Post 11:À l’ombre de jeunes filles en fleurs

Day 9, breakfast
Walking into town, I stop for a gorgeous if forgettable bowl of noodles and vegetable medley. The cook had another pot, though, that looked spicy, so tomorrow I’ll try that. Plus her son was very friendly; he leads guides of the temples in German, but we didn’t succeed in speaking that language together very well, nor did English go any better. Oh well.
Still far behind on this chronicle (and on my column intro for Kasia, plus needing to get back to Lucinda about a change she wanted to make to my book intro), I wanted to do some serious work, so I brought Fudgie and looked for a decent place to have a coffee. Unlike Saigon, Siem Reap doesn’t seem to have much of a café culture, at least for locals. So I end up having to take a seat at a very swanky colonial hotel open air bar, where my white ass suddenly realizes it’s sitting on cushions not plastic, my pate notices the fan overhead, I eventually go to a loo that’s walled in exquisite fabric and smells of lavender (with a functional flush toilet), and I think, so this is what it’s like. Again, with my haircut I couldn’t look more like an imperialist, so all I need now is my linen and silk 3-piece suit that I wore to Amanda’s wedding and I’d be set. Coolies bringing me ice and whiskies and dinner at the ambassador’s and the trade, the mine, the banana plantation and lord knows how these people live in such climes…
I have no idea what my coffee will cost, and I was honestly surprised: only two bucks (one anywhere else is 50 cents). That, given the service, the view, and the two hours work I got done, is money well spent. I might go back even today.

Day 9, lunch -- momentous

I haven’t yet described how just off the central market is a seedy parking lot market of much less tourist-friendly cooked-food stalls. That’s where I got yesterday’s river fish (4 for 75 cents) and the snake (50 cents) and where I’ve concluded I’m going to get pretty much everything. So leaving my colonist’s privilege, I flip to the other side of imperialism and order a plate of truly exquisite looking tripe . The woman selling it had four or five pots of stuff, but this looked so incredibly good, I thought that the standard offal pun was worth risking. Plus I love Lao tripe salad (called laab, similar to the thai larp, though they use other meats), and I thought this could be related (the woman was cutting lettuce). One note about laab, as my brother knows, I prefer it cooked to raw (thus another of our policies: if ordering an unknown meat, and asked if you if you want it raw or cooked, better start with cooked. And, for the record, raw tripe strips taste _very_ transgressive, if you know what I mean). This, though, was more like a curry or a stew, and the tripe was shockingly pleasant, with none of the funkiness, rubberiness or unpleasantness it often has. Delicious.
As usual, I exchange a few words with the people at my table; one guy seems upset that I’m not taking a spoon (I realize eventually that that’s the utensil for your left hand, and perhaps the left hand is not to be eaten with, as in India, for obvious reasons). Not taking a spoon might well have said, I have a flush toilet – or it might have said worse, considerably worse. But then…
Oh my. Let me pause, reader, and quote the note in my journal, written before she started speaking, “Utter bomb sits down next to me, also eating tripe.” I am undone (and clearly my journal will one day rival Pepys’…)
Of course I try to hide myself in the aroma of my rice, but eventually she asks if I’d like to try the side dish she’s eating, which she calls Cambodian cheese (it’s the shu mei filling-like stuff in the pic – very strong and intense, so much so I’m not even sure I liked it). Her English is quite good. Her name is Machai; she comes from a village north of here; she would invite me but there is no road. She borrowed her sister’s moto, as she works here one day a week selling magazines. She tells me that the tripe dish we’re having is called cha. She says she wants to study law but probably can’t pay for it. She’s yet to start university. She’s 19. “I’m 40,” I say. “An old man.” “Not so old,” she says, “and still handsome.”
Something inside me falls, like a marble rolling off a table. She is delicately, intricately beautiful. Her lips are full and her skin impeccable; I imagine how light the down must be on her belly, how smooth her legs. She speaks in a light, shy voice, so tender-seeming I don’t even feel predatory, merely appreciative. I bumblingly say that if she wants to practice her English later (of course I don’t say see me later), we could have dinner. She doesn’t quite agree or disagree to this, but she writes down her name and number, and I tell her the name of my guest house and that she should call there and leave a message if she wants to meet up. But somehow this seems to confuse or scare her, and there’s awkwardness. I get up and leave, somewhat hastening to get away from whatever the possibilities are of the situation. Some part of me doesn’t want to know, to let myself really desire her, to think her real and thus unsheathe the blade.
She said she gets off work at 5, but I mis-time my arrival at the market and, when 5 strikes, I’ve already eaten the lemongrass and tamarind stew you see above. I could haunt the market for another half hour, but the beggars have discovered me and, again, I’m afraid of disappointment, equally probable whether she would show up or not.
This is not the first of my encounters with women here; I have been noticing a lot of smiles since I arrived in Cambodia. In Saigon, every now and then a woman would flash me a look. In a residential back alleyway, there was a young mother of transcendent proportions in a black wife-beater who gazed up from her shrimp-grilling and melted me. A younger girl in Cholon followed me with her eyes half a block before I noticed (so said Martin); our eyes locked for 100 yards, and, when I turned half a block past her, she was still entreating. But here such looks are more common, and they’re often from quite young girls. I think the difference in age really doesn’t matter to them, or at least they become mothers here so seemingly young, that a girl of 16 can give me very adult glances. It’s disturbing in the way some of Sally Mann’s photos are disturbing (and why I can easily understand her persecution): you don’t want to be vulnerable, but you can’t help yourself, and then you feel the truth: the creakiness of your knees, your crow’s feet, your difference, the inability, and you think how strange that mere desire can be so crafty as to pass itself off as real longing, that one can drink so deep from the cup of naivete as to momentarily imagine not just physical contact with the girl but life. And then with the bitter tinge of the touch never comes (nor even a kiss, which in itself would transport), you somehow feel as though one of your lives flashed from a doorway and was lost. It’s not true; that life would have had no more substance than the phantom that it was, yet still part of you thinks it real and mourns. Perhaps if we could see desire for what it is, then we would never lose sight of life as it is too: my happiness at home, my fulfillment, the fact that I wouldn’t exchange it and Sarah and you my friends and my brother and the New York I love for anything at all. I know I am not a man to cheat, for even when I covet, I soon wake from the reverie and all my sugarplum projections. But odd, no, how quickly at hand and seemingly real those sugarplums can momentarily be?

