Coffee

Van asked me if I'd like to get coffee with him today after work. Based on the last two times I saw Tran, I have learned that “getting coffee” may actually mean “eating a massive dinner and then going to a coffee house,” so I didn't eat prior to seeing him. As suspected, he took me to a restaurant where we ordered a large meal consisting of spring rolls and his favorite food, Vietnamese pancakes. Vietnamese pancakes are nothing like American pancakes; they are a crispy fried mixture of flour and meat that you wrap up in lettuce and eat with fish sauce. I also had soda chanh (lime soda) which like so many things in Vietnam, seemed to come in far more pieces than necessary. This particular beverage arrived as a cup of sugar, five slices of lime, a can of seltzer water, a cup of ice, and an empty cup. Van was surprised that not all Americans are accustomed to ordering and receiving lime soda in this fashion.

By the time we were making our way to a coffee house, it was 9pm. I have found that Vietnamese people seem to enjoy caffeine far later than I would ever be able to tolerate. Tonight, I opted for a fresh papaya smoothie. Van said we could go upstairs to listen to some live music. When I agreed to this plan, I didn't realize we were going to be paying for tickets to a concert held in a large, intensely loud, smoky, dark room decorated with strings of neon lights. The first act was a group of three female singers scantily clad in shiny black sequins. Their music was something like 80s techno, and their dancing... well, their dancing looked like it had been choreographed by a drag queen. It was some combination of sideways headbanging, sudden dramatic arm gestures, sexy hip swaying, and the chicken dance. I would have called it “retro” except that I'm not sure anyone, anywhere has ever found that style of dance popular.

I was even more confused about what country and decade I was in when the second act came out, a Vietnamese man wearing very tight jeans and a black patent leather jacket. He was sporting a bleached blond spiked mullet with an inch-wide strip of short black hair around the hairline. He sang a few overly emotional rock songs in Vietnamese, the first of which was actually a cover of a slow traditional Chinese melody. Next was a comedy act that appeared to be making fun of a reality TV singing competition, followed by a female singer whose waist was about the same width as her head. She was wearing black parachute pants, a black strapless bra, and a backless mesh of gold links that was somewhere in between a necklace and a shirt. I was very tired after an hour of sensory overload, and as interesting as it was, I was thankful that Van was more than agreeable to leaving early before my eardrums exploded and I died of second-hand smoke.

It Was Well Overdue

Diarrhea hit me for the first time today. I suppose with everything I've been eating, it was well overdue. I was at work when that familiar rumble that indicated "we don't have much time" started bubbling through me. The Vietnamese understand the word "toilet" so I haven't actually learned how to say the full sentence "Where is the bathroom?" I walked up to the nearest medical student and said "toilet" with some urgency in my voice.  She directed me to a restroom where the sounds clearly indicated someone was taking a shower. I looked helplessly at the nurses and said "another toilet?" They laughed, yelled out to the person taking a shower, and then told me "five minutes." I was now faced with only a few options: I could either beg them again to find me another toilet, try to find one myself in the crazy maze of patient rooms, try to make it all the way to my hotel 10 minutes away, or try to wait. I chose to wait, with each minute punctuated by a more desperate plea for "toilet." By the end I was going up to the nurse, pointing at my stomach, making a grimace, and saying "toilet... please." I'd rather have to learn humility by begging for a bathroom than learn humility by having crap running down my leg. After what felt like forever, one of the nurses took pity on me and directed me to a different bathroom. I couldn't have been happier going into that nasty little room with the open bucket of water on the floor next to the toilet, the toilet paper on the mildewy windowsill, and the rusty shower-heard hanging on the side wall.

The Japanese Restaurant

I decided to go out to dinner at a little Japanese restaurant on my street. When I walked in, I was handed one large plate and one small plate on a tray. I was to chose anything from a few sliding-door refrigerators filled with small expensive (by Vietnamese standards) food items. I chose a piece of sushi, a stick of tempura shrimp, a stick of peppered shrimp balls, and a rice blob. I took it to the front, where the cashier took my money and my rice blob and sent me up the stairs. I was too stunned to argue. When I got to the top, a waiter speaking in Vietnamese asked me questions, took my tray of food, put my shoes in a locker, gave me flip flops and a locker key, gave me back my tray, and pointed me up another flight of stairs. I rose up the second flight, another man spoke to me in Vietnamese, I shook my head in confusion, and he pointed me up some more stairs. I had no idea this place was so high. I went up a final flight of stairs, where another waiter speaking in Vietnamese finally ushered me into a room.

Following everyone else's lead, I left the shoes I had been given in a big pile of identical flip flops at the door, grabbed a mat to sit on, and sat cross legged at a table. A waiter came in, took my food off the tray and put it on the table, gave me three sauces (chili sauce, mayonnaise, and soy sauce), pointed at my stick of tempura shrimp and then at a metal vat of oil in front of me, and walked away with my tray. I put my tempura shrimp stick in the oil vat. A minute later, a waitress came running up, put my tempura stick drenched in oil back on my plate, turned on the oil vat with a dial under the table, said “5 minutes,” and then left. I waited five minutes for the oil to heat as I ate my peppered shrimp balls and sushi. Then I placed my already ruined tempura shrimp stick in the vat to cook it. I still had no idea what had happened to my rice blob. I was having a difficult time figuring out what I was supposed to use the mayonnaise and chili sauce for. I had run out of things to do with myself when my rice blob suddenly arrived, freshly cooked. It was wrapped in something leathery with something meaty inside. It was not easy to eat with my disposable chopsticks, so I ate it with my hands.
 

  Then I awkwardly stood up, left my plates at my table, grabbed two flip flops out of the big pile in front of the room, went down a couple flights of stairs, put my key in my locker (I was very relieved I remembered which one it was), put my regular shoes back on, left my key in the locker with the locker open, went down another flight of stairs, and practically ran out of the building. The whole time I was leaving, I was wondering exactly how many things I had just done wrong. I was still hungry after spending twice as much as normal on dinner. I went to the nearest food cart and got some fish with rice. I never thought I'd be so relieved to have to order something from a Vietnamese food cart in Saigon.