Indulgences

Eclipse

Today is the fifteenth day of the lunar month, and the night sky bears a full moon. Last night was a lunar eclipse, but it was overcast in Saigon, as it has been every night. In Vietnam, the custom is to eat no meat on the new and full moons. But I was not a vegetarian today. I chowed down on an enormous bowl of phở, that trademark dish of Vietnamese cuisine. Phở has two common purposes: breakfast, and remedy for hangover. Today, my first bowl of pho since arriving in Vietnam served both purposes.

Rewind 24 hours. Mike and I were walking to a dance when we dropped into a street market for some dinner. At first, we tried taking a seat at a curbside vendor. But suddenly, the wind came up so hard that signs fell over and branches snapped and dropped out of the trees. Considering we were sitting directly beneath Saigon's notorious power lines, we decided to seek some indoor place to wait out the wind and the rain.

We took shelter from the storm and sat down in a room with grimy walls, plastic chairs, and the sorrowful crying of soap opera actresses on the television. Mike poured 333 brand beer into a plastic mug brimming with ice. I set to work on a bowl of chicken soup with yellow rice-noodle macaroni. The rain outside continued to beat down on scooters and taxis. We watched two drenched guards change watch at the British consulate across the street. I finished the last of the soup, but the deluge showed no sign of stopping. The choice: stay or face the torrential downpour.

Fast forward two hours and now I've been instructed on the way to order beer. I've used this newly-learned verbage twice. The rain has subsided to a drizzle, so we've begun our walk home, and have been snacking on tasty shredded coconut and black sesame wrapped in tender rice-flour crêpes. Once home, Mike has himself a hankering for hot cocoa, makes two, and applies a shot of Amarula to each. It's been several months since I've had a drink, and now I've had three. To make matters worse, I've mixed drink types. This bodes poorly for my noggin. When the morning comes, I'm gonna need that phở. "Nature's perfect hangover food," Mike calls it.

Phở

It was the most delicious remedy--a bowl of expertly assembled fresh noodles, assorted beef cuts, sprouts, onions, herbs, chilis, all swimming in richly seasoned oxtail broth, sprinkled with squeeze of lime. Mostly cured of my fat head, I climbed on the scooter behind Mike, and we scooted across town, through sunshowers and shopping districts. We arrived in Cho Lon, a famous market in central Saigon.

We parked the bike. The lady at parking charged us 25 percent more than her other customers because "it was an expensive bike." Mike hates when he asks a price and the vendor pauses, as if to size us up, before responding with some inflated amount. It seems to happen wherever we go, so he's stopped asking. Unless the price is marked, we get hit up for more money than the locals pay. Lu calls it the foreigners' tax. Apparently, at one point the disparity was government sanctioned. As the story goes, at government used to require two ticket prices for its tourist destinations, one for locals and one for foreigners like westerners, Japanese and Koreans--the wealthy folks who can afford to be gouged. Whether or not that story's true, a lot of vendors I run into seem to be quite content with the policy.

Quả gấc

In the cho, Mike and I did a double take when we spotted a fruit that looked like red jackfruit. We asked about it, found out that it's called quả gấc, bought a small one, split it open and found lobes of bright red fruit inside. The segments looked looked like hemoglobin-enriched organs. We had no utensils, so a couple bites later our fingers looked greusome, as if we were doing thoracic surgery with bare hands.

We walked through the market. As we did, people stared at us. I didn't see any other westerners, so I normally wouldn't be surprised. But today, our onlookers snatched quick, knowing glances at each other, laughed hard, and pointed in our direction. A lady shouted at us, asking if the fruit, which clung to our fingers like gore, was sweet. Mike said, she's asking if it's sweet. I said, no, but I thought it was still tasty. We meandered among stalls of stainless steel, grass, and dried food products and contemplated the fruit's bright sanguine color. The reason for it, Mike said, was the carotenoids, like lycopene and beta carotene that the body uses to synthesize vitamin A.

People still couldnt get enough of the sight of us, strolling through the market with our bloody-fruit soaked fingers like we were casually departing from a violent crime scene. A grey haired vendor in a nón lá couldn't seem to take it anymore. She abandoned her stall, waddled up to us and waggled her finger no, as if to say, stop eating that right now. She chattered excitedly at us. Mike understood some of it. In Vietnamese medicine, the fruit is hot food. Bad to eat. Mike said thanks and we walked away.

We didn't walk another ten feet before some other ladies stopped us. They warned us, if we keep eating that fruit, we'll get stomach aches. To emphasize their sincerity, one of the ladies jabbed a plastic bag toward me to put the gấc inside.

I haven't been sick since I got here, and in no mood to break my stride. I still don't know why the fruit was supposedly bad to eat. Wikipedia has nothing but good things to say about it, (unlike the soursop, which I had last week and is allegedly linked to Parkinsons). Better safe than otherwise, I bagged remaining gấc and threw it on a pile of trash in the sunny gutter outside. I ducked back into the market, found Mike, and then found the old lady. She looked so relieved to see us without the gấc that she gave us six lychees. Another hot food. And for some reason, they were the best I have ever tasted. No stomach ache, either.

Provender

- breakfast: rice and omlette

- lunch : rice and xa pô chê (This was the bitter fruit I tried a few days ago; when it's actually ripe, it's heavenly)

- dinner: Nui, coconut rolls and beer.