So now I’m back in the colonial splendor, insulated by the unlikeliness that Machai would ever walk down this block. Instead I can gaze on the white college girls and their panty lines, the elegant draping ladies emerging from the rooms upstairs, the beautiful wait staff and their wet-chestnut colored skin, and the business skirts passing on motos. It’s good that the drinks here are so expensive or I might start having Pernods -- and that could lead this often sad and sort of young and sort of old man to weeping. It’s very hard to be with others; it’s very hard to be alone.

Post 10: short, less good than 9, and a holdover till tomorrow's 11

Day 8, morning: --TMI ALERT-- : --TMI ALERT-- Henceforth no TP. Details on request.

Day 8, breakfast/lunch: I leave my guest house and discover that it’s right along the river and a nice walk to the central market, where I find an awesome array of food possibilities. I begin with a fried pomfret (sweet and very yummy) -- picture went up yesterday and i can't seem to retrieve it -- and a bowl of rice and 5 or 6 chilis, which is a very nice way to defibrillate your day.

Inside the market (which is densedensedense – photo to follow), I sample a bunch of munchies: somewhat candied olives and unpleasant round fruits; various pickles, sort of chinese-style; some dried banana flakes and tamarinds which I can’t figure out how to eat (don’t bite through the latter unless you want your tongue soured to a crisp); and some tasty deep fried stuffed hot peppers, cauliflower, and green beans with a spicy dipping sauce. Eventually I also get 4 small grilled whole unscaled ungutted river fish; I’m not sure if I was supposed to eat the skin and scales, but they didn’t suit me so much. The flesh was pretty tasty (and healthy for a change) and I’m learning how to deal with the infinity of pin bones: you chew and chew back near your molars, and the fish will flake off leaving the bones behind. (I’m only trying this because at the $2.50 Malaysian place I used to go to deep off Canal street, I’d see worker guys put nearly a whole fish in their mouths at once, masticate/whorl it around for a minute and then take a ball of de-fished bones out of their mouths at the end. Amazing.)

It’s very pleasant walking around here. Traffic is light, people are friendly when I acknowledge them, there are definitive non-tourist places just off where all the honkies congregate (and where I go check email and post these rather Western blogs), and there’s interesting food everywhere. I’m supposed to be here for the temples, but first I have to catch up on the writing (and sleeping, which is going better) and eat a few more things, then I’ll be ready for some high culture. All the final papers from my two classes were due today, so I had a lot of grading and stuff to do as well, so most of my day was spent in an internet café. I took a break though to have a shredded papaya salad – one of my faves, and this one with small crab legs and claws (in the shell) pounded up into it – interesting addition, though not necessarily preferable.

At the center of the central market, I also make a nice discovery: first thinking that I’m seeing little slices of dried sausage (a guaranteed must-buy), I realize it’s actually betel nut -- which I chewed in India and wasn’t really fond of if it wasn’t rolled in a paan. But by association that helped me realize therefore that the small, clear unmarked bag of almost black-colored shredded what-I-thought-was seaweed was actually tobacco, perhaps akin to that smoked by Solomon on the ferry (one note: the only betel-chewer I’ve seen here so far was a beggar grandmother. So if the same stand sells loose tobacco, it might well be grandpa’s skankweed). Of course I buy a bag, and luckily I had brought papers in case I ever wanted to roll my pipe tobacco into cigarettes (I know how effective smoking can be as a social device – dammit, maybe I’m not that shy). So I “spin” up one of these (in my bro’s lingo), fire it, and good god, _that_ is some strong tobacco. Gauloises’ patented dry-roasted dogshit flavor has nothing on my Cambodian’s local smoke. Not even inhaling, I’m airborne within a few puffs. It’s stronger even than I remember beadies in India to have been (though I will certainly confirm in a few weeks); the only comparison I have is with some cigarettes from Russia I had in college; they had a super dark tobacco packed entirely into the first third of the smoke (that’s how they came in the pack) and the other two thirds of the cigarette was just a cardboard tube. The tobacco in that front third was so tight it was almost like a brick, then you’d smoke it and it was rough and rugged and harsh but super flavorful. Bro, I have to think Clint’s cheroots – or at least the soggy butt-ends that il brutto smoked – must have tasted something like this. Apparently in Burma you can buy single cheroots in the tea houses; i intend to sample many.

