Vietnam Day 31 (7/8/09)

Today was my second visit to the Lunch Lady. She seemed thoroughly amused to see me and Ming again, but this time we brought new people with us. With us were some of the Vietnamese roommates who knew nothing about her even though she’s famous in the Western foodie world. She certainly lived up to her reputation of a new soup every day as this soup bore no resemblance to the one I had before except that they were both amazing. This one had Chinese broccoli and a whole leg of chicken along with a plate of papaya they gave us to throw into the broth. The broth was much lighter this time with less oil and spices, yet still quite flavorful. Every time we go, the Lunch Lady gains new fans for life and now Hieu, Van Anh, and Wen have been added to that list.

In the afternoon, we took a bus over to Chinatown to do a little shopping. The market was like Ben Thanh times eight, even louder and more cramped with more booths packed together than I would have thought possible. I could tell this was a market meant for locals because, number one we were the only foreigners there and number two there were no stands selling tchotchkes and souvenirs – they only sold cloths, cosmetics, cleaning supplies, and I even saw one that had fake plants for home decorating. There were however a hefty number of jewelry counters selling “jade” and supposedly precious metals. Downstairs was the food market with a very fishy smell, no doubt coming from the dried squid hanging above the booths and shrimp of every size piled up in large baskets on the ground.

Outside lined up along streets so tiny a car couldn’t fit (which meant that pedestrians and motorbikes were always in imminent danger of collision) were vendors with all sorts of tasty-looking fruits. At the first one, My tried to bargain but apparently everything here is fixed price. The saleswoman got so offended she wouldn’t even look at us, let alone sell to us at any price – she just stared at the ground shaking her head and motioning us to move on. At the next stall, we just accepted the price as was, which was probably not bad for such high quality (I got mangosteen of course and Kendra got a mangaya, a cross between mango and papaya).

We then moved on to the indoor plaza, a cross between a market and a mall where stalls were still clustered together but in a much nicer building with air-conditioning and escalators. The problem was that all the vendors selling the same things were all grouped together so I could never decide where to look – all of the jewelry counters melded together and all had exactly the same things, giving me a constant sense of deja vous as I walked down the aisles. The plaza wasn’t nearly as bad as the marked we’d just been to but I have the same reaction anywhere I go shopping in Saigon – I just get overwhelmed to the extent that I just want to give up and not buy anything (not necessarily a bad thing I suppose). If I do come back here to live someday I don’t know how I’m going to get the things I need.

Since we were in Chinatown anyway, we decided to try a dim sum dinner, but no one seemed to speak Chinese when Wen and Ming tried to ask vendors for recommendations (what a pathetic excuse for a Chinatown). When they finally found someone, we were told that dim sum is only served in the morning so we had to hold off until another day. We had to get back soon anyway for our weekly seminar with Rylan, so we grabbed a quick banh mi (Hanoi-style this time, which seemed to have a lot more meat than the ones we’re used to) – we proceeded to make a mess as we ate them on the bus ride back to District 1.

This meeting was our first time meeting Alice, the new CET director taking over for Rylan in less than a week. She’s a young Vietnamese-American just out of grad school and is very sweet and outgoing so it should be fun having her in Ben Tre with us. At the meeting, we went over last minute planning for Ben Tre and went over procedures for all the fun medical injuries that could possibly occur there (for which Ming is at the highest risk since he’s already injured himself numerous times in the city, poor guy). It was during this conversation we learned that going in the water can make you come out itchy and leave spots on your skin, so I guess skinny-dipping is out. Back at the guesthouse, Hieu had sweetsoup waiting for us. Kendra and I shared white milky concoction made of durian and pumpkin, an odd combination but it works wonderfully.

We then engaged in one of the favorite Vietnamese pastimes – karaoke. This karaoke room was wilder than the one I went to in Ninh Thuan – the walls were mixture of crazy colors with stone inlays in random spots to give it a little class. Fourteen of us squeezed in on a cushioned bench that stretched around the back wall. Usually my voice sounds pretty bad on the karaoke machine, but I actually sang pretty well and when I sang with Molly we got a perfect score singing Cheap Trick. It was really fun, especially since it was most of the Americans’ first time. We played a lot of really amusing songs, among hem the alphabet song, “A Whole New World” from Aladdin, and Right Said Fred’s “Too Sexy” (appropriately sung by Hieu and Van, hehe). Shockingly, the lyrics to al the English songs were actually correct (contrary to my last experience), though they seemed particularly hilarious on a background of random nature videos and scenes of flamenco dancers that appeared on the same screen with the lyrics.