Hoi an: A double-edged sword

Hoi an, a city which is stuck in time, but for a price.  The price has been the disruption of daily life for the sake of another tailored petticoat.  An elemental question countries and cities must make when dealing with tourism is how to develop it without destroying the reasons that many of the tourists came there in the first place to experience.  Hoi an is at this type of crossroads like much of Vietnam today.  After my visit I think that the Vietnamese tourism board must be expecting numbers of tourists more like that of Thailand.  The amount of expansive hotels being built right now is certainly an indication of a lot of speculation by some.  How places develop their tourist industries has always been a tough choice.   

I remember in Costa Rica taking a lot of time to understand how the government had consciously preserved large tracts of land so that they could continue along the path of eco-tourism.  Preservation let alone eco-tourism is not gracing the mouths of many of the tourism operators in Vietnam, instead they are taking a very short-term outlook.   Hoi an became an UNESCO world heritage site in 1999.  I came to Hoi an for my first time in 2006.   

When I came here in 06’ I was happy to find a place that had preserved its 15^th century chophouses and established parts of the city that were off limits to cars.  UNESCO has done something great by helping to promote the conservation of this place.  This honor also brings large amounts of tourists.  Unlike other cities in Vietnam that are large enough to sustain other industries Hoi an has only one real moneymaker, tourism.  This has created a very dependant industry and pushed any of the traditional business out of the old area to places farther afield.  Most of the old town is made up of tailor shops and places selling souvenirs.  It is a shell of its former self.  Do I like the city?  Yes, I actually really like it, especially at night when the rain has taken many off the streets and all you are left with is the quiet and glowing red lanterns.  These scenes make up for the mass commercialization that has occurred here.  Tourism is a double-edged sword that has the chance to improve and preserve incredible places; on the other hand it can turn these historically significant places into caricatures of their former selves.  

I was able to explore the city on foot and by motorbike.  The area of the city that is actually under UNESCO supervision is very small.  The entire area can be walked in a couple of hours if you can stand being constantly peppered with offers for a new suit or cobbled shoe.  If you can make it through this gauntlet you will be rewarded with a thriving market with lots of good things to eat around it.  I was searching for local delicacies when I found the large covered market.  This is a market where they have taken many of the people from the street and asked them to come inside and ply their wares.  I found a dish that I had missed six years earlier, Cau Lau.  

This is a dish much like a dry Bun but instead of using highly refined rice noodles these noodles could almost pass for Soba noodles.  The story goes that this dish was created by a Vietnamese who wanted to benefit from the large amount of Japanese traders that were living in Hoi an at the time.  The noodles get their very unique color from the city well where the water gives off a certain hue.  With the addition of pork simmered in soy and five spices, mung beans, mint, basil, lettuce, fried wonton squares and topped with the drippings from the pork.   This dish is a tour de force in texture and subtly.  I really feel in love with the incredible chili sauce from this region, which I also encountered in Hue.  This chili sauce is much more like Chinese chili sauce rather than the southern Vietnamese version, that just pounds chili with no garlic or other ingredients.  A dollop of this made the whole thing come together.

I am a man into wraps of all kinds; I have had a love affair with a fluffy corn tortilla for who knows how long.  The Vietnamese are masters of wrapping things, whether it is in lettuce leaves or rice paper, both ways yield an excellent product.  I met a nice quiet American during my time in Hoi an who recommended a place.  Hoi an is not a city where you are going to discover new restaurants off the tourist trail, the entire city has been blogged to the high heavens and most rocks have been overturned.  The American took me to Bale Well (website), which makes very few foods but focuses on preparing some of the most delicious grilled pork skewers that I have tasted in all of Vietnam.  Besides the deafening sounds of a pack of Australians this place was incredible.  When we arrived we were seated at shinny stainless steel tables (always a sign that you are in for something special).  There is no menu except for a list of three foods on the wall, all of which will at some point be wrapped in rice paper and stuffed down you pie hole.  

