Chôm Chôm - Rambutan

Clusters of rambutan fruit

With a bright red skin like a slab of rubber, and a thick coat of soft curved hair like the hooks in velcro, the rambutan fruit looks like the egg of an alien. Peeling back the skin reveals a white translucent orb like albumen. At the core of this gummy, slightly grape-flavored flesh is an edible seed that tastes slightly nutty. The whole experience of eating a rambutan is as delicious as its appearance is unusual. We got to experience a rambutan harvest at an orchard in Vĩnh Long, and we brought home 25 pounds of the wonderful but bizarre looking fruit.

In the morning after we arrived in Vĩnh Long, Dì Tư took us for a walk to the rambutan orchard near her house. But first, we had to cross the river to get to a river island where the orchard is. We made our way to the dock for a ferry that shuttles people back and forth. The ferry pulled in, the metal ferry gangplank slid up the concrete dock, and we boarded. The ferry backed out from the dock, turned around, and chugged through the malty-brown water for the island. The current was strong, and the ferry aimed far upstream to compensate. We got to the other side and disembarked. After meeting a friend of Dì Tư, we took to the sidewalk for the orchard.

On the way we passed a cornucopia of fruits hanging from trees: enormous jackfruit, globular pomelo, green-skinned oranges, clusters of longyans, various types of bananas, and coconuts at the tops of palm trees. Tunnels dug beneath the sidewalk channel water from the river into canals between the fruit trees. The verdant quality of the forest is matched by its productivity. It's hard to imagine anyone going for want of food in the delta.

The bamboo tool

At the orchard, we found spiky fruits of reds, yellows, and greens dangling in clusters far out of reach. The guard handed us a pair of bamboo poles with forked tips at one end. The way to gather rambutan is to find bright red fruit and spear the branch around five or ten inches above them. Twisting the pole breaks the branch, and the fork holds the harvest in place. You drop the pole down and gather the bounty. Within twenty minutes we gathered more than 25 pounds of the delicious fruit, which we carried back to the guardhouse for weighing. The guard priced our bounty at $2.50, Dì Tư's friend tied the branches together into bundles, and we carried them back to the ferry.

Since we've been home, we've been slowly making a dent in our harvest. We've been eating it every day, and have given away grocery bags brimming with rambutan to more than four people, and we still have enough to fill up a kitchen sink. Also we found out, during one of Lữ's trips around Vietnam, that the seed of the rambutan is edible. Not only is it edible, it's really tasty, with the consistency of a giant fresh unroasted peanut, and the flavor of coconut. And tonight, Lữ made chè with rambutan, jackfruit, dragonfruit, avocado, yogurt and condensed milk over ice. It was divine. I'm not sure we'll get tired of the rambutan before we run out, but I'm happy to find out.

Drained

Every once in a while, I catch myself writing about writing, which is unfortunate, because the purpose of this blog is to write about travel. But I haven't written much about travel the last couple days--or anything for that matter--despite the incredible trip I went on this weekend. In a strange turn, I find myself writing about, well, not writing.

The lapse is not for want of ideas. This weekend inspired several topics for riffing. But I faced trouble with technology mid-trip. Blogging for me is not a simple process that requires a single piece of hardware. To make my posts visually appealing, I like to bury thumbnail-sized preview images in the text. This fastidious method demands a multi-step process that requires a proper internet browser. All I brought with me on the trip was the phone, and it doesn't make the grade.

Before the trip to Thailand, I had solved the line break problem, which was caused by posting through email, by using an HTML email client to eliminate character limits. But still, using the phone caused me a slew of hangups. Email doesn't seem capable of labeling posts or adding large, hyperlinked photos. Also, I can't caption more than one photo per post, and the images show up small. A simple workaround to these problems would have been to log onto the blog's dashboard through the phone's browser and encode the images through HTML. But this workaround requires the image URL, and the feeble little browser on the phone won't let me get at it. No matter what, a laptop is required equipment. Leaving mine at home made no difference. Even if I had brought it, I need internet access with the laptop to get the URL's. We had no wi-fi in the countryside places where we stayed, and I deleted my tethering application sometime during one of many software resets on that brick of a phone.