Day 8, dinner

Finally it’s dinner time and the macho theme continues to prevail. I happen to get, independently, two components of a truly masculine meal. The first is what was called on the box “Muscle Wine,” i.e. the local liquor, which I feel it’s my duty to try. I’ve had the Vietnamese Mekong whiskey; this is darker colored, as you can see, like a Gosling’s Rum and tastes like black liquorice (not anise-y but like black twizzlers) – surprisingly ok. The other half of my man’s meal, as I’m sure you noticed above, is Satan from the garden of eden, this time strung up as he deserved and put over charcoal, basted with local flavors and grilled till tough.

Lucifer doesn’t go easily. I can barely get my teeth through the skin, and then it almost seems like it’s full of bones (it’s the internal structure of the snake that allows it its movement) and firm fatty bubbles like the pigskin bits you find in Portuguese sausage. It would be worth it, but the flavor again is quite new, and this time less welcome, sort of musty and funky and gamey, the way I’d imagine opossum would taste (though god knows I might soon find that out too).

I ultimately have very little of either of my male enhancers, probably good since I couldn’t be more stag, and the 37-yr-old French librarian, whose name I noticed on the guest register just above mine, tragically checked out this morning. Quelle dommage (craigslist.fr rencontres perdus?).

Post 9: the full story of the bugs, my friend, and his family

My darlings,

I've finally had time to tell the full story, so i'm going to re-post the photos from installment 8, inset in the text (andrew, blogger king, told me how), and you should get it the right way. Here we go:

Day 7: If you know me well, you will have heard me say that the gods of irony are the only gods there are. Fine, I’m talking out of my ass, but whatever your denomination, you’ll agree that they make their presence felt in more than abundant vestigia. So on the heels of a misanthropic post for which I took a little deserved heat (yes, I know I should give everybody a chance -- just as, theoretically, I could give ever restaurant a chance -- but I have reason to suspect that my hunches on both fronts are often correct when they scream out, “Must avoid” …), I find myself not only speaking to but befriending a Cambodian on the bus to Siem Reap (launching city for some of the world’s finest temples, including the famous Angkor Wat). My new pal, Bunthon, will ultimately facilitate some intense and fabulous insider experiences that I’ll try to detail to some degree, but yesterday left me so mouth- and eye-overloaded (they literally ached in their orbits from gawking), I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do it all justice. (And, yes, Plaegian, I also realize that it could be your creator could have sent Bunthon – my own chainsmoking Beatrice -- to remind me of the errance of last post, but for now I’ll stick to my theological guns.)

Ok, so I decided to bus to Cambodia instead of heading to the Mekong delta and boating up because some months ago Lisa advised against the latter, saying it was “most touristy – horrid.” Normally I love river travel, but then again I prefer it if I’m traveling alongside the river, by foot along the quays or amid the leftover condoms and syringes on the banks (cue the Suttree descriptions). Plus I felt pretty contented with Saigon; the parts that I wanted to explore on foot I did, and to do anything else I would have had to strap myself to the back of a man and be motorbiked around (which, as with having to be marsupialed to a masculine in my first skydive, would have taken some of the fun out of it.) I am sad, though, to have missed Cu Chi, the unbelievably elaborate – and therefore that much more depressing – tunnel system built by the Vietnamese soldiers to elude the Americans during the war. If you want to know just how awful man can make life for man, these will rival anything this side of the harshest imprisonment or slavery.

Off I went to my little bus; I had stockpiled peanut butter sandwiches, steamed buns (which all prove to be awful), the veggie/meat/rice dish (inedible), water, and pickled salads. My brother mistakenly warned me about getting bahn mis for the trip, as he ended up with an infernally spicy one for his 12-hr ride, resulting in no small discomfort (I’m going to try to believe him that those particular chilis were extra hot…), so there was little threat of that. I’m sure he would have been much happier had I duplicated his experience. Still, I went to such lengths to make sure to have a light pack when I left the states; now with my one-day’s provisions, I was carrying what felt like 40 kilos. On the way out of Saigon, I mostly took notes for my forthcoming post on the erotics of girls on scooters (especially with the terrorist-looking cloth masks they often wear over their faces because of the smog, and with the long armguards that look like 50s Hollywood starlet gloves). I’ll make sure to post one of my photos as an example, as soon as I find one that doesn’t feature two schoolgirls in uniform riding tandem…

Once we’re into the countryside, it’s not long before we reach the Cambodian frontier. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a border guard, to have no trace of humanity whatsoever, to be more dour and joyless than American socialists, and to spend your day making people’s lives atrocious? Such a great group of men. Mercifully, one of the perks of the tourist bus is that we are assisted with our visa applications, otherwise I’d probably still be trying to convince the authorities that all those articles on Nerve are by some other jack murnighan.