 Within the first five minutes after sitting down we were presented with a mound of grilled pork two ways.  One preparation was strips of pork that had been pressed between a piece of bamboo and was slightly pink in color, the other was pork forcemeat wrapped around the same type of skewer.  Both had been grilled and finished with a dusting of sesame seeds.  Our waitress took a real liking to our table and started to wrap the first one up to show us ‘amateurs’ how a real wrap was done.  We all thought that this was fun to watch and even more fun when she insisted on actually feeding everyone at the table.  After the first one she again arranged the fixings and made another wrap.  On sixth role the newness had worn off and we were now wondering if she was trying to fatten us up for some strange ritual.  We were eating at a pace that none of us could really keep up with and we were just filling up to fast, thankfully another large group came in to distract our lovely waitress.  Bale Well does not just make normal rolls of vegetables, herbs and grilled meat, they have taken their rolls to the next level, they have Super Sized them.  The first super sized roll I had was with a fried spring roll, long like a hand models.  This roll was all about the crunch and complemented the herbs to perfection.  The second, and my favorite was the “Chalupa roll,” like some strange marketing experiment from Taco Bell these wonderful ladies had created a new monster.  Combining a Ban Xeo with grilled pork, herbs, and lettuce, you had a roll the size of a teenagers fist.  This was even more crunch and utterly dripping in fry oil.  Nevertheless, it was hands down the best roll I have eaten in Vietnam and for all the hype that this place has gotten on the Internet and the Lonely Planet is well deserved.   

The last piece of the puzzle for this restaurant was it’s incredible dipping sauce.  This sauce which is very much like Thai peanut sauce but without the coconut milk, a viscous accompaniment to the grilled meat or deep fried things that you will wrap up.          

On our last full day in Hoi an area the American and I rented motorbike and rode to Da Nang.  Da Nang is a city like all others, on the rise.  It is slated to be the next large tourist destination for people seeking wonderful beaches.  It is only 35 minutes by motorbike so many people commute back and forth from Hoi and to Da Nang.  On our way to Da Nang we stopped at a calm mountain temple called Marble Mountain.  A nice place with temples imbedded in the mountain and some even inside the caves.  

To travel is to find the unexpected from total strangers.  As we were driving into the city we stopped and consulted the guidebook for some good places to eat.  After agreeing on where to eat, we had to find it.  Da Nang is not some Podunk town it is a city of 887,069 and getting bigger every day.  After about ten more minutes of driving we both realized that we probably were not going to find the place so we spotted a hotel and pulled over to see if we could ask for directions.  I expected to get a cursory explanation about how to find the place; instead we were given VIP treatment to the restaurant.  The man got on his own motorbike and without any discussion of payment, which is the norm here, led us to this great little restaurant that he didn’t even know about.  

For lunch we had some normal fare but this dish, which I will attempt to recreate at home some day, soon is tofu stuffed with pork.  A very simple, very Chinese dish of tofu, pork and tomato sauce.  Over a bit rice it was a deeply satisfying dish that really filled you up.  With the addition of lemongrass chicken and sautéed vegetables it was a great meal.  We then braved a gigantic rainstorm back to Hoi an. 

Hoi an is a place all travelers should go to when they visit Vietnam, but what the guide books don’t talk about is how this city has changed already and that it is on the verge of not being what it once was.  The pace of development outside the protected part will make the rest of the city look like just another nondescript town in Vietnam.  Urban planning and real zoning issues I hope will come into play as they continue to develop.  I enjoy coming back to this city for the moments when the streets have been cleared of people, the city is dark and only the lanterns can mark my way. 

 

An aside:  This blog is mostly about food from Southeast Asia, that being said I have incredible space in my stomach for baked goods in the morning.  I could have been a doughnut in Boston, or a croissant during a Saturday market; I have always enjoyed some carbs in the morning.  Hoi an has been blessed with incredible French style baked goods from the Cargo Cafe.  When I came here six years ago it was a revelation to find such high quality croissants in the middle of Vietnam.  The Vietnamese do bread better than anyone else but you rarely see the sweeter side of the French repertoire.  I like waking up in the morning and having the chance to eat a pain au chocolat instead of a bowl of steaming pho.  Coupled with a dark Vietnamese coffee I feel like my great-grandfather, reliving a colonial past.  During my time in Hoi an I learned why the Cargo Cafe has such great baked goods.  Some years ago the owner was living in Australia.  

 She realized that many foreigners were visiting Hoi an but had no place to get well made French style desserts, so she bought all of the equipment that was needed and imported it back to Hoi an.  The problem was that there was no one capable of making the breads and cakes that she desired.  For three years the machines were silent until one day a couple from France passed through Hoi an.  They got to speaking and when the French couple mentioned that they were moving to Hoi an the owner of Cargo Café offered them her bakery.  Some things were just meant to be.