revision

mid-way through week three in sai gon, and i must break a moment from my study of plastic surgery related vocab (could not be more unrelated to my research interests, but oh well) to revise an earlier entry regarding the food in sai gon.

let me be clear: ha noi is still better. BUT, i have made some important discoveries that have made me a little less of a hater and that i will share with you here.

1) thit kho - you'll be happy to know that i have stopped eating mud bunch for lunch. last week i discovered that on the sidewalk just next to my hotel is a cluster of little plastic tables run by a toothless and totally incomprehensible old man who serves up the most fabulous braised pork i've ever eaten. for 19.000 dong ($1 something), you get a great big plate of rice, some sliced cucumbers, cabbage, an omelet (random, but whatever - it's gooood), the pork, and a small bowl of soup. i'm not exaggerating here: i touch the pork with my fork - just tap it really - and it falls apart on my plate. and there is gravy, but not the heavy southern kind i grew up on. the lighter, tangier, i don't know, more fabulous-er asian kind. and fish sauce with chiles. really, these days, i don't go anywhere without the fish sauce.

2) banh tet - this may also be available in ha noi, but since i discovered it down here... well, one point for sai gon. this little treat falls into the "gummy, wrapped in banana leaves, and thus utterly unidentifiable" category. when i was here before, i steered clear of all things wrapped in banana leaves for fear of biting into pork fat, boiled egg, and/or green bean paste - bleh. but i was so stupid! banh tet is essentially a little, asian banana rolled up in a layer of sticky rice flavored with coconut milk and pineapple stalks (or leaves, or whatever the are), wrapped tightly in banana leaves, and boiled. when you unwrap it and cut into the "cake," the banana has turned pink and the rice has... i don't know... sort of fused together to form this thick gelatinous outer layer. it's sweet and chewy but so subtle. i could eat these all day!

3) the most important discovery of all - having a vietnamese grandmother cook for you!! my roomie here is viet kieu (both her parents were away studying in france when the war with the US got nasty... they never returned, and eventually landed in riverside), and since this is her first time in viet nam (and we suspect, because both her grandmother and her mother are the eldest in their families), she is getting royal treatment over here! and the other night, she let me tag along to her aunt van's house for dinner. after hearing a lesson on world tennis in vietnamese and learning what may very well have been the slang term for masturbation (!) with her uncle, we sat down to a meal of grilled pork with pickled vegetables, sticky rice with potatoes and little fried onions, and the most savory rice gruel chock full of squid, shrimp, and clams... then she peeled a grapefruit for us (vina-grapefruit, though very dangerous to say, is one of my absolute favorite fruits EVER) and served up some homemade yogurt. obviously, i thought i was going to die after eating all that... but it was worth it.

so there you go - sai gon is not as bad as i thought!