It’s 380km from Hanoi to Sa Pa near the Chinese border. The trains are as slow as trams making it an overnight trip in a sleeper to possibly the cloudiest place in Vietnam. We arrive in driving rain and hail. One travel guide tells us that the sun shines fro 60 days a year here. That’s right, for the remaining 300 odd days it’s cloudy. Somehow in six years this town has grown from only eight hotels to 233. There’s […]
Recent posts
Michelin and Vietnam
Well why wouldn’t there be a connection between Michelin and Vietnam? After all it was the French who colonised Indochina from 1883 to the 1950s. Ho Chi Minh – at the time just plain old Nguyễn Sinh Cun – trained as a pastry chef with Escoffier in the Carlton Hotel in London. Later he moved to Paris and founded the French Communist Party. And it was the French who trained the Vietnamese to make wonderful baguettes, paté and coffee (believe […]
Home and blogging again
I’m meant to live in the edgy side of Melbourne in St Kilda. Drunks, drug addicts street walkers. That’s saying nothing of the so-called actors and artists who hang around in the cafés all day. But everything seems very quiet and dull since returning from Vietnam. Apologies for lack of blog entries but finding a recent version of Internet Explorer was hit and miss. Now I’m home I can tell the full story.
Eating on fried fish street
Stay in the old quarter in Hanoi. Learn to love the congestion, the buzz and honking of motor scooters. Ah, and the smells. Two stroke, food and incense. This is the place where the action is. Life is lived and transacted on the street or at least without leaving the motorcycle saddle. It is a place where street names have a meaning. Hang Gad is chicken, Hang Hahn is onion. Hang Ruoi is clam worms. And the stretch between Hang […]
Office space: rent or buy
From IN THE BLACK April06 The big debate on property is whether to rent or buy. When property values and rents are falling the market favours the renters. But when the market is in an upswing – as it is now – owning a property can shield against rent rises, an attractive option for small business owners. One option is the strata office. The fact is that 71 per cent of strata office buyers are the occupiers themselves, while the […]
Next in line
From IN THE BLACK April 06 When it comes to succession planning, many business owners overlook the obvious: selling to their own employees. It’s the dilemma facing all ageing business owners. What to do with the company upon retirement? Many will choose a trade sale of the business. But few are thinking about a sale to their employees. The average age of a family business owner is 57. Over the next five years, more than 40 per cent of business […]
Hot and cross, yes. Buns? Not so sure…
Now that you’ve been exposed to my technical ‘skills’, it may not be surprising to learn that my hot cross buns were lacking something, too. I followed a recipe that I downloaded from the internet – probably my first mistake! – and while they turned out perfectly edible, they had a texture more akin to a scone than a bun. Everything started out nicely enough, although I was apprehensive about using copha, or vegetable shortening, as I associate that stuff […]
Resuming normal service
Ok, it seems all is ok with the DMBLGIT picutre gallery now – but please let me know if you have any difficulties veiwing the entries via the link at the top left. I’ve uploaded a few more entries this morning… keep them coming!
WHB: Street pinapple Hanoi
What is a picture worth? About 50,000 dong- nearly US$5. Or at least this one did and involved me buying four peeled pinapples. They were elaboratley carved in spirals and were fresh and delicious. All in the name of Wekend Herb Blogging over at Kalyn’s Kitchen. Thes women are shrewd. This money and overnight train journey to the north west in Sa Pa, near the Chinese border, I bought another of these elaboratly carved fruit for 5,000 Dong and they’d […]