, squids, crabs, other shell fish and prawns.

Moving ahead to the mountainous Northern Vietnam, I have started to refer to myself as an chai, which is a Vietnamese term for vegetarians (for religious reasons). I think I haven't missed out of anything, even the cabbage can taste wonderful here and tofu is sold in the market like loaves of bread. Markets are interesting for meat eaters as well. When in Europe you can perfectly well eat and buy meat without even noticing that the nicely packaged chicken breasts belonged actually to a living creature before satisfying your overly meaty diet, here you can't avoid to understand that eating meat means eating an animal. At the market in Sapa, you could see parts of cow still with hairy skin on it, pig's head next to its paws, and various unrecognizable intestines served for lunch to the locals (not many tourists eating those things). Seeing this outdoor butchery, I however considered it much more human compared to the factory farming practiced in the 'developed' West. When it comes to food production, development and progress do not seem to mean anything positive.

The scene also reminded me of the young Finnish girl scouts with whom I visited Senegal one year ago. They were shocked how the Senegalese bought their food, a living goat, from the markets and were dragging it along the roads to their dinner table. The Finnish girls were naive enough to think that this was cruel. It only highlighted the fact how the Western people are so alienated from the reality of food production that they believe it's inhuman to forcefully drag a goat by the road, while a factory farmed animal would be hardly able to stand by its own legs.

Close to Sapa, I stayed over night in a home stay with a local village family. They had dogs and four cute puppies of 1,5 months old. They would be later sold for their meat, price around 1,5 dollars per kg. I also learn that puppy meat is tastier than older dog meat. Though the puppies were adorable (not any more adorable than baby sheep, rabbits, cows or goats however!), I hoped that all tourists would take the opportunity of reconsidering their attitudes toward eating animals when seeing Vietnamese eating puppies. In his inspiring book "Eating Animals", Jonathan Safran Foer makes a good point about eating dogs. He doesn't promote eating dogs but with this analogy tries to make people understand what it means to eat animals. Why not eating dogs? There are plenty of dogs in the USA that are fed to livestock that is later eaten by humans. Why have this step, why not eat dogs directly, he asks. What's the difference between a dog and a pig after all (the latter is even smarter)? It's all socially constructed and cultural, so how do you justify eating pigs or any other animals that are kept in horrible conditions and fed with massive amounts of antibiotics to survive and hormones to make their bodies grow in unnatural ways so that they die under their own body weight? Next door in the village, they killed a cat in the morning. It was stealing meat from the kitchen so it was now its time to get into the dinner table... An chai!

Halong Bay

Ha long, meaning 'where the dragon descends into the sea', consists of 3000 amazing islands on the coast of Vietnam, on the way to China. The legend says that a dragon created these green islands when water filled the traces of his tail but I guess there's some geological wonders (limestone karsts being developed through erosion of 20 millions years of tropical wet climate to be exact) behind this Unesco World Heritage site. The easiest way to get to know the bay is on a guided tour where you sleep one night on a boat (I paid 75 dollars for 2 days/1 night tour including everything). Even though the weather had gone down to something around +17 C and it was cloudy, the place still looked pretty amazing and otherworldly. I guess the scenery is familiar from some movies but I can't really remember if it's Jurassic Park or some James Bond.

Even though January is low season, the bay was full of boats. During kayaking, you could see the water being dirty from gasoline or oil. So no regrets I couldn't swim there. Our guide, who had the Vietnamese name of 'Dragon', was obviosuly proud of this natural site. He first took us to the 'surprising' or 'amazing' cave. At least one surprising thing about it was the Celine Dion music you could hear from the load speakers hidden behind the rocks. Cave instead was lit with neon lights so you needed a lot of imagination to wonder how it had been in the 19th century when the French explorers found the cave, now it was merely a tourist trap (but still interesting to see) even if it had all the possibilities of being amazing and surprising (it was huge!). No need for my head lamp there...

On the boat we got a lesson of doing spring rolls and again we ate delicious sea food. Travelling alone, I'm very pleased to end up in such a nice group of people. We were a German, Australian and American couple and a very nice South African family with their college-aged daughter with whom I share the cabin (and kayak). The interesting conversations vary from hiv in South Africa, vegetarianism, socialism, Paul Pot, Vietnam War (or American war as they call it here) to more usual travel stories. Again, I understand the great eye-opening opportunities of travelling, not only do I learn about the country that I'm visiting but I share these experiences with other travellers creating this vast synthesis of what I saw, what the others saw and how do we reflect upon the experience from our different cultural departure points.

