Vietnamese women in South Korea

During the past years, VNese are exposed to many products of Korea, and to be able to sell their products in VN, Korean companies have made many advertisements through TV shows, drama series.

Many Vnese women live in the rural parts of VN are forced to married to foreigners such as Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean...etc because they want to give their family a better life. Many of them met their future husband to agencies, and after paying the fee, the money left that they can give to their parents is more or less 200 USD. These poor women (most are still young) surely do not know what awaits for them in the foreign lands, foreign family, foreign languages. A big part of them found out that they had married to a peasant, living far from away from the big city, and are tied to strong harsh traditional culture. These girls have to work hard on the fields, have to take care of the family at the same time, and have to bear their husband beating them, and have no money to send hom after all.

Many reports and news show some of them were beaten so badly, but they can't escape because of the damage fee that have to pay to their family in law, more or less 15000 USD. They are unprotected, vulnerable but they can't go back to VN because the contract applies in VN, too. Certainly some of them try to live because of their children.

Yeah, these are Vnese women. Vnese women are so strong, so generous, so lovely but could not run away from the terrible destiny that cover Vnese women's lives. Of course, there are better stories but how many compare to the sad ones. Since when, a woman has to get married to help her family financially? When can they meet love?

For the love of sticky rices and Noodle soups

I guess I can't hide the love for noodle soups and traditional foods of VN. When I go to restaurant sometimes with friends, I usually am a bit disappointed about the content of the menu in Vnese restaurant. Certainly, Vnese foods do not vary like many other foods, but we do have many dishes other PHO, nem (cha gio), springrolls (goi cuon)...etc. Moreover, there is another problem of degrading the foods, I mean making VN foods or dishes is taking much labour and time, but the price for it is so cheap. One of the reason is because one restaurant offer foods at a reasonable price, the next one is gonna to offer it cheaper to compete. Hence, Vnese foods are cheap!

Hmm, I should not blame anyone, that's about business, you have to offer something that the customers demand. That is why if we want real quality Vnese foods, we have to know how to cook ;-). Probably it is not gonna be as good as eating those dishes in Vn in the past (because with the problems with vegetables...currently in VN, am not sure, it is safe to eat there), but they sure still reveal our memories.

When I was in VN, every morning waking up, I could hear the calling of early merchants selling street foods (yeah, that's my VN), especially different sort of sticky rices such as corn sticky rice, black stucky rice with mung beans, peanut sticky rice, mung beans sticky rice, black beans sticky rice...etc. All of them taste super delicious and fill your stomach full for at least several hours. They are usually served with coconut and salted sesames (roasted) and wrapped in babana leaves ;-). My favourite is the corn sticky rice with smashed mung beans, and coconut. Here in Belgium, I could not find the right corn to make it, so I once tried the frozen version of the ready-to-eat one (that I swear I will never make that mistake again ;-)).

Here in the picture, we have the black sticky rice with smashed mung beans, coconut and salted peanuts.

Of course, breakfast in VN isn't just that, we have a lot of many types of noodle soups, not only PHO, most of the noodle are made of rice like bun moc, bun thang, bun rieu, hu tieu, banh canh...the list goes on. I love all the noodle soups. Not only the broth is made differently from one to another, but the way it is served just distinguish itself.

Anyway, here we have bun thang that I made the other day ;-)

Coconut and pecan nut cookies

Recipes from Noinieu,

...they are super good, peronally, I prefer the chocolate pecan nuts cookies.

When we comfortably sit at our dining table....

complaining about our foods, many children in Africa have no nutritious foods or worse they have ever tasted clean water. Yes, Africa, for me, it is a lost continent. My best friend just came back from Kenya, Rwanda...after two months and a haft travelling. Her initial plans was only to go there for a month, but now she came back with Africa winning her heart, and she plans going back.

I guess, through our discussions, the things that won her heart, not only the beautiful nature of Rwanda, the gorillas, but also the happy people. I wanted to get on a plane and go there just by hearing her stories. There are funny ones, as always, because of the different cultures encountering, but there are sad ones like 40% of the population in Rwanda has AIDs, children were born with the century disease, and shortage of water. These people needs our attention. Yet, living in a poor conditions does not make them sitting there, feeling sorry for their sorts. "We share everything", they said. It made me feel so sad. How many times, we make a big fuss about small little problems, but only hear these stories, it makes me feel so much more positive because our problems are nothing compare to theirs.

I received a letter from a 12 years old, he is from the orphenage where my friend stayed helping, buying stuffs for them. I can't believe how such a young boy can think so deeply, and the words he used are so beautiful and sweet. They study with not enough pen, or papers, but they write so well. These brats in our society should learn a lesson. But we can't blame them because we, too, live so comfortable that we become so selfish, only thinking for ourselves, we forget about SHARING, and compassion.

This Xmas, I am going to make a new friend, his name is Harun, he is 12 years old, and he is from an orphenage in Kenya.

Museum of comic strip

I have been in Belgium long enough but have ever been to this famous museum ;-). After all, Belgium is known for, apart from their watering mouth chocolates and their amazing beers, their comic strips. It is all about arts and teamwork, a person who came up with an idea, a person who starts drawing, and one person who writes, and then one person who put everything together, not to mention the support team around them like in any other businesses.

It was a pleasure to visit, I've got a handful of info about space since a lot of comics related to the first man on the moon...etc. But what I loved the most was I could see how the comic had developped over the year, not only the different technics in arts like aquarel, pencils, acrylics...,that affected the story, the personage... but also the effects of society to the stories, for example, humour, erotism..etc.

Of course, many stories about how Tintin and his Snowy were born or the Schrumpf ;-). I still remember as a kid I used to be completely crazy about the Schrumpf and their mushrooms. While in VN, comic was only children books, in Belgium (and I guess elsewhere), adults and children are mad about them.

Anyway, here are pictures of the time machine and Thao, the capitain ;-)

Almond cookies

I was meant to bake some cookies from the

Noinieu

recipes, but either I could not find the ingredients that I wanted or instead of buying one, I bought another ;-). So, ended up baking these Belgian almond cookies (well, in my way ;-).

The result? To be honest, was not that bad, it was destroyed very fast during a couple of hours after I took it out of the oven hehehe