Eels, Miss? Offal, Miss?

Day 2 in Saigon. The traffic that I'd heard so much about, unhindered as it is by stoplights or rules of any road, is nevertheless not as bad as I'd anticipated. It's just a matter of screwing up your courage and stifling some of your instincts of self-preservation. When it seems like there's a break in the vans and taxis and the whizzing flocks of scooters, you just start walking across the street. Bizzarely, it seems to work best if you don't look too much - the scooters wil avoid you, but if you stop like the proverbial deer, it will throw them off and you're in worse shape than if you keep walking. I've taken to wedging myself in between 2 Vietnamese folks crossing at the same time. This works particularly well if they're carrying babies, reasoning (without evidence) that the drivers will be more lenient. It's almost easier just to walk along the side of the (smaller) streets anyway, as the sidewalks are choked with street kitchens, parked scooter, fruit sellers, you name it. [Editor's note: I wrote the above paragraph in Saigon. Now in Hanoi I would like to say for the record that in fact you need to turn your instincts of self-preservation all the way up to 11, and rubberneck like mad. Though wedging self between women with babies still effective.]

I started the morning at 3:45, waking up with jetlag, and when the sky brightened 2 hours later, I stopped pretending I was asleep and got up. I headed out to Binh Tay Market, just across the street and up from my hotel. I sat down at one of the little stands and ordered Pho Bo - very exciting, to be getting my first bowl on Pho in Vietnam. Apologies to my buddies at Vietnam Restaurant in Ballard, but this was so much better. The broth was rich and fatty, not too boney-tasting, and the beef was tender and delicious, both tai (rare) and chin (less rare). To go with that, sitting around on the table for all to partake of, was a massive platter of lemongrass stalks and wet basil, as well as a bowl of lime wedges, cups of chopped red chilis, saucers of sliced green and orange chilis, cruets of fish sauce, squeeze bottles of hoisin and sriracha. The best part by far though were the noodles: delicate and tender, they dissolve in the mouth and have obviously never been dried, bagged, and reconstituted, are ragged in places as if just sliced by hand. And to go with it, ca phe sua, coffee with (condensed) milk - hard-won to get it without ice, and, consisting of a great whack of sugary condensed milk with espresso, was a bit like drinking a shot of Hershey's syrup. (I would say the hell with this no-ice policy, but then the horrifying words "amoebic dysentary" bubble up in my mind and I shut up and drink my Hershey's.)

Meanwhile, my breakfast was taking place in the larger context of the daily market, in full swing by 7 am. Inside the covered section were stands of clothes and shoes, as well as the hard sellers: "Miss Shoes, miss? Dress, miss?"Outside, however, were what I was after: the meat and produce stalls: great stretches of green veggies I can't name, heaps of fruits, many of which I can: apple pears, papaya, durian (on which more later), the famous crimson and green dragonfruit. My old nemesis mango was not to be seen, though his buddy the pineapple was everywhere, which the vendors top & tail, then peel whole, then score in a sort of tight barberpole fashion, thus removing the pits of rind in the flesh. Then came the rows of fish vendors, with angry carp crammed by the dozen into shallow pans; pearly translucent grey and pink shrimp piled according to size; little pointed peaks of something meaty which prove to be piles of pure crabmeat, again divided by "cut" - big rosy chunks of claw meat, flaky pink leg meat, the white oily meat from the body itself. And many of their live scuttling brethren as well, pissed off and trying to get free. One of my favorite sights in a packed day was the woman who was swiftly scaling fish, occasionally pausing to take a swift whack with the side of her knife at a crab who was unwilling to go without a fight. Frogs, live frogs, twitching sporadically in an aborted leap, having been bound to each other, chain gang style, at the ankle. My Rough Guide promised me doomed-for-the-block hens running about, and I was disappointed to see no live fowl at all (and little dead fowl, for that matter.) The meat section was plentiful, too, and inside, with the shoes and clothes: a batallion of ladies hacking away at big hunks of meat.

Unsurprisingly, I don't get the hard sell in these parts of the market. No one touches me on the wrist saying "Eels, miss? Offal, miss?"

Of course there are all sorts of dry and dried goodies as well: beans and peas and nuts and dried fruits and little sweets, as well as tea and coffee, either straight beans or flavored. Apparently the most reknowned and special of these coffees is made in a very special manner. Once picked from the bush, the beans are fed to a critter in the weasel family, whose digestive processes work some magic on the coffee. When the the weasels poop, they gather up the beans, presumably wash them off a bit, and roast 'em up. That's right folks. I'll start patronizing Starbucks when they start marketing their "Buon Ma Thuot Weasel Poop Roast."

I have many many things to say about fruit, but that will have to wait for another post.

Lunch I ate near Notre Dame Cathedral (the lesser-known Notre Dame). I had Bahn Cuon, which are sort of like spring rolls, rice wrapping rolled around minced pork and black mushrooms, topped with crispy fried shallots and served with a light nuouc cham (fish sauce based dipping sauce. We shall be hearing a lot about this later). The rice wraper, however, is much different from a spring roll wrapper. Thicker, softer, and sweeter, it's the consistency of pad see ew noodles, but in sheet form. These came with a side of cilantro and some mystery herb: crispy & green, petals the size and shape of cooked orzo, tasting a little like mint but deeper, earthier, more umame. I also ordered Xoi Ca, sticky rice with fish. I was brought a bowl of white rice topped with a heap of salty ground peanuts, a bowl of pickled daikon, but no fish in sight. I was a third of the way through the bowl before I realized that the" peanuts" were the fish, dried and salted and ground fish.

So, after all this, it's only 11:30.