Cambodia. Wow. It’s immediately different (and not only because there are enormous American and American-style casinos just inside the border check – and shanties across the street). Obviously the script is different, and it’s suddenly a bit scary to not be able to make out signs, even when I consult my supposed alphabet (who is this publisher Thomas Cooke, anyway. His fucking language books are utter fucking shite. Again, since they’re intended for brits, aussies, and us, it’s probably a Volume II of the Proust situation; they make them out of garbage because they don’t think anyone is ever actually going to open them).

After the language and Vegas Bally’s – no joke (oh, and the billboard for Tiger beer that says, It’s better on top, enjoy winning!) -- you immediately notice roadside stands with shelves of old Johnny Walker red and black bottles refilled with yellow liquid. Of course, I wanted to pull over and swill whatever it was; only later did I realize that these are gas stations, and the bottles contain petrol. And then you notice the marshiness -- man, this country is wet! The Netherlands are reputedly under sea level, and apparently huge chunks of Bangladesh wash away after a bad monsoon (killing dozens of times as many people as 9/11, by the way), but I’ve never seen a place as swampy or fen-ny or boggy or rice-paddy-y or however it should properly be described. It’s beautiful.
The houses are mostly like shanties on stilts, though in some cases they’re still ground-level – perhaps floating – and connected to the road by long wet narrow single-tree-trunk footbridges that would make Nadia Comaneche a little nervous (though I saw a young girl just walk over one like it was nothing).

There are cows everywhere, most on leashes by the roadside; there are exquisite, quite impressively horned, slate-colored oxen (I saw an old man squatting by a mud lake then noticed his plow team lolling up to their eyeballs in the muck – very sweet); there is an abundance of pool tables (don’t ever bet money with a skinny Asian man at a poohall); there was a troupe of men pulling a highwire cable down the length of the road like some mythic snake; there was a boy chin-deep in the flood washing his cow, and when he saw the bus coming, he started jumping up and down and waving; and on and on. And then we got to the ferry.

The ferry. Good god. We bipeds need water, clearly, but in overabundance it is our natural enemy. Not a large river that we were crossing, but an utter impasse for the less-moneyed, to them the very earth’s rim. So they congregate, and they
accumulate, and the better-off ones pack themselves into Toyota van and onto Toyota vans and mash their cargo into and onto Toyota vans until the rear is tied up in such a distended state it looks like my sister-in-law, Hillary, walking backward in her present gravitude. (the photo above was actually a rather light load compared with some others. Then today I saw two Toyota light pickups each with literally 30+ people in and on them. Unfucking real.)

To serve these masses, women and kids with trays and bags and racks of food, none of which I can purchase, tragically, as my fancy tourist bus’s windows are sealed for the AC. Ugh. So many things I would have liked to try, though I must admit, as noted above, that I wasn’t quite ready to cross the Rubicon of the giant flying cockroaches

(you realize that each one is the length of my palm! And wide! And thick! Good god, biting into one of those you would have detonated a pint of bug gelatin into your mouth). Looking into a van, I see a little boy eating tiny live shrimp and an impossibly old man rolling a cigarette (wide-gauge, like I roll them) from a yellowed bag of the skankiest tobacco I’ve ever seen (which gave me ideas…). My eyes were paining from the exertion, and I finally thought, Ah, ferry-town ferry, shuttle me to and fro, shuttle me amid all and all, fore and back till I’ve seen all that is see-able, all one can witness, and then let Charon take the rudder…

We continue. Through Phnom Penh where we stop and I pho á la Hanoi
and we start again, hamstrung in city traffic (but oh, girls on motos…), and I see the sublime and unexpected beauty of a truck carrying 10,000 unboxed bottles of fish sauce. Eventually we leave the city and begin driving by villages and countryside of enormous beauty. The people when I make eye contact smile. I wave and they laugh and the bus moves on.

Eventually we stop at a roadside market, where I see the tray of tarantulas and again fail the nut-check. But then a man who has been on the bus, who had pho at the same place in Phnom that I had pho, who I took to be Indian or Pakistani, bends to order the spiders, and I say, Ah, you are getting them. And he says, Yes, do you want to try? Now I believe you will all understand that it’s one thing to wuss out alone (I disappoint myself with utter impunity) but when there’s a witness… So of course I can’t demur. He hands me a gooey object and it is surprisingly large and even a little heavy. I ask if you eat the whole thing and he looks at me like I’m an idiot, then nods, tilting his head back as if to say, Chug it.

I bite off the headside half. And chew. And swallow. And smile. It tastes a bit candied, actually, not sweet but sticky and chewy like a cross between chiccharones and tamarind paste (or sun chips and a prune). The flavor is not one that had been logged in my register, but it was somewhere on the line between fruit and meat, again a bit plummy, though if you could imagine a plum with no sweetness, or like a jerky made out of a particularly delicate mango-fed beef. Not amazing, mind you, but good enough that I ate one again later (as you will see).