People living in floating villages in the bay area sell drinks and snacks to the tourists.

Finding the sophisticated metropolis

On my fourth day in Hanoi, I started getting more used to the traffic and crossing the streets felt like part of the tourism sport. In general, I strated liking the city a bit. And more was to come. I had read an interesting article on the New York Times about the contemporary art scene in Hanoi, "The Awakening of Hanoi", and I was inspired to look at some bits of this awakening. I followed my dorm mate's advice and visited Mai Gallery and Apricot Gallery. I have to admit, I was impressed. For 3000 dollars you could buy some pretty great paintings (next door they were being copied by lesser talents). I especially fell in love with Nguyen Van Cuong's powerfully coloured paintings of Vietnamese women.

My art tour was followed by an espresso (oh, it felt good: even though Vietnam is a huge coffee producer, the coffee here is extremely sweet, almost tasting like hot chocolate, the Italian coffee snob in me speaking again) in a little coffee house, La Place, next to St. Joseph's cathedral. The neighbourhood around the church gave me a glimpse of that sophisticated Hanoi some articles were writing about. I was sitting next to three local hipsters that really caught my attention with their cool clothes and fashionable hair styles. I started talking with them. It turned out that one of the guys, Nick (right in the photo), was actually a fashion designer himself and sold his clothes in La Cage, in the very expensive neighbourhood close to the opera (he's photos are all over La Cage's website). Perhaps, an avantguard of Vietnamese fashion. Nick had lived in London and spoke perfect English with a Brittish accent. I felt bad in my crappy traveller's clothes. I quite didn't understand before arriving here that Hanoi is actually a capital just like any other, and as in London or Paris, people don't walk around in trekking shoes but girls are wearing high heels of 10 cm. Nick however noticed my Marimekko bracelet and with a sparkle in his eyes admitted that he was a big fan of the Nordic design (maybe I pushed it a bit though...).

Mausoleum.

Contemporary art, espresso, and local fashion designer, not all that bad for getting into Hanoi's sophisticated side. Well, let's not exaggerate, I also visited Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, one of the creepiest tourist site's ever and got into the socialist side of Vietnam as well. After queuing for one hour in a strict order kept by many soldiers in their white costumes, I spent 20 seconds around HCM's body (not that I had wanted to contemplate the waxy body any longer). I was almost laughing out loud; the idiot stuff you need to do when you're a tourist... Next to the mausoleum, there's also a museum dedicated to HCM. It's only slightly less weird than the mausoleum but definitely worth a visit. It's quite unlike any other museum I've visited. On display were many installations and documents that introduced HCM's ideas and achievements to the visitor mostly in a very symbolic level. It was socialist propaganda in almost a cute format that made it feel very unreal.

Ho Chi Minh.

The text for this weird display read: "The symbols of nature in its beauty contrasted with industrial plants in this hall represent Uncle Ho's expectation that Young People shoulder the reponsibility for the protection and preservation of peace and the environment, and prevention of aggressive and destrucive wars." Well said, even though the Alice in the Wonderland kind of a display is pretty funny.

Sharing

Toilettes in the National Water Puppet Theatre in Hanoi. A view that was maybe even sligthly more interesting than the water puppet show.

Hanoi Rocks?

For a limited period, this blog turns into "Great Escape" as I'm travelling in South-East Asia celebrating the end of my PhD thesis.

I left Finland's extremely cold and snowy weather on 29 December. At the airport I had a glass of prosecco (in memory of Florence); I was so happy to leave Europe and my thesis behind that I had to hold the tears coming. During my second prosecco I talked with a Finnish man living in Shanghai for the last 13 years and we contemplated the advantages of travelling alone. Later in Hanoi, I met others travelling alone and others admiring those going solo (or maybe they just pity us). It is quite liberating and relaxing to travel alone, and the Vietnamese are happy to chat and help you around, so there's no need to feel lonely. Instead, I feel that I'm more open to things happening around me and I can more easily immerse to my surroundings.

