Hello from Ho Chi Minh City

I'm (Kevin) sitting in the Ho Chi Minh Airport after an eye-opening, emotional, and excellent 2 week coffee buying trip through Laos and Vietnam.  This was my first trip to both countries (as well as a brief night in Bangkok) and I'm leaving very impressed with both countries.

I traveled with my boss, Lindsey, and we had a one night layover in Bangkok at the start of the trip.  With a free afternoon ahead of us, we immediately took to the streets to explore the city.  We saw the largest solid gold Buddha in the world and, after meeting up with a coffee supplier of ours, we took a boat ride along the Chao Phraya River.

Wat Traimit - holds the largest gold Buddha in the world

Boat on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok

The following day we flew from Bangkok to Ubon, Thailand, and then drove across the border into Laos.  We spent the next 4 days exploring the main coffee growing region--the Bolavens Plateau.  Laos is a beautiful and very peaceful country.  I hadn't done my research ahead of time, so I was surprised when I saw the communist flags flying throughout the country.  This was my first time in a communist country, but it didn't affect my trip at all.  It's a very calm and peaceful feeling country which may stem from the prevalence of Buddhism.  The food was great, the people were friendly, and the potential for high-quality coffee is enormous.  It's a relatively new coffee origin for the higher-quality coffee roasters, so we're very excited to be an early adopter and supporter of the coffee.  I'm running a special project with a coffee mill there which will be a coffee type that has never been produced in Laos, so I was very eager to taste the progress thus far.  So far, so good.  The highlight of the Lao portion of the trip was the day when a group of coffee farmers organized a village party for us.  We had excellent food, watched (and partook in) some traditional Lao slow dancing, and had some good laughs.  The last day in Laos we visited a Hindu temple from the 11th and 13th century called Vat Phou.  We were accompanied by one of our coffee suppliers who is Hindi so it was great to see it through his eyes and have him explain it all.  After 4 great days in Laos, I was a bit sad to leave and but was excited to head into Vietnam.  

Coffee delivery

Visiting a school and donating some art supplies

Great welcome from the students

Students

Coffee break

Our coffee drying

Village party

Village party

Village party

This is the village leader

Meeting with a group of coffee farmers

Meeting with a group of coffee farmers

Cupping table

Lao and Communist flags

Vat Phou

Vat Phou

Vat Phou

Vat Phou

Vat Phou

Vat Phou

Vat Phou

We arrived late at night in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon until 1976) and were immediately impressed with the absolute lack of any traffic rules as we headed to our hotel.  The streets are completely filled with motorbikes and they act like ants moving through the streets in every direction.  During our 6 days in Vietnam, we did a lot of traveling throughout the country.  The first full day there we flew up to Dak Lak to visit the robusta area.  Robusta is a very low quality type of coffee of which we only buy a very small amount.  It was a very different experience than visiting an arabica area (higher quality coffee that we buy) and it was much more impersonal.  Robusta is really the ugly side of coffee, but visiting the area was a good education nonetheless.  It's much more a price-driven (low, low prices) area rather than a relationship/quality driven area.  Starting the Vietnam portion of the trip in robusta territory made me a bit nervous for the rest of the trip.  However, the next day we flew north to Da Lat City and all concerns immediately vanished.  Da Lat City is an absolutely beautiful former French city up in the highlands of Vietnam.  The French influence is apparent in the architecture and it's called the honeymoon city b/c that's where people go for honeymoons and vacations because of the climate and how beautiful the city is.  It reminded me of a mix between Lake Tahoe (lots of pine trees that I've never seen in coffee areas) and a French alpine village.  We met many farmers and even spent a day visiting farms on motorbikes.  It was a fantastic 3 days and I'm excited to go back there on vacation with Melinda.  We spent the last 2 days in Vietnam back down in Ho Chi Minh City and used one as a tourist day.  We visited the Cu Chi Tunnels which was the underground tunnel network and headquarters of the Viet Cong.  Next we visited the War Remnants Museum which is all about the Vietnam (American) War.  I've never had such a hard time going through a museum.  It was a tremendously emotional experience to see the horrors of that war, but it was a well put together museum.  The last morning of the trip I woke up early to walk down to a park that tons of people exercise in during the early morning.  It was a pretty funny sight to see people moving in all random directions with their wacky exercises--swinging their arms and legs in odd ways, practicing Tai Chi, a guy practicing his sword moves with an actual sword, and two extremely old ladies hacky sacking better than anyone I've ever seen.  It was a great way to start the day.  I sat sweating in the early morning humidity watching them too long and soon realized that I was going to be late for breakfast.  I was walking back to the hotel when I was signaled over by a guy on a stopped motorbike.  Through his arm motions I realized that he was offering me a ride and it would cost 50,000 Vietnamese Dong (their currency) to take me the mile or two back to the hotel.  That equals just over $2.  So I borrowed his extra helmet (too small) and hopped on back and we joined the chaos of the motorbike ants swarming through the city and had a great final ride through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City.

Happy farming family

Coffee buying station -- owned and run by women as most are in Vietnam

Coffee tractor

Separating the red from the green

The pom-pom looking robusta trees

Stoking the fire of the coffee dryers

Nice view from a wet mill

The countryside around Da Lat is covered with these green houses growing flowers.  It's a huge flower producing area and has a big flower festival every December.

