peteg's blog 2007-07-15.autumn

Trung Nguyên: 2-4 Cửu Long, District Tân Bình.

Had a brief stop at this sort-of garden café on the way to dropping Loan off at the (old, now domestic-only) airport. It's on a side-street off the main drag going to the airport, and hence is quite pleasant.

Trung Nguyên: 50 Hồ Tùng Mậu, District 1.

Another "official" Trung Nguyên café. Very comfortable, very down-town inner city. Custom-made for the shoppers on the nearby Nguyễn Huệ and Đồng Khởi streets.

Trung Nguyên: 603 Trần Hưng Đạo, District 1.

A fairly pleasant vertical place on the corner of Trần Hưng Đạo and Nguyễn Văn Cừ on the border of Districts 1 and 5. It feels a bit unfinished; the indoor water feature needs to be repaired. There's no food but you can buy some of the Trung Nguyên trinkets, this being another of the "official" ones.

Trung Nguyên: 7 Nguyễn Văn Chiêm, District 1.

My first visit to the feted "garden café" with Tigon. It's expensive (the whole area is expensive, being next to the Diamond Department Store and all), but quite pleasant. Motorbike parking is a bit limited. This one is a bit "official", but I'm not really sure what that means; I thought Trung Nguyên was a franchise.

Trung Nguyên, 42-44 C10 Nhiêu Lộc 2, District Phú Nhuận.

A fancy place just near Mike's apartment building, which is clearly marked on this map (the orange-red thing on the far right). Very comfortable and not too smokey for an indoors joint.

Trung Nguyên, 272B Xô Viết Nghệ Tĩnh, District Bình Thạnh.

On the north-western corner of the monster roundabout at the intersection of Điện Biên Phủ and Xô Viết Nghệ Tĩnh (the big fat highway heading north of Hồ Chí Minh City). There's a massive Trung Nguyên sign out the front, but it's otherwise unimpressive.

Trung Nguyên, 1A Phạm Văn Hai, District Tân Bình.

A large night-clubby kind of place, with big comfy couches and that special kind of dinginess, quite close to the airport. I went there with Loan after visiting the v-heart project.

Café Trung Nguyên, 53A Phù Dổng Thiên Vương, Đà Lạt.

An incredibly cute three-story house that would be right at home in the Blue Mountains in Australia. A cà phê sữa đá #5 costs just 13 kilođồng, fully 7 kilođồng less than in Hồ Chí Minh City.

Trung Nguyên, 114 Lý Tự Trọng (corner of Thủ Khoa Huân), D1.

Just up the road from Bến Thành Market, cunningly concealed on a corner facing away from the traffic streaming down both one-way streets. This one's a cosy little "brown café" that wouldn't be out of place in Amsterdam.

Trung Nguyên, 346 Nguyễn Trãi, D5.

The twin of the paradigmatic one on Trần Hưng Đạo in District 1. It's a bit more austere and hence less atmospheric, but the coffee is just as good.

Trung Nguyên, corner of Nguyễn Đình Chiểu and Nguyễn Thiện Thuật, D3.

This one's a bit like the old Century Tavern / Bar Century in Sydney; the downstairs is nondescript, but upon winding up some stairs one finds a hermetic air-conditioned room containing several smokers, with a curved series of windows fronting the street corner. The view here is of a steel telegraph pole, from which a thousand wires emanate. The decor is somewhat similar to both the Century and the standard-setting Trần Hưng Đạo joint.

The upstairs looks like it's setup for karaoke... mirrorballs, lights, those spinning light things.

Addendum to last post: I should emphasise that Trung Nguyên coffee is similar in style to what is found on the streets of Việt Nam, albeit brewed-on-your-table in one of those cute filters they use. Some street vendors only get hot water in the mornings, and so by the time I visit them they only have half-day-old black sludge in a Coke bottle.

Cà Phê Thềm Xưa, 371 D1 Nguyễn Cảnh Chân, Q1.

Loan's usual, due to it being a garden cafe and relatively close to DRD. It's part of a chain (I think of three) that includes the one our In-Country Manager Chị Lan took us to, in District 3, back in July. I've got to track that one down...

Trung Nguyên Cafés.

Hồ Chí Minh City is a place to buy coffee, with vendors on every street and every alley (presently exchanging a foreigner's five kilođong for the caffiene-and-sugar hit of a cà phê sữa đá) and all the hotels (the Legend Hotel charges .50 for a very mediocre American-style drip coffee). Mai got me onto the Trung Nguyên cafés, which are apparently a Starbucks-style franchise. If there's anything to be said in favour of tariffs, Trung Nguyên says it; I have difficulty drinking street coffee now.

The problem with it being a franchise (and this being Hồ Chí Minh City) is the difficulty of getting a list of addresses for the cafés. Fortunately I can crib from here (and please excuse the erratic character decorations):

1 Trần Hưng Đạo, District 1.
Diagonally opposite Bến Thành Market on the roundabout. The first one I went to, with Loan one Saturday afternoon. My local, I have a table there. Don't be put off by the big love-heart on the door, the waitresses will take good care of you. Head upstairs for more of that 50s Art Deco feeling.
On the monster roundabout at the intersection of Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm and Điện Biên Phủ at the top of District 1, opposite Mike's workplace, the impressive-looking Institute of Agricultural Science of South Vietnam.
On Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm between Nguyễn Đình Chiẻu and Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, District 1.
1 Bủi Thị Xuân, District 1, opposite the park.
Somewhat like my local on Trần Hưng Đạo but not as atmospheric. Mai steered me to this one.
Nguyen Van Chiem, next to the Diamond Plaza.
Today it was closed for renovations which will clearly take some time.
32 Mac Dinh Chi, District 1.
Couldn't find this one, but the numbers go strangely on that street.

