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“Our eyes catch sight of small limbs, stretching and retracting, silhouetted in the light from the braziers and lanterns.” |
Saigon peddlers are aggressive. Even the doormen at the Grand Hotel are hassled to buy lottery tickets. (The sellers don’t bother the tourists with that caper at least.) It’s a flash, fast city with a lot of lures but, inevitably, it’s losing some charm. Still, details like the pavement, the construction and maintenance of which seems to belong to the shopowner, are a dangerous delight. Strolling the street requires an all-terrain mind as every step is different – tile, stone, rubble, pavers or dirt – in this fast-changing environment.
We can sum up Saigon with this event that unfolded on our last evening in town. We’d earlier fallen into conversation with an Irishman who teaches five-year-olds at one of the handful of International Schools here. He suggested we look for a nice unhassled time at the street cafes that pop up, and are frequented by locals, when the Binh Tay Market is winding down each evening. We’d just had our confidence in street food boosted by a beautiful woman crouched over shiny pots she’d just released from her bamboo pole. For 20c, we’d slurped down a bowl of the most heavenly fresh silken tofu blessed by crème caramel sauce and for the next 20c, a bowl of soft, chewy rice dumplings wrapped around crumbly eggy centers.
This experience sealed the deal and we shot off, walking behind a couple who were so romantically involved that, at one point, she teased him by picking up a cockroach and throwing it onto his back! Go figure!
At the market, braziers blaze, and throw off more heat than is sensible into this humid night. We notice a couple with a personal coal-stoked cooker at the table, topped by a roof tile with the concave side facing up and one end tilted slightly to drain the fat into a bowl. They’re grilling meat, Korean BBQ style, placing it on a crispy rice pancake and trolling it, together with a potpourri of greens we’ve become familiar with, and dipping it in fish sauce. Even veggo Andy is hooked on the process. No sooner do our ingredients arrive than four men sporting shirts identical to our waiters’ appear and begin taking turns grilling our meat. Then they’re assembled at our cafeteria-type table, order Saigon beers and grilled chicken with toasted sweet rolls, and we all begin toasting.
Nobody spoke the other’s language but by the time we said our goodbyes a few beers later, they’d bought us a round, shared the chicken (with me) and accepted our beers and chicken plate in return. Such was our bond that one gave Andy a hug – a gesture rarely instigated by a Vietnamese man towards another man. To answer the obvious, these were clearly men getting together after work for a beer to let off a little steam. We were happy to be their entertainment, as they were ours.
As we leave the market,. We make a mental note and ask later, to be told they were frogs, captured by farmers in the fields and brought to market tied by the neck. At the restaurant, you choose your frog and your recipe, and five minutes later, voila! This very alive food is disconcerting to us. Witnessing pigs strapped to motos, tied by the feet and drugged, ducks perching between the knees of drivers, thit cay (means dog like lamb means sheep) stuffed so tight in cages they can’t move, is hard for us to swallow … no pun intended. We’re used to “beef” in Styrofoam packages. The closest we come to this is innocuous-looking fish tanks in Chinese restaurants. It makes sense as a way to guarantee freshness in a very hot country. Still, we’re glad we saw the frogs AFTER our meal.
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