Exploring farms by motorbike

Happy farming couple

Beautiful country

Lunch served at one of the farmers' house

Hostess

Her house (where she served us lunch) and farm in the background

Coffee and pine trees -- a unique combo

This lady lost her husband a few years ago but still continues to farm her land

My driver

Notebook from a coffee collection station

Coffee collection station

Award ceremonies for the top farmers of the year

Raking the coffee to help it dry

Ben Thanh Market - Ho Chi Minh City

Ben Thanh Market -- Ho Chi Minh City

There are constant reminders throughout Ho Chi Minh City that it's a communist country

Joining the masses of motorbikes

All in all, it was a great trip filled with excellent food, new sights, and great coffee and I'm very eager to return someday--hopefully with Melinda in tow. 

Auntie Geralyn's Persimmon Bars!

One of my favorite things about visiting (or living) in a new place is going to the grocery store and checking out all the neat food. For example, here similar to many places except the U.S. we find our milk and eggs sitting on an unrefrigerated shelf, or if we're in the mood, we can pick up some horse steaks yes you read right, horse steaks, and grill them up for a proper swiss meal.

The other neat thing about the stores here is that they are so seasonal. The fruit and veggie selection stays true to the seasons and lately we've been seeing so many persimmons! I didn't use them in Vermont, but my grandparents had a huge persimmon tree in their yard when I was growing up, and my aunt used to make the best persimmon bars.

With Kevin gone for a few weeks, I've had a bit of spare time, so I dug out my aunt's recipe and Anna and I did some baking. These bars are so good, and seem to have room for additions if you are feeling adventurous. We followed the recipe exactly, and we're so happy with the results. These bars didn't last long in our house!

Our grocery store carries two kinds of persimmons the really smooshy ones like these for baking...

They also carry firm persimmons for slicing up and eating like an apple.

 Anyway, here's my Aunt's delicious recipe...

Ingredients-

1 Cup persimmon plup

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg

1 Cup sugar

1/2 Cup vegetable oil

8oz finely chopped dates

1 1/2 tsp lemon juice

1 3/4 Cup flour

1tsp each of, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

1 Cup chopped walnuts or pecans

*Lemon Glaze- 1 Cup powdered sugar blended with 2-3 Tbs. lemon juice

Directions-

1. Mix persimmon pulp and baking soda and set aside

2. In a large bowl lightly beat egg, stir in sugar oil, dates and lemon juice

3. Combine the flour with the salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves

4. Add that mixture to the persimmon pulp-- alternating until well blended, stir in nuts

5. Spread evenly in a greased and floured jelly roll, or 9x13 

6. Bake at 350f for 22-25 minutes until browned. Cool in the oven for 5 minutes.

7. Spread with lemon glaze, and enjoy!

If you can find persimmons in your area, I highly recommend them, and if they don't sell the smooshy ones, just buy them and set them on your counter until they are nice and ripe.

Happy baking!

Paris, A love note.

*the beautiful view from our flat last weekend.

My heart aches for all those touched by the attacks this weekend. It is a terrible tragedy and as I sit here in a another country far a away from family and friends I have wondered the best way to deal with the fear of unprovoked violence on innocent people. We love to travel and explore new places and in our world climate today the fear of violence is real.  I spoke with my mom last night and after the conversation I realized that the best way for me to combat these reckless acts, is through love.

I love to experience new places and I will continue to explore and show my children this beautiful part of the world.  Kevin and I were there last weekend and fell in love with the city, as one always does in Paris. While we were on our weekend away, we committed to bring our kids back for a visit soon, and we will. I will not let fear get in the way of love. We love to explore new places and meet new friends; we will teach our children this love, but also help them to learn to be aware of their surroundings and make smart choices about where they visit and when they visit a new place. 

Paris you stole our hearts with your delicious food, shameless people watching and amazing architecture. We love you and we'll be back, so save a baguette for us!

xoxo

Trick-or-Treat!

Our first Halloween was a blast! Being in a foreign country for an American holiday was a little something to get used to, but we made it work and are sure glad we did.

A few weeks before Halloween I asked a few Swiss ladies at gym class if they knew of a pumpkin patch in the area and they had no idea what I was talking about! They couldn't even imagine the concept when I tried to explain it, so Anna and I picked up some choice pumpkins at the market a few days before the big day. The kids enlisted Kevin and I with the manual labor, and our grocery store punkies turned out pretty well.

 

On halloween night a friendly neighbor gave us a list of the apartments in our neighborhood who were accepting trick-or-treaters so we headed off with our costumes and list and hit the streets.

The "tricky" part of Swiss trick-or-treating is getting into the fortresslike apartment buildings and figuring out which house is handing out candy. Once we were in the buildings it was quite a surprise seeing the different kinds of candy people were handing out.  The kids got some interesting treats.  A women came out with a tray of tiny homemade cupcakes (yum), someone gave us plastic gloves filled with popcorn, and Anna was lucky enough to reach into some guy's candy bowl and fish out a giant unwrapped marshmallow, go figure.

The people giving out candy were mostly foreigners or people with small children, and it was kind of fun sharing this holiday with a handful of friendly faces in Lausanne.

After a good night we headed home and took stock of our goods.  Anna has decided that she's really less of a gummy girl and more of a chocolate kind of girl. Fortunately for her she's in the right country for that.

And this superhero likes his chocolate as much as the next kid!

Happy Halloween! Hope yours was a blast!