In the airplane, I watch Eat, Pray and Love and I feel I'm not part of the target audience. I almost envy the Korean guy in front of me watching an action flick with Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone (I guess). My mind is wondering away from Julia Roberts' monotone narrating: maybe I should have gone to Bali as well, and hey, I certainly don't have that kind of fancy hippie clothes with me, and why is she meditating with full make-up anyway. Julia Roberts' 'finding herself' -trip ends with her falling in love. How disappointing! Well, it is Javier Bardem, but still. I wonder how her trip would have ended if she wasn't extremely pretty, and in general, should this kind of soul-searching involve something else than finding a handsom lover? Would Clint Eastwood's Marlboro-man type of a guy settle with just falling in love or would he continue alone, trying to find out what it means to be a human being in a desert/jungle/Indian meditation centre for Americans, breaking women's hearts but not compromising his higher objectives. In short, I felt disappointed with the story ending with a typical romance, maybe the feminist inside me woke up again with this traditional structure of woman finding the solution (or the sense of life) in a man.

Well, back to my great escape (not including any yoga or meditation). I arrived to Hanoi, Vietnam, three days ago. First impressions: pollution, pollution and chaotic traffic. I felt like I want to move on immediately. The traffic is like the end of a football game in Campo di Marte, Florence, when hundreds of motorinos hit the streets simultaneously. Except that here it's ten times worse. I've never seen so many scooters at once. It's almost hilarious. Except when you want to cross the road, when you're spelling "schaisse" in your mind and hoping they would have even the slightest respect for the pedestrians. They don't. The sidewalks are parked full of motorinos, so you need to walk on the road and cover your mouth and nose in order to avoid the worst fumes. The locals seem to be glued on their scooters and there are hardly other pedestrians than the exhausted tourists. I've seen locals sleeping, having their coffee and reading newspapers on their motorino. And of course, it seems safer than stepping down and walking.

Like most hotels, also my hostel is in the Old Quartier of Hanoi. The streets are full of locals going on with their daily business and the tourists wearing their khaki shorts trying to figure out how to cross the street safe. Closer to the opera house, I spot a Gucci and Louis Vuitton stores (where there is LV, there is capitalism: where there is McDonalds, there is democracy, so far I have only spotted a KFC so don't know about the latter here, and for example Facebook is blocked so I don't think we can talk about advanced democracy to say the least). This modern side of Hanoi has received a lot attention in the few articles I've read about Hanoi: "Vietnam's capital has experienced extraordinary growth over the last two decades, evolving from a grim, famine-ravaged place into a sophisticated metrpolis with high-rises, sensational cuisine and world-class art", writes The New York Times, and in another article: "Instead of being a squalid third world capital struggling to recover from years of war and isolation, it is a stylish European-influenced metropolis with manicured lakeside promenades, tree-lined boulevards, ancient pagodas and French-colonial building painted in palette of jade, turquoise and burgundy."

I'm not sure if I can sign all that. For sure, Hanoi is no longer a third world capital but it is still far from being a sophisticated metropolis, if only for the traffic. There seems to be considerable middle-class eating nicely in the restaurants and driving big cars. Lots of men wear business suits (those silk ones that make them look like Chinese mafiosos) and women are dressed with care, though the style is closer to that found in Parisian banlieus with lot of glitter and cheap tight materials rather than smart-casual style. At the same time, at least in the centre, you can't really see poverty, nobody is begging on the streets and you don't need to feel like a rich Western voyeur. In comparison to Egypt for example, there's much less haggling and people let you go around without forcing you to buy things or give money. Everybody seems to be busy working - or driving. Older men are playing with Chinese cards in the park (one had long white hair, a fabulous tweed jacket and Woody Allen glasses, I guess he didn't understand how fashionable he was), kids are waiting for a bus to take them to school, women are cooking in the outdoor restaurants and surprisingly many are taking their wedding photos in the parks.

It's my first time in Asia, so obviously I'm interested in pretty much everything and it is funny how so many of those cliches are true: the huge burdens carried around with motorinos, women with their conical hats, locals sitting on those tiny plastic chairs and having delicious lunch. But Hanoi is too hectic, noisy and bad for your health (after 3 days spent here, I guess I've shortened my life by 2 months just by inhaling the pollution, it's like smoking constantly), I'm looking forward to getting to the mountains in the North of Vietnam. But one thing I have enjoyed greatly is this incredible food (coming soon in this blog... with some photos).

