TRAVELLIVE 10-2016
Friday afternoon, I’m going home after a busy week with tons of deadlines and articles from our contributors. A few stairs are long enough to make me tired. I’m trying to climb step by step. Suddenly, I catch the scent of baked cakes in the air. Yeah, that is Joseph. This enchanting scent must come from the kitchen of the “conjurer”, Joseph! All my weariness seems to disappear. I run quickly up the last stairs, calling out loud “Uncle Joseph”. Upon coming in, I hug him from his back. Wow, the sweet smell of cream cheese is still lingering on his hair. “The conjurer of cakes” is the nickname I have given Joseph, an old member of my family. Thanks to his career and hobbies, he has had chances to travel around the world. He has cooked the delicious dishes he has learned on his travels since I was a little girl. He also tells me how he “met” those dishes. I usually enjoy the dishes while listening to his endless exciting stories. No matter how mature I am, his dishes and culinary stories are always miraculous. Now, we are preparing the last plates for our dinner today while happily telling funny stories. This time, he is the listener as I’m sharing with him my recipes and my passion for cooking. Actually, in that busy life, what could be more important than the excitement we have whenever enjoying or cooking scrumptious dishes? Why don’t you share with us your own excitement during your culinary journeys? Box: Experience your exciting and memorable culinary journeys in Vietnam and around the world.
Friday afternoon, I’m going home after a busy week with tons of deadlines and articles from our contributors. A few stairs are long enough to make me tired. I’m trying to climb step by step.
Suddenly, I catch the scent of baked cakes in the air. Yeah, that is Joseph. This enchanting scent must come from the kitchen of the “conjurer”, Joseph!
All my weariness seems to disappear. I run quickly up the last stairs, calling out loud “Uncle Joseph”. Upon coming in, I hug him from his back. Wow, the sweet smell of cream cheese is still lingering on his hair.
“The conjurer of cakes” is the nickname I have given Joseph, an old member of my family. Thanks to his career and hobbies, he has had chances to travel around the world. He has cooked the delicious dishes he has learned on his travels since I was a little girl. He also tells me how he “met” those dishes. I usually enjoy the dishes while listening to his endless exciting stories. No matter how mature I am, his dishes and culinary stories are always miraculous.
Now, we are preparing the last plates for our dinner today while happily telling funny stories. This time, he is the listener as I’m sharing with him my recipes and my passion for cooking. Actually, in that busy life, what could be more important than the excitement we have whenever enjoying or cooking scrumptious dishes?
Why don’t you share with us your own excitement during your culinary journeys?
Box: Experience your exciting and memorable culinary journeys in Vietnam and around the world.
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Actually, from the very first moment I<br />
set foot in Saigon, I didn’t know where<br />
a peaceful secret corner of this city was.<br />
I simply thought that all I needed was<br />
to follow my heart and keep going, looking, and listening.<br />
I got on a bus connecting the center of District 1 to ChÓ<br />
LÌn. The way seemed endless. And I was overflowing with<br />
emotion when I arrived in Dist. 5, a unique residential area<br />
in bustling Saigon.<br />
A community of Chinese people have lived and earned<br />
their living here for hundreds of years. Consisting of<br />
separate apartments and buildings occasionally between<br />
community places, this area’s architecture is very special.<br />
From above, Dist. 5 looks like a giant zig zag carpet with<br />
patterns of roads and winding lanes. Be patient and follow<br />
these endless roads. Get lost in this strange yet enchanting<br />
place and it will seem from time to that you are back in the<br />
1990s.<br />
COLORFUL STREETS<br />
Perhaps because of its proximity to ChÓ LÌn, Chinatown is<br />
always busy. Houses are close to each other. Their first floor<br />
have been restored and decorated to serve as shops. I don’t<br />
like noisy places, but upon passing these streets, I wasn’t<br />
GET LOST IN THIS<br />
STRANGE YET<br />
ENCHANTING<br />
PLACE AND IT<br />
WILL SEEM FROM<br />
TIME TO THAT<br />
YOU ARE BACK IN<br />
THE 1990S.<br />
bothered by the throngs of businessmen<br />
and customers. At that time, I was<br />
busy looking at the upper floors of the<br />
houses where the old architectural style<br />
has been preserved with narrow corridors, marred yellow<br />
walls, wooden windows with different colors, opencast<br />
altars with incense smoke, and various shaped windows<br />
on the wall.<br />
Old apartment buildings are considered an attractive<br />
“specialty” of Chinatown. I don’t know exactly how many<br />
apartment buildings there are in this district since I just<br />
walked about 500m to find a new buildings, but they seem<br />
to be about 50 years old. The paint on the walls have faded<br />
with time. While the old buildings in Hanoi have stairs<br />
right at the gate ways and apartments on the ground floor<br />
have their own doors, the old apartment buildings in Dist.<br />
5 are more mysterious.<br />
It’s better to call them small residential areas than<br />
apartment buildings. They are identified with a pretty large<br />
dome gate and Chinese letters on the wall. I passed the old<br />
gate, walked some minutes along a dark lane, and got lost<br />
in a quiet sunlit yard. I felt the scent of incense somewhere<br />
and the only sound I could hear was silence. Along the<br />
yard’s two sides were long chains of houses consisting of<br />
dozens of apartments.<br />
<strong>TRAVELLIVE</strong> 12
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