A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Today I decided to eat at the sidewalk "restaurant" that I've been drooling over for the last week. Every day they start cooking up things on little grills right on the sidewalk at 10:30 or 11am -- stuff that smells delicious, with different meats, marinades, and mysterious barbecue sauces. Then they pile all the dishes on a table with several levels and patrons choose which stuff they want along with rice, soup, fish sauce, mystery sauce, and tiny bananas (about 3 inches long!).

I chose a grilled fish with some kind of red barbecue sauce, a stir-fried beef and bean thing, and an absolutely unidentifiable cone-shaped item that proved to be some kind of processed spicy pork stuffed into a chile (or something like a chile -- it didn't look like one, but sure tasted like it. Whew! I could only eat half). At this point, let me just apologize that in all cases of food description my powers are very limited. They seem to have many times the number of fruits and vegetables than are commonly available in the US, and most of them are unfamiliar to me, possibly because I've been known to avoid the produce section of the supermarket. Here, however, I'm all about the veggies.

I was guided to one of those teensy weensy tiny miniscule plastic stools (imagine your child's beach pail turned upside down) in front of a teensy weensy tiny miniscule plastic table (imagine one quarter of your coffee table) thankfully located under a big umbrella. I regret to say that the size of those stools and tables is not really suited to the size of my hind end or to my person in general, but I managed to avoid drawing too much attention by knocking anything over (one near miss, actually) or falling off the stool (constant vigilance).

As they don't debone anything, I made a concerted effort to subtly remove fish bones from my mouth to my plate. Upon more careful observation, however, I realized that the guy sitting next to me was just spitting things on the ground, which the restaurant ladies would sweep up after he left. That would certainly be a more efficient method, but somehow it just doesn't seem ladylike, and I feel my mother would frown on spitting in public. Clearly this issue requires further study.

© 2002 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 5:59 AM