It was not the plan, today, to launch this blog. I was planning for yesterday to recur: an early morning rise, a bike ride to Hôi An bus station (about 6 km from home) then a bus ride to Danang (30km) and a visit to plant nurseries. The bus ride should be an hour including stops, but there is a mysterious rote, exacerbated by yesterday's driver: the bus pulls out of the station, then immediately stops just a few meters later. A few people show up on motorbikes, not planning to board the bus: they haul on the empty rear part of the bus firmly packed goods to be delivered in Danang or on the way. A meeting is setup using the station name, and somebody will pick up the parcel. Instant, UPS style delivery.
Meanwhile, the passengers sit and wait. This loitering outside the bus station takes up at least twenty minutes before the bus slowly moves. By slow I mean 2 km/hour. It pulls to another stop three hundred meters later, at the cemetary. After some more dragging for another twenty minutes, the driver finally consents to cull speed. When he does, he honks all the way to Danang, making sure the road is clear. Since the sound is deafening, he raises the sound system button to LOUD so everyone on the bus can enjoy the syrupy music.
In Danang, I am only familiar with its airport and the Cham Museum which houses the world's largest Cham sculpture collection—not surprisingly, since the Chams are an ethnic group originating from Central Vietnam. The 1915 ochre yellow building is a masterpiece of West-meets-East architecture, totally French and totally Cham. Naturally ventilated and uncannily cool, a 'green' building before 'green' became the hype. They just didn't have electricity-triggered air-conditioning back then.
It took a frustrating taxi ride to a wrong location and a moto-hug ride (that's how motorbike taxis are called—xe ôm) before I arrived at the short strip where plant nurseries are aligned. I am specifically looking for coconut coir hanging baskets to create a vertical garden wall. I have never done this before, as I have never even gardened until two months ago. In this time lapse I have undergone several species addictions before currently arriving at the fern stage.
Why ferns? Well, ferns have been known to arouse pteridomania among the Victorians (check this link: http://www.peterboyd.com/pteridomania.htm) and the aesthetic reasons are many, but I am also attracted to the fact that they are undemanding in terms of light and soil: after two months of intense planting, the sunny spots in my plot of land have dramatically shrunk. Even the shady zones are beginning to be crowded. That is, horizontally. Also, an obnoxious air-conditioning compressor unit needs to be hidden (our house is 'green' and cool enough, but when it gets hot in Hôi An, it gets VERY hot).
The vertical option, made grandiosely popular by my friend Patrick Blanc, comes to my fertile mind that hours of researching on the Internet have thoroughly composted.
Ferns! Their roots are capillarily thin and they can be grown with very little earth. The staghorn fern does not even require soil at all. It would be the perfect candidate for my wall, I thought. The centerpiece, which I would glamorize with tinier ferny items.
That was my reason to set off for Danang. In Hôi An, the horticulturists have yet to be itched by the pteridomania sting. When I inquire about the "Dragon's nest" (local name for staghorn fern—ổ rồng) they'd say, 'Oh, but dragons don't nest'.
The fern coolhouse, shielded from excess heat and sun, was easy to spot: stuff grow upside down. I walked in, hopeful, and bam, there they are, platycerium bifurcatum galore. I dashed towards the nursery owner: How much? Not identifying me as a serious buyer (ie, a buyer for the seaside resorts that abound the coastline), he reluctantly says: five million (250 USD). What? Five million dongs for a fern? No, for the whole crown.
I have this idea that my country fellows (whom I am about to offend irrevocably) are control freaks and nature haters. They are desperate to tame anything that grows—an impossible challenge in the tropics where ferns cascade and muscular sap stretches branches and leaves to unlimited extents. They recoil in presence of the tentacular and the outrageous. Lush must be trimmed down to demure. Wild must be harnessed *. Amazingly, they do find ways to win the war against barbarous nature (they have won many wars) and one of them is to assemble the staghorn ferns into a crown so they have less of a jungle look and more of an urban, polite appearance.
Annoyed but not defeated, I sauntered back to the hothouses where normal plants are sold at normal prices. I have been avoiding the nepenthes shop showing off rows of red pitchers locally called 'teapot covers' (nắp ấm). Soon, however, I realized that nepenthes alatas grown upside down and untrimmed looked very much like an epiphyte. I made up my mind to buy two of them for a paltry sum in the hundreds of thousands instead of millions dongs.
Lunch was a quick stop-over at a sandwich booth. In LA where my sister Thanh lives, the local Vietnamese sandwich booth is the Nom Nom truck. This one is the Rolls-Royce of banh mi micro-trucks serving exclusively crunchy lacquered pork suckling.
The occasion was giỗ, some ancestor's death anniversary. It is the sole occasion for a gourmet celebration in this country—other than weddings (weddings are not recurrent, at least not traditionally). Daughters and daughters-in-law were up since four in the morning to prepare the feast.
Today, I woke up early (not at four) and planned to go back to Danang for more nepenthes or fern shopping but the sky is gloomy and rain is threatening . Instead, I sat down and got this blog started.
My back wall has gorgeously improved and the air-conditioner piping much less conspicuous. Am I really supposed to feed flies to the plant? Breed flies?
* in rebellion, I took the pseudonym "Moï", which means "wild".
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