Arrivederci Firenze

The Economist wrote about PhD programmes a week ago and concluded that doing a PhD is waste of time. It was slightly discouraging to read such an article only a few days before I was finishing my thesis but, at the same time, I could only think that the last 3 and half years have been an excellent period in my life and living in Florence was an amazing experience. If I don't manage to translate my extended studies into economic benefits, at least I have had the opportunity to learn about Italian culture, admire painters from Giotto to Michelangelo, and visit dozens of beautiful Tuscan churches. So, I always have the plan B of becoming a tourist guide in Florence...

Of course, the whole autumn (my last one in Florence) was a huge nostalgic period when I was constantly thinking that I will have to give up my life in Florence that I had just now learnt to fully appreciate. Even those two months when I was the first one at the library at 8h30 when it opened (after a cappuccino and cornetto in San Domenico) and left around nine o'clock in the evening and hardly had the time to explore Florence, I was enjoying my stay.

During my last weekend, I strolled around the city to go through all my favourite spots of the city and walked up to San Miniato. It has the best view of Florence. The church itself is also amazing; so amazing that during one of the Florentine wars, Michelangelo protected the church with mattresses against the enemy's weapons. I sat inside for a while and in the comfortable isolation shed a few tears, out of happiness of having had such great last few months in Italy, beauty of the place and melancholy.

The last weeks in Florence were so busy that suddenly, via Cologne's Christmas market and Brussels, I was back in cold and snowy Finland, complaining about Senegalese tomatoes found in the supermarket and bad coffee found everywhere and drunk excessively. Later it was also snowing in Florence, something I've never seen. People who had stayed there posted images and Facebook comments on the chaos in the city. This video as well:

Olio nuovo

While the on-going season is usually accompanied by a gentle jingle of wine bottles when people are hurrying to pre-Christmas parties, my bag was jingling because of something else. I had just purchased three bottles of our institute's olive oil. From late October to end of November markets are filled with olive oil vendors promoting their freshly pressed olio nuovo, new olive oil. The olive trees in our institute's lands are also contributing to this exciting culinary season.

Photo from Talk of Tomatoes blog with a description of olio tasting in Tuscany.

New olive oil is lime green, unfiltered and bitter in a way that you become slightly addicted. My dinners will consist of mostly bread during the next week as I just want to savour the delicious taste of olive oil. It's also very good in different minestrones or soups. My new favourite recipe is Tuscan-style soup with potatoes, onions, chick peas, cavolo nero (black cabbage?) and other root veggies that are part of the autumn season. The soup gets especially good after three or four days. Yesterday I added the rest of pici (spaghetti type of fresh pasta from Siena) and today when I finally finished the soup it was at its best. And of course I drizzled a lot of olio nuovo on top of it.

Giorgio Locatelli is an Italian chef and the author of magnificent "Made in Italy, Food and Stories" that makes me feel like spending hundred euros in a good balsamico di Modena. He writes about Italian cuisine in a way that you're annoyed that you were born in a country with no special emotional attachment to food. Actually, I think that one of the most important things I learnt while living in Italy is the way of "living" food and not just eat, cook, or even enjoy it. Locatelli writes about olive oil, the liquid gold: "In Italy, olive oil is still considered something you buy from someone you know, either direct from a local small producer, or via a shop that will probably only stock a few oils." What would then be better oil for me than the 'Badia Fiesolana, olio extra vergine di oliva', from the trees that I have probably been contemplating while writing my thesis.

Olive oil has been produced since around 5000 BC but only around two decades ago it arrived to Finland promoted as a healthy Southern product that was considered as the reason for longevity in Italy or Greece. Today everybody knows that you should buy extra virgin oil even though few actually know what's the difference really between basic olive oil, virgin oil and extra virgin. From Locatelli (my new food guru), I learnt that extra virgin oil is extracted only by cold-pressing without chemicals and has a very low acidity (less than 1 per cent, what ever that means...). I also engaged in a "field study" to get hands-on information about olives. When following a group of Italians picking olives in Settignano, outside Florence, on a beautiful November day, I ended up asking them a couple of questions. I found out that one tree can produce something from 10 to 20 litres of olives. On the one side of the road, a sophisticated method was being used to pick up the olives: a tractor with a special equipment shook olive trees while another tractor was holding big plastic sheets underneath it. On the other side, people with whom I was talking picked them manually, some people climbing on the ladders and others laying nets below the trees. It was all very idyllic and if we weren't in a hurry (for spritz!), I would have liked to stay and if not to help at least to observe. (By the way, olives directly from the trees are not made for eating! Their amazing bitterness might be however worth to try out...)

Happy olio nuovo season!