Apparently once the vendors see you eating spiders, they open the floodgates. Out come the locusts (or grasshoppers for the less eschatological among you) or crickets, which Andrew tells me this is (hell if i know -- to it looked way to big to be a cricket). They too are fried (what dubious thing isn’t put in oil?), and here I had heard that the outside was crunchy and the inside a vile substantial pudding. But again, how could I say no in front of my new friend? In one goes, whole (I really didn’t want to see the color of the pudding), and to my surprise it was genuinely good. Again a bit like a candy, with a wafery crisp outside and then, yes, pudding, but pudding that tasted a bit like coconut cream. My friend, Bunthon, tells me both the tarantulas and the locusts are the specialty of this particular village, and, as I’ve never heard a Westerner say they liked a fried insect, it could be that these are particularly good specimens of the same, the Kobe steaks of edible horrorfilm beasts. (but then I admit to a somewhat large palate; take Marmite: if you don’t grow up eating the stuff, you’re not supposed to be capable of liking it, and I _love_ Marmite…)

Anyway, now Bunthon and I are friends. I ask him if he knows anyone who runs a guest house; of course he does and he’d be happy to take me. (I’d be suspicious, but I have no room reserved and he seems genuinely friendly). It turns out he is one of the Cambodian reps for a pan-SE Asian tour company, South Breeze Travels, and would be happy to hook any of you up with as fancy a trip as you want. Actually, he wants me to do it and charge you whatever I can get, keeping the commission. Email me at the address in my profile…)

When we get to Siem Reap, instead of taking me immediately to the guest house, he invites me home for dinner with his wife and family
(at the sound of the word wife I took a deep internal sigh of relief. Right, Leif?). Of course I accept, awkward as I feel, and we are tuk-tukked back to his house. In I stroll, forgetting to take my sandals off (it’s my first invite in, and I had forgotten protocol). I meet his family; his toddler son screams in fear when I look at him; his 4 yr-old is afraid too but eventually starts taking my picture and everybody and everything’s picture (his camera) and then won’t stop showing me his homework and dragging me around by the finger.

Bunthon and his wife are excellent hosts; dinner is served on the floor, and consists not only of the fried delectables from the market (which the kids eat up like fries) but sour fish soup which you spoon onto your rice and add a little chili (every time I have grabbed the chili spoon since I’ve been in Asia everyone looks fearful).
Then strips of beef and an incredible tray of the standard Cambodian vegetable medley: sliced cucumber, basil leaves, the herb I photographed that Bunthon had no English name for, lettuce chunks, cabbage, carrot disks, and shredded banana flower (the spirally pink/red thing). This you dip with the beef in with one of two killer sauces – unbelievable. One of them Bunthon says is very Cambodian and that Thai and Vietnamese people don’t like it. (I admit that the difference was lost on me; had he had said it was very Thai or Vietamese and that Cambodians don’t like it, my taste buds would have been none the wiser).
He also poured me a beer and himself one, and was sad when wouldn’t have a second, though he did. Then he made me have one when he had his third. Then he said I could spend the night there (which I refused only because I had gotten so little sleep, and my awkwardness was reaching its apogee) and apologized for keeping me so long while he had his fourth. “I like beer way too much,” he said, then drove me through the dark bumpy streets on the back of his motorcycle.

post 8: interlude as prelude

Hello all

Arrived in cambodia. much, much, much to tell (and perhaps i'm somewhat less misanthropic than advertised). details to follow.


also, yes, that's my haircut. i forgot to mention that i got one. i splurged and spent $2.50 at a nicish men's place where i was offered my first manicure. i declined.

finally, if you don't already know, i'm a fundamentally lonely and massively insecure person in need of steady transfusions of affirmation; small surprise, then, that i check to see if the posts get any responses and light up when they do (even when i'm being scolded). i also light up upon receiving private emails, pictures, and cash contributions, as you prefer. thank you for caring.

post to follow, once i resolve some technical difficulties. poor fudgie...

Post 7: A fork in the Saigon river....of life

I often say that I’m shy, and that particular utterance tends to generate more laughs than most any of my jokes. Yet shy I am; rarely do I strike up a conversation with strangers, and rarer still do I want them to spark their verbal flints on me. When spoken to, I begin suspicious and proceed to perturbed. If you are a stranger and want to be my friend, email.

Last night at the bar made me want to leave the hotel and check into the Unabomber’s cabin (details to follow), but then today, day 7, there was cause for renewed hope…

But first, some inspiring human interactions of a decidedly less verbal variety:

Day 5, dinner: I’m back to being a solo rider, which is kind of good because now I don’t have to walk like I was wearing a kimono (I know, wrong country). Considered going back to the lunch joint, but I realized there was one more half a block I had missed in my pointillist analysis of the street food of secret Saigon. So back I go, and ultimately discover my favorite meal yet: a cart with little sausages wrapped in leaves then grilled, served with ricepaper wrappers and all the stuff to make spring rolls -- lettuce, basil, mint, cucumber, cold noodles, and ground peanuts -- plus some slices of an unknown (to me) citrus and pale green eggplant. The sausages are absolutely delicious, though each one does have an unfortunate little bit of bone chip in it (par for the neighborhood, I suppose; why kvetch?). Delicious as they were, the portion was still Vietnamese sized, so I confess to giving in and trying the Vietnamese fried chicken on my way home. Lord save this sinner man.

