We get mentos with our bun dau mam tom.
The culprit is the mam tom, the pungent shrimp sauce. Some people, including many Vietnamese, don’t like the smell. It can be divisive, like Nato in Japan or the Durian in Singapore. Hence the mentos for when you get back to civilisation.
Notice also the 1980s design of the shop, appealing to nostalgia. Now I miss Hanoi. Let’s go there soon.
Vietnam food Saigon
Inside an alley in Saigon, Hoa showed me a hidden vegetarian place.
The nice thing about inner alleys is that most neighbours house doors are open. This lets us eavesdrop on their lives. We try to imagine their backstories.
This is 68/11 Le Van Sy. If you don’t find it at first, keep walking deep into the alley. Something wonderful is always found.
Saigon foodFrom 2008 to 2017, we ran yearly unconferences in Singapore called Barcamp Singapore. People loved this event where everyone came together to learn from each other.
Thanks to the folks at GeekcampSG, who offered us space at their event, we got a chance to revive the Barcamp after the long gap. We do not have a fixed speakers or schedule. The discussion topics are decided at the venue by the participants. The range of topics is interesting.
The opening of Geekcamp/Barcamp.
A discussion on note taking and diagramming tools.
A discussion on online scams.
A discussion on Twitch streaming and the life of a live streamer.
A discussion on why Agile is overrated.
Discussion on documentation.
More discussions on online scams.
Talking about communication between developers and non-technical people in a team.
A discussion on Notion.
Some years back Thao invited me to the Pham Viet Chanh neighbourhood assuring free views of giraffe (and other tall animals) from the Saigon zoo across the canal. Now this has become my home. If you are at the zoo, you can see a large dark animal across the canal for free.
International and local food in Pham Viet Chanh
This is the place I often return to when I want to test a new camera.
Can you love another country so much that you dedicate most of your life to it? In the early 1980s, a Japanese musician Sada Masashi visited China on a concert tour and fell in love with Yangtze river. He returned to China to make a documentary on the river and the life along it. It was expensive filming, had to hire People’s Liberation Army Air Force helicopters for the aerial shots. Sada Masashi took out a 3.5 billion Yen loan for the production. It took him 30 years to repay the loan.
The result is a beautiful time capsule of the unique period in China’s modern history. It’s on Youtube with Japanese narration, Chinese subtitles. Don’t worry about the language, just let the visuals speak.
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There are many interesting backstories and trivia about this, remind me when we meet
Sada Mashashi returns to China.
Sada Mashashi hitchhikes. The documentary is shot very much how vlogs are presented these days. Though in those days, they would have had a crew following the presenter around.
Sada Mashashi finds kids floating on a tyre and fishing in the pod with their bare hands.
The Buddha or Leshan in Sichuan province.
Sada Mashashi is not happy with how the Japanese army destroyed Nanjing.
Probably one of the earliest crepe maker in China. 80s was like the spring. Things were getting relaxed in China. People were putting up small business.
the art of getting lost