Friend or Phở

I like Vietnamese food, but must confess to having been a little disappointed over the past couple of weeks. Restaurants, street vendors; some good, some bad, nothing brilliant.

The most famous Vietnamese dish must be phở - noodle soup. I used to slink off down Huong Viet on Englefield Road and eat bowls of the stuff for lunch on my days off. Yet despite being a Hanoi specialty, the best pho on this trip was in Tempe, Arizona. Until last Thursday that is, when it was surpassed by one I made myself.

Cooking classes are ten a penny in Hoi An. Most places offer classes whenever you feel like it, but I plumped for Red Bridge Restaurant. The day began with a visit to an organic garden outside of town. Some 200 families maintain it as a co-operative, and they grow just about everything here. Each tiny rectangle of land is hand cultivated, and their combined effect is one of great tranquility, like a giant Zen Garden being meticulously raked.

Not so tranquil is the market we visit next, but the produce is extremely fresh, and it's a lot cleaner than some I've been to in this part of the world. They also have the weirdest chicken trussing technique I've seen so far. As with everywhere else in South East Asia, nearly everyone working here is a woman, and the butchers are exclusively female.

Good pho is all about good stock. We brown beef shins over a charcoal fire, as well as grilling shallots, onion and ginger. All are then blanched to remove the smokiness before going in the pot with all the spices. While that simmers, we prep the pickle, veg and herbs, and make the rice noodles from scratch. With the right kit and a bit of patience it's fairly simple, and a lot more rewarding than taking them out of a packet.

The result is divine, as good as any I've had, and now I've got the recipe. I chalk up another dish on the menu that has been slowly writing itself in my mind these last few months.

We also make a fish claypot, a chicken and banana flower salad and lemongrass shrimp in banana leaves. The latter is extremely good and will be added to my barbecue repertoire just as soon as I've grown the banana tree. The fish is basically Cha Ca, another Hanoi specialty. Mackerel marinaded in turmeric, cooked with dill and spring onion then topped with peanuts. There's even a street called Cha Ca in Hanoi, where establishments of varying quality purport to be the original Cha Ca La Vong, a fifth generation restaurant selling nothing but, though viciously overpriced.

Hoi An has its own local dishes, the best of which is Cao Lau; thick, doughy noodles served in broth with sliced pork and rice paper crutons. White Rose are small open dumplings made from the same batter; both are only available in Hoi An, since the water used to make them has to come from the nearby Ba Le well. So insulted would they be if you attempted to make them without it, they all refuse to show you how they're made.

This is all well and good, but I'm getting the impression that I was spoilt in London. I know other cities have big Vietnamese communities, and anyone from Melbourne will tell you how great the food is down Victoria Street, but there's a dingy little community centre in Hackney where the chairs are uncomfortable, the staff unfriendly, the service unpredictable and the food way, way better than anything I've had in the homeland.

Hanoi: a tale of two cities

I won't lie. I didn't lie. It must have been obvious. I don't like Hanoi. I'll live - dust myself on, keep going. It doesn't matter.

Except it does matter. And for one reason; someone I've only met a few times, a subversive hard-smoking chain-drinking German philosopher poet journo, who I instinctively like and respect, told me it's his favourite city in the world. And that's been bothering me, because I must have missed something. So I came back.

Every city has a skin. Some are easier to puncture than others, but you can't understand the place until you're through. You need to be in the right frame of mind, and have the right approach. If you're in London and New York and you don't talk to anyone, you won't get through. If you're in Hanoi and you don't look beyond the mopeds, you won't either.

The first thing I do in a new city is go for a walk. I'll walk for hours, trying to get my bearings; not just the geography, but the soul of a place too. I walked for two days in Hanoi trying to get a grip, but to no avail. On Saturday night I pulled up a small plastic chair outside a Bia Hoi joint, and realised where I'd been going wrong. I'd never thought to stand still.

There are two cities in Hanoi; the one that's moving and the one that's not. The former washes in and around the latter. It is manic but magical. When you are moving with it, you're just another molecule being flushed through the pipes. You don't really see the other city; it passes by in a blur. So I sat and drank my beer and watched in wonder and realised what a great place Hanoi really is. How unlikely yet perfect is its harmony; the order resurrected daily from the chaos, unchoreographed, unfeasible and so irrefutably human in all its joyous complexity. Mopeds and all.

I'm glad I came back. Thanks Frank.

Hanoi

Travelling direct from Luang Prabang to Hanoi is like slipping excitedly under the bedsheets with a shimmering blonde goddess, and waking in the morning to find yourself straddled by Mr T, furiously bitchslapping your startled jaw with his bejewelled hands and urging you to "Get Some Nuts".

Insects. Insects with big bulbous heads and upright bodies. Sometimes two or three of them hugged together on the carapace of some other luckless creature. The nearer the city, the more they multiply. A trickle to start with. Then tens, hundreds, thousands and then millions. Quite literally, millions of them, everywhere.

A biblical swarm of angry two wheeled bees buzzing furiously and fanatically around the great hive of Hanoi, choking out their cheap gasoline fumes. Somewhere in the middle of them throbs a truly great city, but I just can't see, hear or smell it for the mopeds.

Hanoi doesn't exactly lend itself to simple orientation. Roads change name every block or two. Side street names might actually apply to any number of roads in the same vicinity, and they suffix building numbers with letters completely randomly. Signposts and street signs are scattered arbitrarily around the city, the only rule being that they are never there when you need them, and always when you don't.

Should you be lucky enough to find what you are looking for, it will almost certainly be a minute or two past 11:30 and you will need to find a way of passing the next two hours before they reopen. If "they" are the Immigration Police, find yourself a nice quiet park to escape the traffic, then puzzle over why it is completely empty, stare across a rather serene lake and wonder, again, just where the bloody hell everyone is going all day long.

Try and pick your way back if you can, but remember that sidewalk is a complete misnomer here, since the paved area next to the road is actually a giant parking lot for mopeds, and the dining rooms of tiny restaurants, all laid out with unfeasibly small chairs that even a three year old would struggle to sit on. Walk in the road instead, with all the other crazy bastards and ask yourself, once more, just where in the name of God they are all going? Even the hot girls in fake Burberry helmets with bug eye shades.

Crossing the street is an act of considerable faith and courage, but actually quite liberating. We're far too up tight in western society - too many rules, regulations and inhibitions. To look at this place you would imagine people were dying on the roads every few seconds, but they don't even come close to brushing wing mirrors. In the absence of any kind of highway code, cars, buses, mopeds and pedestrians (and their cargo) wind in and out of one another like Han Solo flying the Millenium Falcon through the asteroid belt.

It is utterly enthralling to watch and a part of me, the evil part, really wants to rent one of those bad boys out....