So, on to the bar and all the sadness. I didn’t start out on the right foot, clearly. I’ve already noticed that I always seem to be dressed a bit more upscale than any other foreigners (I wear snug black polo shirts with light, well-cut fatigue-y pants every day), which makes me think I’m giving off more than my usual snobby miasma. But then I show up to the watering hole with my journal and a book (the so far not-short-enough Life of Oscar Wao). I’m forced to sit at a table with a visible wanker from down under and a British guy who looks like that old cartoon of the dopey dog but has teeth that evoke a bike chain made out of teak (did I miss a Sotheby’s auction of George Washington’s dentures?). I nod but don’t say a word, take out my journal, and start writing in my guy-from-Seven microscript. The aussie then asks the winning bidder what he does for a living, to which lumber mouth replies, “I drink.”

Now I’ve always thought it odd that people show up alone in bars without a book or journal in hand. But apparently they thought it odd that I showed up with both, and with a vintage tobacco pipe that I took out, loaded, and began puffing away on. From that point, there was no chance of anyone speaking to the dauphin.

Being ostracized was merciful, as it turns out (and often is), because behind me I heard a Vietnamese guy using such pathetic racial and homophobic slurs (though I grant they were new to my ears), that they’re not worth repeating. I was so appalled, I gulped my beer down as fast as it would go and went back to my room to pout.

Sleep was fitful, up for matins, which in my church is beginning to involve noodles.

Day 6, breakfast.

My brother wrote me being concerned that my food experiences might taper off; instead, I opted to take a page out of his autobiography in progress, tentatively titled How to Eat Two Farmer’s Breakfasts and Other at-the-Table Atrocities.

It happened by accident. Still sampling every spicy pho that morning secret Saigon has to offer, I stumbled upon a place with that deep orange/red color stock one seeks out, and marvelous-looking glistening chunks barely concealed by the bubbling. I sit; the proprietor/cook (how nice that that’s always the same person) gestures and asks if I want flank steak with it -- who would say no? -- and I watch her dunk it in a broth for 15 seconds then into a bowl with noodles. I turn to make a note in my journal about thin-sliced flank steak, and look up to find in front of me a bowl…of clear broth. Oh no! Clearly when I opted for the steak, that meant I got the other soup, and now I was in the Lindsey Weiss memorial how-do-I-eat-this-meal-if-it’s-not-spicy pickle.

Bro, I burnt an offering at your altar. Down goes one pho, noodles and all (and note the green leaf here ; it was added with basil for flavor and was as delicious as unknown to me), then I asked for the red one and ate that to the porcelain, generating very wide eyes all around me. When I paid, we all started laughing. I proceeded to waddle back to the hotel.

Day 6, lunch

You will not be surprised to hear that lunch came late, but you might be surprised at how long it could have lasted. It began innocently enough: I walked back to District 4 for a final go-around (I leave Vietnam tomorrow) and to try to get the legume potage I saw a woman selling the first time, plus anything else I missed. Sadly, I was a little late for most of the market, but did manage to score a nice pork skewer from a woman who was inordinately pleased that I bought and photographed it. (Again, in this neighborhood, all the adults stare, all the kids point at me – and many scream “hellaw” – but when I wave they all seem more than a little amused). The potage lady was gone; in my bereaved bewilderment, a banh mi vendor grabbed my arm firmly and smilingly entreated me to get one (but it was the grilled pork I had already had – can’t repeat!), kept laughing and calling out to the neighborhood (who en masse were steadily emerging from their homes) and wouldn’t let me go till I charaded a stomach sign and then squeezed my fist to say (falsely) that I was full. Then I was freed.

Back across the bridge I went (much less fun going with the traffic and not being able to make eye contact with the gawking girls on motos). My only hope was that the final block from last night might have different offerings at lunch than dinner. Indeed, ecstasy: got a stuffed bun for tomorrow’s bus trip (I don’t know what’s in it, but they ranged in price from 5,000 dong to 10, so I opted for the fancy one, following my recently adopted buy-the-most-expensive-thing-at-the-cheapest-place policy, which I think Ron is also subscribing to), as well as a meat/vegetable pile on rice for tomorrow, and a sausage banh mi that sent me over the moon.

But that’s when things got interesting. As I’m eating the transcendent wurst (can’t have that one either, Vic), a 50-or-so year-old woman comes out of a shop and tells me, in English, to put the sauce on the sandwich (which I had already done but of course did again). She then asks where I’m from; I compliment her on her accent and asked how she learned; she said only had a Vietnamese teacher but she’s very intelligent, and then she drops the grenade. “You should come talk with me. I had a husband but I divorced him many years ago. So you have nothing to worry about.”

Trust me when I say that the implications were clear. My Saigon visit could continue – as long as I wanted. Our “talk” was going to be very deep – and thorough. Suddenly I find myself feeling less than prolix, so I said that I had to go and that I was leaving tomorrow. She says she runs her own salon and fruit stand, both right there, and that I should take her number and call her whenever I wanted (her name is also An, like the lady from 2 nights ago, and seeing it on the marquis, I realize here it’s a 2-letter job). I get more nervous. I say I can maybe come by tomorrow before I leave (though my bus is at 6 a.m). She says yes to come. And, like the shy, or nervous, or chickenshit, or stupid, or all-of-the-above person I am, I scuttle away, sweating through my shirt.