I haven't been to (and they may not exist):

114 Ly Tu Trong, District 1.
44B Chu Manh Trinh, District 1.
349 Hai Ba Trung, District 3.
150D Ly Chinh Thang, District 3.
10 Nguyen Thong, District 3.
46 Chu Mạnh Trinh, District 1
2A Nguyễn Huệ, District 1.

Apparently one can purchase their coffee in Australia.

What one reads in Việt Nam News.

Việt Nam News is "The National English Language Daily", published by Việt Nam News Agency.

One can obtain the Sunday edition on Saturday. (Sunday's is more of a Good Weekend-style supplement, a week-in-review and some feature stories, rather than new-news.)
The comic strips are Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes and Rubes. There is a find-these-words-in-a-matrix and a rather strange and Americentric crossword.
There are some editorials but no letters-to-the-editor.
From Tuesday 2007-09-18:
- City drivers fail to heed traffic safety month: The traffic in the two main cities (Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City) is terrible. Apparently in August there were 987 fatalities and 746 other injuries in more than 1,000 road accidents, though it is unclear if that is just for the cities or country-wide. (I've heard it said that wearing a helmet makes one feel more safe, ergo more likely to push the safety margins, so I wonder if the imminent law making them compulsory will improve these figures.)
  
  There are 3.5 million registered motorbikes in HCMC, which apparently get their riders around at a speed of 3kph at peak times, and 6-8kph at other times; this makes walking look competitive on this basis.
- Asian Development Bank projects drop in inflation rate next year: The ADB reckons Việt Nam will have an inflation rate of 7.8 per cent this year, and 6.8 per cent next year. I hope the INGO bean counters are taking note!
- Local writers join Swedish book fair: three lucky Vietnamese are having their work featured at the Göteborg International Book Fair. At least one, Hồ Anh Thái's Trong Sương Hồng Hiện Ra (A Rose Appears in the Mist), has been translated into English, apparently under the title Behind the Red Mist.
From Saturday 2007-09-22: USAID supports disabled employment:

HÀ NỘI — An employer council was organised yesterday by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to discuss strategies for promoting employment of the disabled.

The council, called The Blue Ribbon, aims to provide employment opportunities and skill training for the handicapped and raise awareness of the benefits of hiring them.

"The Blue Ribbon Employer Council is in a position to take the lead and make the business case for hiring people with disabilities in Vietnam," said United States Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak at the first Council meeting.

Assistance programmes worth million have been launched by the United States to help the disabled in Việt Nam.

This is excellent news, and I hope we hear more about it.

Their main competitor in HCMC is the Saigon Times (apparently a business rag), which I haven't read.

A little blah blah, The Last Vestige: Philip Brophy

Thea somehow laid her hands on some of Philip Brophy's work, which she played for us at Lush. This included (some of) Evaporated Music (where he overdubbed various filmclips from my childhood), a Hal Hartley-esque homage to Melbourne and a beautiful Japanese girl, and an extended take on the gender wars, framed by an apocalypse.

Vietnam gets thrashed, Hồ Chí Minh City goes ape.

Even after a heavy 4-1 loss to Japan in their final Asia Cup pool match, the streets of Hồ Chí Minh City were abuzz with merry people waving the national flag and honking their horns like they were preparing to overtake the world. Tomorrow will be a national hangover, and I'm sure there'll be a RJL Hawke figure somewhere saying "Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum".

Panorama from Mike's apartment building.

Mike shot this panorama of District 1, looking south from his apartment building, which I think is called the "Mieu Noi Apartments". There are some great photos of the area here, and some stomach-churning images of the canal.

I stitched this together quickly and roughly with DoubleTake, hence the big "DoubleTake". Perhaps I'll redo it with something free, one of these days...

Hồ Chí Minh City for plane people.

I'm still too busy-lazy to do a decent write-up of what's been happening this last week-and-a-bit, so here are just a few pointers for the curious (and my future reference):

Google Maps doesn't have a decent map of this city; apparently this is as detailed as it gets. Vinacarta is much better but their geocoding is not that great and the map is not insanely detailed, neither of which come as a surprise to anyone who has tried to find a decent map of HCMC. Here's an attempt at embedding:

I'm staying in a hotel on a lane around about the "o" in Pham Ngu Lao, near the top-left, and the DRD (Disability Resource and Development) office is somewhere on Ho Hao Hon street, which is in the centre at the bottom. I would've marked these in Vinacarta but it doesn't seem to work with FireFox.

Pham Ngu Lao is the backpacker district, so things are a little pricey around here and the touting gets old fast. Conversely it is quite convenient to the downtown, and as the room itself is quite decent I'm content to sit tight for a while yet.
The taps in my hotel room are Swedish-style.
These are my fellow DRD workers, whom I met on Monday. From left to right: Huy (my counterpart for web development), Loan (fingers in may pies), Cử (employment-related stuff, funny man), and two shy ladies who I need to get to know better.
I still have no idea how to enter Vietnamese characters into XEmacs or HTML documents, even after some serious googling; the MacBook is of course happy provided I stay in Mac land. The future is doubtlessly Unicode, but the present looks like a mess. So, sorry for the lack of decorations, things will improve in time.
There are loads of Vietnamese-English dictionaries around, e.g. vdict. If I have time I want to convert one of these dict-friendly ones to the Apple Dictionary.app format.

I start work proper tomorrow, with hours 8am to 11:30am, 2pm to 5pm (I think). The massive thunderstorm tonight will hopefully make it easy to catch up on some sleep.