Another setback to posting over the weekend in Vĩnh Long was the lamentable lack of batteries. I could have spent more time at least taking notes and drafting outlines if I wasn't worried about running out. The phone is good for short posts, but longer ones burn up power, and I have a tendency to spend four or five hours alone just writing a single post, not including the time-consuming challenge of coding pics.

Besides blogging, I need batteries because the phone is my link to the outside world, a way for me to contact Mike or Lữ if I get lost, a camera, and a Vietnamese-English dictionary. I need battery power, and I run out quickly and often. What's worse, I didn't bring a portable charger this weekend.

To get me through, I leeched battery top-ups from Lữ's computer. But she didn't bring her charger either, and it wasn't right of me to sap her battery when she needed it too. I held off on nicking a recharge until she'd used as much power as needed to share her beautiful photos to her little cousins.

I learned something about myself in those moments when I was low on batteries. I felt a bit like I was stranded on a lifeboat at sea, and the red, blinking power meter was a steadily dwindling supply of drinking water. I can imagine that people adrift on meagerly-stocked lifeboats tend to reevaluate priorities. I realized I'm beginning to get a little technology dependent. Once, I thought any kind of dependency was a bad thing, a limitation, a liability. There's too much we're dependent on as it is; just look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the pyramid describing growth toward self-actualization.

Though the phone, the battery is linked to various levels of the pyramid. I looked down at the blinking red light asked myself, what do I do when the phone dies? How can I manage if I can't take pictures of my travels? Or look up a bus route? Or translate, "I'm lost, could you help me find my way?" How would I get by without immediate access to the omniscient modern day oracle, Google, for song lyrics, engine schematics, and snakebite remedies? And how on Earth did people ever manage once upon a time without the internet, without the cell phone, without being perpetually plugged in with one another? I can't remember. And I don't think I'd want to go back to those liberated times, when there wasn't so much need for a battery.

I find my own psychological batteries are a little drained at the thought of catching up all the stories from the weekend. This trip was a cartwheeling escapade of experience: country living, scenic beauty, natural splendor, exceptional hospitality, and incredible food. All of it deserves riffing. I suppose if I had enough batteries in my phone to post just a few paragraphs each day over the weekend, at the very least I would have less to catch up on now. At least I've got a wall outlet and stories to tell. And I have a feeling, once I'm all caught up, my own batteries will be more or less recharged. Lesson learned. Have charger, will blog.

Arrival in Vĩnh Long

On Friday, we took a trip to Vĩnh Long to pay a visit with Lữ's aunt and cousins. The ride into the Mekong Delta took four hours, but went by quickly, in part because we transferred from mode to mode of transportation. We started off in a taxi, which scuttled through Saigon's crowded streets to the bus ticket office. Our $4.50 tickets in hand, we boarded a mini-bus headed for the Saigon bus station, waited a while, then hopped on a touring bus.

The view through the bus window presented images of tin-roof shacks built side by side along the banks of malted milk-colored rivers, thatch-roof cafes with woven hammocks swinging in the shade, fruit stands with cultivated varietals of bananas and coconuts, as well as rice paddies, lotus ponds, and miles of flat land. I said it looked as flat as Kansas, and Mike said there's nothing in the universe that's that flat. 

We got to Vĩnh Long after dark, with a final transfer to a shuttle bus that whisked us through the darkness along a narrow two-lane road, past silhouettes of palm trees, gated walls, and houses with vast front doors opening into living rooms with brightly lit, incense-smoky altars facing the entrances. Our shuttle stopped and unloaded us into the heavy tropical night air. Travel-weary and loaded down with gifts, we trudged along the road's shoulder, lit by pools of light that splashed from headlamps of scooters and trucks that honked and whooshed past. 

