What is the PHO 24?(Vietnamese noodlepie)

      Nothing makes me fussy like Pho. Vietnam's national dish, a belchworthy beef broth, belongs in scuzzy shacks, floors littered with broken chopsticks and cheap napkins and NOT the poncey tables of nouvelle cuisine, restaurants with chamber music or the 'ethnic' section of the Hilton breakfast buffet. For this reason I was reluctant to check out Pho 24 at 5 Nguyen Thiep Street in District 1. My Top 10 list of pho joints has remained stalled at a Top 2 after bumping up the belt notches on a mammoth '30 different soup kitchens' soup test over the years. Most pho, in my experience, is average at best.

      Both my top 2 are up the road in Hanoi: 13 Lo Duc Street, Hanoi & 2 Le Van Huu Street, Hanoi. These two pho-tastic soup shacks are within 30 seconds walk from each other and are well worth sniffin' out. Devoid of clueless foreign tourists, packed to the rafters with sino-soup slurpers and oozing grubby charm. Long may their paint peel, their floors gather grime and their service snarl.

      Pho 24, on the other manicured & moisturised hand, is all uniformed waiters, polished table tops, dimmed lighting, chefs with real chef's hats, china toothpick holders, logo embossed place mats and chopstick holders.

This is not pho as I know it - there are 9 beef/1 chicken varieties on offer for chrissakes - but prejudices aside, how's the soup? Well... much as it pains me to say it, Pho 24 just brings my list to 7 shy of a Top 10.

      The thing about Pho 24, I guess, is they've taken a street food and given it respectability, class or maybe just a fancy facade - you choose. But, what they have done is new and a first for Vietnam - at least to my knowledge. (In Saigon, there is also Pho 2000 - more of which later this week) - but it's Pho 24 which, I think, has set the standard for the rest to follow.

     Pho is a noodle soup and comes in either its beef variety - Pho bo - or chicken - Pho ga. The chicken variety has been missing from the streets of Vietnam since Asian bird flu struck the region in early 2004, but has started to make a tentative comeback in the last week or two. The beef variety consists of thinly sliced beef and fresh flat noodles, sitting in a steaming stock, heavy of star anise, meaty vapours and sprinkled with spring onions.

        In the south the broth often comes with a side of herbs, bean sprouts, chili slivers, half a lemon and maybe sliced raw onions. In the north, many folk, myself included, like to crack a raw egg into the soup. Although Pho is known as a northern dish, the Saigonese have added a certain sophistication to their broth which is missing from the bogstandard raw and alive deal in the north. I am reliably told that the key difference is; the Saigonese regularly skim the fat from the 100l vats the broth cooks in, go easy on the fish sauce - nuoc mam and know how to spice with a gentle touch. I'm far from being an expert, but the southern version does taste 'fancier', even if my base nature has an instinctive preference for Hanoi's basic broth.

        Meanwhile, back at Pho 24...
        To cut to the chase... I simply cannot find fault with these guys. The key is the soup stock. The steamy beams of aroma rising from a Pho 24 bowl demand immediate devouring. This is the most flavour-filled Pho I have found in Saigon (so far). And so it should be. At 24,000VD a bowl (my Hanoi faves set me back 7,000VD and that's with the added egg) OK-OK- I'm paying for the service, the setting - but still...

 Midway City, CA92655
Thu Nhat Anh Nguyen

My thoughts on Life after Death...

         What makes you unique is your personal beliefs and the experiences you have had in your lifetime. Your personality, your character, your very being all depend on what you choose to believe and choose not to. A belief that is extremely vital to the way one lives day to day their beliefs on life after death. Going to a Catholic school for many years pushes many beliefs on you that aren’t necessarily yours.

        From a young age I was told there was a God in heaven and we would join him one day if we lived a virtuous life. And, for much of my early years I never questioned this. That was until one fateful day during my 8th year at elementary school. I’m not sure how the first thought on the topic came to my mind; I only know that when it did nothing else mattered. The thought was, “What if life after death is all a misconception? What if all our beliefs are false, and when we do die it really is the end? Death isn’t even unconsciousness, it’s less than that.” I can remember pondering this question diligently at school and trying hard to search within myself to find answers. Soo......