Sipping iced green tea from a sidewalk cart two blocks away (which costs 7 cents, by the way, with refills), the possibilities are suppurating: My bad-hair life would be a thing of the past; I’d learn the names of all the mystifying fruits I’ve been seeing; I could be initiated to the secrets of the East (if that’s not merely West orientalizing); I could direct foreign clientele to her salon; and I could probably get bulk discounts on the sausage banh mis out in front. It would be a life, perhaps even an excellent life. But, alas, dear reader, you knew it was coming: I am too shy.

post 6: on my own petard

Post 6:

A note on hypocrisy: fear not, dear reader, my own Olympian levels are not lost on me. Too true that I flee the skin color I bear (and occasionally bare); I scorn the traveler I am; were I to see my mythic double-going me saunter up to a food stall, I would shake my head, sad that I hadn’t walked far enough, and trudge on in search of more decay. Anthropology, gastronomic or otherwise, is a privilege, but more so is the ability to deceive yourself that you’ve outpaced your own identity, sloughed one skin and slid into a new, perhaps less white, less rich, less coddled. But don’t worry; I fool myself as little as I fool you.

Day 4, dinner

That said, I make exceptions for the white and sweet (the chaps, angel food cake, sarah…). So they come by, convinced now of my truffle-finding snout and the wisdom of following it (though my gait has proven to be a significant problem). It’s their last night, so I take them for crab claws
I saw in secret Saigon. Knowing that shell-crackers are a western luxury that this time we won’t be able to indulge, we all have molars on the mind as I lead them down the muddy path to tastiness. I also wanted to take them to the pho stand where I met Anne, but when we arrive it’s not there, no trace. We make up for it by sampling the gantlet (no typo -- we don’t eat gloves): the crab claws warmed on a grill and served with the omnipresent salt/pepper mixture (very yummy, but I can honestly say I far prefer the hassle-free bang for buck of shrimp); then Mick had the Fluf-tuber omelet, which he loved; Martin and I had liver pate banh mis (dangerous, but very very yummy), then a plate of Chinese-style fried noodles w/ greens (first leafy one I’ve had yet, ironically), and 4 different types of dumplings, which we ate in the bia hoi bar (and the beer was much better, pretty much draft PBR at $1/liter). That, my dearies, is eating a block.

We then retired to the cheaper, shittier, whiter, closer, but also, as long as they’re my company, more fun bia hoi bar on my block, where their abilities as English provincial drinkers are finally put on display.

I sleep soundly.

Day 5: Morning

For the first time, there isn’t one. I awake at 6 briefly, then sleep again till 10. Finally. Sleep, in the Bard’s words, “knits the raveled sleeve of care…” Indeed.

Day 5: Lunch

Final outing with the gents, we go to take the strolls Genevieve’s brother recommended and to eat another block, on his suggestion. When we get to the latter, it’s fancy and quiet, almost soporific at this point not being almost-mown by motorbike at every step, and at first we fear mistake, as there are no food stalls to speak of.

. A grill restaurant (not so good for Mick), then nothing till we come across the motherlode: a big spread with outdoor seating and thirty-odd dishes to choose from (it took me three pics to get it all)
I order us each a different fish dish so we can all share and taste everything. The winner, as is often the case, was the giant sardines. Oil might as well share a named with spoon; it is the flavor ladle, as we know, but occasionally that’s lost on me (though not on my brother, who has been bringing home rendered duck fat to cook all his meals in. Donations to Hillary’s purple heart fund can be sent directly to me…).

Interestingly, this meal costs about three times what the others have, but no real surprise. And it is pretty much the best thing yet; they’re both blown away, and since they’re leaving in a few hours, a happy guide am I.

Post 5: The threat of crime

Before we proceed to the next update there are a few points of business: it has been brought to my attention that I am following good blog form by piebalding my posts with typos, there apparently they’re they’re and everywhere. I will try to be more assiduous, lest my writers think I can’t edit or my students think I don’t practice what I preach (because we know I do so well following my precepts the rest of the time….).

Second, and no doubt of more interest to you, is the rum fact that my brother’s responses to my posts have been more amusing than the posts themselves, though I’m ostensibly the writer in the family. I’m sure he’d be willing to share if you email him, or I can forward on request.

Also I changed my profile photo due to an abundance of questions if it was taken from outer space and/or in the 80s. My apologies; I actually thought that was a good one.

And last, apparently my wording in the coffee vendor tale made it sound like I might have brought a “little friend” on this trip and that I was soon to get married. Both of those things were once true, but now they’re about as out of date as the photo.

On to the meals, oh, I mean the deep cultural investigation.

Day 3, evening. Dinners are dodgy. I’m afraid of the traffic once it gets dark, and there’s no chance in hell I’m eating anywhere near my hotel, none. So tonight I went back to the street I had discovered (the last there is) in my tried and true secret Saigon. Sitting down at a crowded banquette an 80-something year-old woman asks me in French if I’m French. We proceed to speak a bit in the gallic; she’s very sweet and named Anne (at least as she told me) and then gets extremely shy when I ask to take her picture. “The years for that are passed,” she says, though of course I don’t think so.