We got to the locked iron gate in front of the house. Lữ's aunt, Dì Tư, is the third child; her short name means fourth aunt on her mom's side. Lữ called through the gate and her aunt rushed from the house so excited to see us that she forgot her slippers and ran barefoot across the courtyard to unlock the gate. She whisked us out of the dark and into her one story concrete house.

The home was light and airy. All the doors and windows were open, including a metal door the length of the living room wall, where geckos stalked moths drawn to the fluorescent light on the wall. Pencil-scrawled artwork by Dì Tư's grandchildren adorned the yellow-painted walls at waist height. Dì Tư's husband sat on the patio beyond the giant metal door, smoked cigarettes, and talked in a husky voice about how he helped prepare funeral honors for U.S. soldiers killed in the war. Dì Tư talked with Lữ, who told me that her aunt's heart was heavy because I'm so skinny. She added that we would be eating dinner soon, and that Dì Tư had saved some coconuts from her tree because she heard I love them. Outside, fireflies blinked in the darkness, and the full moon crawled into view through coconut palm leaves.

On full moons and new moons, many Buddhist Vietnamese avoid eating meat all day. Lữ had called ahead and asked Dì Tư if she would prepare us a chay meal. We sat down at a metal table in the kitchen, and pushed aside an enormous basket brimming with mangosteen and rambutan to the edge of the table. Dì Tư placed three whole green coconuts pierced with straws on the table, followed by plate after plate of food: chewy mushroom jerky strips, stewed bitter melon, pickled mustard greens, mushrooms and root vegetables in gravy, grilled tofu, and shredded papaya and pomelo rind wrapped and cooked in a banana leaf. We tucked in for a marathon of eating.

As we feasted, Dì Tư, Mike and Lữ chattered in Vietnamese. Dì Tư sat across from me, and occasionally made a gesture in my direction or patted the table in front of me. Mike or Lữ responded and then translated. "She says you have a kind appearance." I nodded deeply and gratefully, my mouth full of rice and chay. Dì Tư continued, pointing at Mike and then back at me. "She says you look more kind than your brother." I looked over at Mike, whose smile made him seem all the more mature and reserved. "She says Mike looks intelligent, and you look kind." Well, you can't have everything. That was one of those moments when I wished I was better at laughing at myself.

Having never met me before, Dì Tư barraged me with questions. Through the family grapevine, she knew I wasn't married, and wanted to know if I had a girlfriend. My translators said "no." She said, that's why he's so skinny. Why doesn't he have a girlfriend? I couldn't answer. "He's always been passive when it comes to girls," Mike suggested. Does he want a Vietnamese wife? "He says no."

Dì Tư leaned toward me, swatted at me with her fingertips, pointed at me and spoke at length. You need to find a wife, because she will feed you and make sure you get a haircut and a shave. I asked, "why do people think that men are so in need of girlfriends?" Because men can't take care of themselves, was her response.

I, the skinny, shaggy-haired, and scruffy-faced one, sat on her kitchen chair and looked at the bowl in my hands. I had already refilled it twice and filled it another two times before dinner was over. I was still shoveling food into my face long after Mike and Lữ had moved on to the mangosteens and rambutan. I realized that if I ever had a Vietnamese wife, my rapid metabolism would commit her to a lifetime of scrutiny by people who doubt her ability to cook.

Yet Dì Tư looked happy as a cat as I methodically and rhythmically teased bite after bite of delicious chay cooking into my mouth. She said, he is an easy eater. "It means you'll eat anything," Lữ said. To which she added, "it'd be nice if you would actually gain some weight. She's saying it's my fault you're so skinny."

I appreciated the fact that no one was trying to get me married off, but felt a little sorry for my unkempt and malnourished appearance. We followed up dinner with sugary-sweet longyans, gigantic rambutans, and many mangosteens. After dinner, we took bucket showers and dropped mosquito nets over our beds. Dì Tư and her husband laid out a mattress in the kitchen so I could have my own room. I made plans with Mike to drop by the market for a haircut and a shave in the morning before we went off to meet Lữ's cousins on the other side of Vĩnh Long. And, silently, I pledged a belly-building diet of bacon and steroids.