Midway City, CA 92655

Thu Nhat Anh Nguyen

Myself don't give up (Vietnamese song)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCh-EWI4EA

Translate to English:

Don't give up, myself don't give up

Autumn leaves why fell in winter

Don't give up, honey, don't give up

You are mine and I'm also yours

Flying kite like whose soul chearless

Down a kite that gulf get more grieved

Who i were, shedding tears myself

Who I am, why exists in world

who am I, then who,and who

So much love the life

Don't give up, myself don't give up

Lost sunshine like my own story

Don't give up honey dont give up

You refresh and you get sunrise

Farther road and late sun quiet

Those whose soul now tiptoes sadden.

Midway City, CA 92655

Thu Nhat Anh Nguyen

 

Vietnamese Specialties – Salted fish hotpot

The main materials of U Minh salted fish hot pot is salted trichogaster pectoralis (good one). The salted trichogaster pectoralis is cooked until its meat and bone are separated. Take all bones out, putting enough sodium glutamate and sugar into the hot pot. In order to rise it smell, people add some chopped citronella and its beaten root to the hot pot. The secret to make the hot-pot sauce fatty, scented and viscid is that people add a little milk instead of sugar. It depends on our liking that the hot pot is added pork or fish. But U Minh hot pot must include fresh fish meat. The most delicious and right ones are eal, anabas meat, ophiocephalus maculates or white catfish.

Besides fish meat, the hot pot can be added fresh water crab meat, snails, half fat and half lean meat. The most interesting thing in eating the hot pot is to enjoy many vegetables. The hot pot is a dish that collect the most wild vegetables. It may be right to say that there is not any dishes which are eaten with as many vegetables as the hot pot in the world

Midway City, CA92655

Thu Nhat Anh Nguyen

For the love of books

When I was a child, I loved reading, and I read anything I could find. But I detested sport, and even hated going for walks, so I spent most of my time with my nose in a book. I was the only girl in a family of four brothers, and I was quite quiet – but in the world of my books, I was strong and beautiful - the lovely princess with the handsome prince, the girl who fights enormous monsters, the star….

As I grew older, books became my life. I didn’t need to go out, or watch TV -I lived the highs and lows of my characters in their fights for success - I worried about the dancer who broke her leg, I cried when the rider’s favorite horse died and I was so happy when the doctor got through floods and thunderstorms to save the life of a stick child!

Of course, after time, I started to write my own stories. And of course, at first, I wasn’t very good at it! I found it easier to write about sad things, so my first stories were full of disasters, accidents and deaths. My father read one story and couldn’t quite understand why three characters died, a dog had an accident and a house burned down - and that was all before the end of the forth page!

Then one day my aunt said I should write about my own life. I was in bed with a broken arm, and even I got bored of books after a while. My aunt came to visit and brought me some paper and a pen. “Go on”, she said, “Write about your life with five brothers. Tell it like it is”. And so I did. (Luckily, my right arm wasn’t broken, so I could still write!)

Ten years after, my first story was published. And I used those early childhood memories. The main character is a writer. And guess what? She breaks her arm falling out of a tree, and her aunt comes to visit - and then she becomes a famous writer! And me? Well, I’m still waiting….

Midway City, CA 92655

Thu Nhat Anh Nguyen

Les Valse de Vienne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDQ9f2eEixM

You don’t understand

The pain that I’m in

The constant worry

That I feel within

The fact that you don’t care

Makes it that much worst

You joke about it all the time

And that really hurts

I can’t have what I love

And it makes me want to cry

I sit in my room at night

Thinking to myself whyI watch other people

Enjoying life without a worry

Why is my life so different

I’m always in a hurry

So try and understand

What is like to be me

Listen to my words

Hear my plea!

Midway City, CA 92655

Thu Nhat Anh Nguyen

When you are gone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyz5h2nhyCc

The pain is still there when I talk to you,

Your still in my thoughts when I cry.

You still make me laugh when I am sad,

although you are the one,

who put me in this sea no chance of a smile finding me.

The tears are always there,

at night,my Teddy-bears always there to hug,when you never are.

The words always come, when I think of how stupid I was.

The longing is always there,when you are ne'er.

And yes you took the pain when I was sad.

And yes you gave it back magnified, and multiplied.

So yes I am mad.

Not at you but at myself for falling for a lie.

Midway City, CA 92655

Thu Nhat Anh Nguyen