People are staring.
So what. I’m riding around Saigon
with a beautiful girl and life is good.
That I happen to be sitting on the back of her scooter, am tall enough
to see perfectly over her head and that this is totally emasculating are minor
details. At stop lights, young kids sandwiched
between mom and dad on a scooter openly stare, as does the baby sister who
stands in front of dad, gripping the rearview mirrors above the handle bars of
the bike, protected on either side by his veined arms. He doesn’t look over, the men here seldom do.
The streets of Saigon are an ant hive of motorbikes and a
handful of cars. The bikes swarm from
one light to another, entering the rotating jumbles of round abouts and
emerging on the other side having executed a hundred decisions both conscious and unconscious, following laws both written and unwritten at a moments
notice. I wouldn’t trust anyone from
here to get two miles in the States without occurring a half dozen traffic
violations and likewise I don’t quite trust myself to navigate this teeming
mass of humanity and come out unscathed.
You can’t go a day in the travler's ghetto without seeing a pale skinned
foreigner sporting fresh injuries, likely a knee and elbow on the same side,
wrapped in white bandages. Most try to
make up a good story; none of them are any good.
So I let Rosy pick me up on the street outside the
guesthouse. She appears out of the
traffic wearing a smart helmet and the facemask that is ever present among the
women of Vietnam. It’s equally important
for protection from the sun as it is for the pollution. I hop on the back of the bike, which gives a
bit before rebounding and we head to dinner.
We are going to the other side of the city and it takes us over twenty
minutes to negotiate the way. We try to
hold a conversation but it’s hard as she’s talking into a mask and facing away
from me. I sit back, enjoying the city
passing around us and the night air rushing by.
My first time in Saigon had been a year earlier, when I had
flown here from Myanmar. Then the bright
shop signs lining the streets had felt harsh and intrusive after the peacefully
undeveloped Burmese towns. But now the
lights provided a comforting backdrop to scene of us humming down the
streets. Sometimes empty, sometimes
packed, with the occasional roundabout to keep me from getting too comfortable. Despite having an unimpressive skyline and
not nearly the global pedigree of some, Saigon is alive in the way that all
great cities are with the chaotic, yet controlled hustle and bustle of everyday
life played out in public. In Kuala
Lumpur life is subdued inside sterile mega malls, lite rail systems and traffic
jams full of lonely people in compact cars spending hours commuting a few
miles. Rush hour in Saigon is a hectic
mess but you could never call it a traffic jam.
Things are always moving, life is always buzzing along.
We turn off a main street and into a brightly lit
alley. It is wider than most with lights
and banners crisscrossing between the buildings overhead, giving it a festive
feeling. The pavement is so badly
potholed and broken that I’m nearly dislodged from my perch but we make it the one
block to where the main alley splits to the left and on the right is a narrow
passage not more than a couple meters wide.
I hop off the bike and Rosy guides it down the passage while I checkout
tonight’s offerings of snails, crab, oysters and other creatures. A few gnarled chicken feet are the last thing
I notice before heading off through the passage after her.
The passage way widens into a well-lit courtyard/three-way
intersection between the back alleys.
Larger alleys come in from the sides and the building straight ahead has
a couple dozen scooters lined up out front.
Rosy is setting her bike inside the narrow building’s fluorescently lit front
room, which is being utilized for parking tonight. As I walk towards her, on my left is a
collection of tables and stools that to the unaccustomed eye would be mistaken to
be for hobbits. There is more staring
from the occupants as I walk past, unaccompanied and then I join Rosy and we
get a table.
A generous measurement would put the backless stools at a
foot high. I attempt to gracefully lower
myself into one, which prompts a laugh from her. A waitress arrives and briskly gives her a
handwritten note, today’s menu. Rosy asks what I want to drink – green
tea. Probably not a good idea here – ok,
Coke. The waitress is off to get drinks
and Rosy goes to see what is fresh today.
She returns, the drinks arrive and the order is made. Then somehow we get on the subject of hột vịt lộn – the partially developed duck
egg. They have it, so we order it. Later, I learn more about this egg from Mr.
Kim, the mildly flamboyant manager of the guesthouse I use. Like all strange foods (snails not being
considered as such) it is suppose to make you strong. Often it is given to new mothers to help
their recovery and after the American War, it grew in popularity as a source of
protein since meat was scarce. Hột vịt lộn
was a staple of Mr. Kim’s childhood diet.
To eat two of them is bad luck while eating either one or three is best
as those are lucky numbers. It’s also
bad luck to eat your own dog but not one you didn’t raise, so take that as you
will.
The snails come in three types. There are the long, ridged ones in a garlic,
coconut milk and butter sauce, which is phenomenal. I believe these are called ‘sweater snails’
after the ridges. The pointy end has
been cut off and you suck the snails out - an act, which in the right hands gives
rise to an untold number of sexual innuendos. Next there is a plate of periwinkle type
snails in sort of syrupy sweet/sour sauce for lack of a better term. These are smooth and round with a plasticy
layer at their opening about the texture and width of your phone’s screen
protector. Using a small two-pronged
fork you peel this off, stab the meat and then with a delicate twisting motion
remove the edible part trying not to break the tail end. This is almost impossible and all of mine
come out with a broken tail. Rosy
delights in playfully irking me by showing off her perfectly removed
snails. She quickly catches on to the
concentration I’m putting into getting this right.
‘You’re very competitive aren’t you?’
‘Only with things that don’t matter.’
‘I see.’
‘It makes stuff more fun sometimes.’
‘I bet you can’t get one out
perfectly.’
And she was right. A few minutes later I am still unsuccessful
and she hands me one of her intact snails.
Whether it was as consolation or to rub it in my face I am not
sure. Unfortunately, this particular
snail turned out to be the only one of the night that had decided to swallow
half the beach and my mouth was coated in musty sand.
After washing that down with some good
ol’ glass bottle coke we started on the third offering. Two mammoth snails the size of tennis balls
cooked with butter and green onion and topped with crushed peanuts. Using the same forks we pulled out big succulent
chunks and enjoyed the white flesh, periodically dunking pieces in a mixture of
salt, pepper and lime juice.
Soon the eggs appeared, served in the
same sauce as the periwinkles but with a few peanuts added. They were shell-less, light brown in color
and appeared to have been slightly hardboiled.
On either side of a soft center was a hardened membrane sack that tasted
strongly sulfuric. Later research would
prove that often this part is left uneaten, but I followed Rosy’s lead and dug
in. I trusted her enough to navigate us
through the streets of Saigon and didn’t think twice about this. The center part was really good. Surprisingly light with a strong poultry
flavor. I’d heard horror stories about
crunching down on tiny skulls and bones and beaks but as far as I could tell,
these weren’t that far along to being the little quacky guys. I also maintained eye contact with her
through out this eating process while trying to include some peanut bits in
each bite, chalking up anything crunchy to them.
Later that night, chatting and calmly
driving down quiet and sparsely trafficked roads, Rosy leans back and I can
tell she is smiling beneath the mask, “You know right now you are kinda like the
female sitting there.”
I scowl fakely and pinch her side.
“Yup now you are really the female,”
she laughs.
“Fuck.”