Most of you know I’m somewhat obsessed with old people (maybe because I knew 5 of my greatgrandparents – as well as my greatgreat aunt Dot – and had all 4 of my grandparents till I was 37). My new book is actually dedicated to my grandpa walter who I spent close to a month with near his death 2 years ago, watching him systematically lose everything that made him the man’s man and the inspiration that he was. It was very hard on him (and me), and, like many old people, he pretty much just let himself starve to death to forgo further indignity. He never read a word of literature in his life, but he believed in nothing more than education, and has always been my great source of inspiration.

Oh my, sorry about that. Not the right time to get all teary, is it? Isn’t this supposed to be a food blog? Anyway, the soup was in fact delicious, then anne left, and, as I’m leaving, I thank everyone and say goodbye in French without realizing till after. Fucking idiot.

Sarah teases me because I, like my 2-yr-old nephew Billy, approach the unknown by putting it in my mouth. In my case that means i always order the dish on the menu or steamtable that I can’t identify. So walking back from my colonial bungle, still on the same block, I see and have to order a god-knows-what that a lady has frying on a flat wok. Turns out to be some kind of tuber, I think, something like a cross between a potato and a noodle, even more doughy than cassava or fu-fu (and, no, Vic, you can’t use More .Doughy Than Fu-Fu for your band name because I already have). The woman clears a space in the middle of her pan and cooks an omelet with this Fluf-root. The end result tastes rather like the frittatas I make at home with Chinese leftovers, i.e., not so great.

Then I see a real bia hoi bar -- no crackers -- but it’s only six so I can’t start the evening’s pouring yet. And I suspect that no one would or could talk to me anyway; I would just look funny, drink a liter or two, and leave. Authentic, but authentically lonely-making.

Apropos of sketchy autochthonic alcohol, in passing I want to thank those of you who have likened my inhaling and guzzling to that of another obnoxoid, the intrepid Anthony Bourdain (I took it as a great honor last year when two friends, independent of each other, started tivoing episodes of No Reservations for me without me ever having mentioned the show). Only problem is, the more I do my sniffing and munching, the more my envy of him and his work sinks its fangs in, to the point where I think I might end up pulling a Tanya Harding on him one of these days (but with a french rolling pin). That is, of course, right after I get Leia’s slave-chains and garrote Harold Bloom…

The evening ends as per: 2 liters of bia hoi, chatting with me chaps (who truly make anyone else who happens to speak to us seem inordinately dull by comparison), being temporarily locked out of my hotel till I roused the desk guy from his back bedroom (he looked thrilled), and I tucked in for my nightly 3 hours.

Day 3, Middle of the night

When the hell do you think I find time to do this?

Day 4 breakfast

So despite the revelations of yesterday (and I’m sure you all were joining right along, spending that extra 70 cents in acts of unfettered rapture), I got the house breakfast today. No, I didn’t eat it – don’t worry, I just wrapped it up and put it in my bag for latenight snacking, since I seem to sleep only from about 1:30-4:30 and then again for an hour or so during the day. That 4:30 – 7 shift gets me a little peckish, so a peanut butter sandwich will come in very handy. (again in passing, why is it that peanut butter, like hamburgers, always sucks abroad? Is there great arcana to their manufacture? of course, we can’t seem to brew a decent beer – unless you like hops with your hops. Yuck)

The morning banh mi was only okay, and then I came back to wait for the gents so I could take them on a tour recommended to me by genevieve moore’s brother, who has lived here 15 years. He emailed and told me of a particular street that he thinks has excellent cart food, and I intend to eat the entire block. (Andrew, Herr Comestor, I could use you right now). I told him where I had been walking to and eating, and he said he was “astounded,” calling this city, apart from a tiny little area, “unwalkable.” I have to say, that put even more spring in my sinusoidal dork stride.

Mick shows up solo to say that Martin has to cancel, apparently having been waylaid by a local lady who on their first day had made him a few oeillades (and that is not a food item -- I believe such things go with the Kris Kristofferson turf). Incidentally, despite hearing that as a single man I’d be accosted by ladies of the night, day, and afternoon, i have yet to be approached even once. Leif Ueland, care to explain (www.nerve.com/PersonalEssays/Ueland/StraightMale/)? Or is it just evidence that I’m not bullshitting you about the less-travelledness of the neighborhoods I’ve been frequenting.

So I take Cousin It back through our steps from yesterday, looking for a few fish dishes that in the rearview mirror we were sad we had eschewed. We ended up getting some excellent shrimp soup, though it also had 5 or so different kinds of what some might call scary manifestations of pig, so he filled my bowl with all his chunks and I gave him back all my shrimp. Meanwhile the proprietor/cook and her friends start imitating my speaking (apparently this is good sport) and punching my arm. Unprovoked playful strikes by 70-yr-old female strangers with whom I share no languages -- that I love. After much misadventure, I find out the soup is called Bun mam (there are diacriticals missing). Good but pretty straightforward, punching optional.

Off to put this up. The photos to accompany will be delayed, as my psyche can’t take another incarceration in the internet café, and my dinky laptop, Fudgie, thinks the world is moving a little too fast for his taste, and now gets rather befuddled and sad with certain programs like a shy man finding himself on the wrong bus. Poor Fudgie.