Yoga, Phở and the Wisdom of Elephants

It was an early morning today, as we had to make it to the yoga sanctuary for the first of our beginners' course. Although jet lag had left us at some point during the past week, getting up at 6:30 on a Saturday has never been an activity I did with much relish. However, Vietnam is certainly an early-to-bed/early-to-rise kind of place. In the city, most folk seem to be up between 5 and 6am and schools can start as early as 7am. Commensurately, many take lunch from 11am onwards. We are slugabeds by comparison, but not this morning.

A blue sky greeted us as we left the flat and the air was noticeably cooler than later in the day. Passing the usual crowds of people and motorbikes, hurtling pell-mell down the tiny side streets and along pavements, we nimbly crossed several lanes of traffic that would have had us dithering and teetering on the edge of the pavement only a week ago.

At the tranquil yoga sanctuary, we met a couple of other beginners - both Spanish speakers. One girl, from Panama, had been travelling for the last 26 years, since she was 11, and came to Vietnam from Berlin on a whim.

Having ascended to the remote calm of the top floor, we met our instructor - a slight, friendly man from America, wearing (I suspect coincidentally) Buddhist orange. The lesson was similar to the introductory session we had taken last weekend, although more attention to detail was given to the basics of proper breathing, posture etc.

At the beginning of the class, the teacher sang the same mantra as we had heard last week. He explained that this was an appeal for there to be no obstacle to our learning and good practice. The mantra is in Sanskrit and evokes the elephant-god Ganesha, as the characteristics of the elephant are that it removes obstacles from its path and is wise.

Feeling invigorated and much more awake for the morning's exertions, we broke our fast in typical Vietnamese style with a bowl of phở (noodle soup).

I wanted to call this post "Pho Chi Minh City" (oh, the wit), but this would have perpetuated the incorrect pronunciation of this signature dish. Phở is often pronounced by foreigners as 'fo', but is more correctly rendered as 'fur?' or 'fuh?' (with a questioning tone). The diacritical marks on the ở seem to act a little like the umlaut on the German ö in this case. Vietnamese is a tonal language and I have little idea how the written symbols relate to the sounds I hear. Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh (Ho Chi Minh City) at first glance seems to contain the same set of letters, but the phố here is actually spoken as 'fo'.

Irrespective of the pronunciation, the base of the dish is typically a broth of beef (phở bò) or chicken (phở gà) with meat of said animal, plus rice noodles, served with fresh herbs and a varying range of accompaniments, depending on where you try it.

We breakfasted at the small café we spotted earlier this week, which offered phở chay (vegetarian). This had a spicy broth, meaty mushrooms and sticks of soy skin (yuba) on top of the rice noodles. On the side was Thai basil, sliced chillies, lime wedges, and condiments to tailor the soup to one's own taste for saltiness (soy sauce) and sweetness (hoisin). We tucked in and left with bellies full and lips tingling. A bowl of phở cost 30,000 dong (slightly less than £1).

On the recommendation of the guide book, we went in search of a tranquil place in the botanical gardens, in which to prolong our peaceful state of mind. The botanical gardens and the Saigon zoo are one and the same, having been started by a French vet and botanist. While the grounds of the zoo contain a number of trees, bonsai and elaborate topiaries, these are interspersed with cramped cages of listless-looking animals.

A separate garden was not in evidence and the tranquility was broken by thunderous music played for screaming children. Our serenity was being challenged. Where we had sought nature, we were faced with animals in, if not suffering, then less than ideal conditions. I looked into the elephant's eyes and tried to imagine how it felt. It did not appear obviously sad or desperate, so I wondered whether it had transcended its lacklustre surroundings and achieved an inner calm.

A brief but heavy shower fell, so we abandoned our vain search for the garden of tranquility. Peace, we concluded, must come from within. This is what the elephant knows.

At home, I sat writing this blog with Chiba curled up next to me sleeping.

Not sleeping

Chiba means "girl with three colours" - so called because of her black, white and ginger fur. To accompany this lazy afternoon, I tried my hand at preparing Vietnamese coffee (the hot kind).

To make coffee, there is a special Vietnamese filter, made up of several metal pieces, that sits on top of the cup. I filled this with ground coffee, tamped it down and filled the contraption with water. The coffee drips through onto condensed milk, which you can stir in or leave as a sweet final layer. The results were acceptable for a first attempt and far from fetid.

We had picked up some lazy, prepared vegetables, a mushroom selection and tofu on the way home. After some research, it became clear that one of the packs was to be prepared as canh chua tom - a Vietnamese sour soup.

Can chua tom is typically made with shrimp, but we replaced this with tofu. The pack contained all other ingredients necessary: tomatoes, bean sprouts, okra, tamarind, red chillies and bac ha (Vietnamese taro stem), which is like a large, porous celery stick. The soup was finished with ngo om (rice paddy herb) and ngo gai (sawtooth coriander or culantro). Although slightly sour from the tamarind and sweet from the pineapple, the result was rather bland and nothing compared to this morning's phở. Vegetarian fish sauce would probably liven things up a bit. The medley of mushrooms we fried very simply with some garlic. It was a quick and simple meal that we shared with our host's brother.  I suspect he was too polite to point out our shortcomings at creating authentic cuisine.