Enormous xa cu trees line the streets of Saigon, trapping the exhaust fumes in pools of mid-August heat. It's the season of monsoons. Motorbikes are the mode of transportation. Two in every three Vietnamese own one. Driving regulations are laughably low. There are few traffic lights and no stop signs. Intersections, therefore, are a free-for-all. Miraculously no one seems to mind and few get hurt. It is your first such experience.
Having placed in my mouth sufficient rice for three minutes’ chewing, I laid aside my pen and withdrew into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected upon my spare-time activity of epistolary transportation. It is 6:30 and a Sunday. There is so much activity in the street that it’s hard to detail in a letter. How do you describe being an American in Vietnam in 1995? In whatever way I can, I want her here with me, to understand, somehow, what my life is like. A white-pink pig is lounging on the sidewalk beneath one of the trees, nuzzling a woman’s plastic yellow sandal, occasionally lapping at the pockets of cooked rice that seem to be everywhere. I'm on a small street not far from the main thoroughfare of Hai Ba Trung. I'm sitting on a red plastic stool no more than a foot off the ground, my knees crammed uncomfortably beneath the table of a food stall. I'm eating spring rolls and my first bowl of pho. Should I tell her that the sidewalks are nearly black with soot or dirt or grime, so much so that I finds myself walking gingerly in my own sandals? What about the immaculately dressed gentleman climbing into the cyclo with his grandson, his hair as white as the daisy in his lapel or the glint of sun off his high-polished shoes? Or should I begin with the facts: that Vietnam is one of the more youthful countries in the world, that from 1972 to 1992 the country’s population increased by 20 million, that nearly 60% are below the age of 21, which means Americans to them stand more for chewing gum and blue jeans than war? Few have said it better than the sage in my guidebook:
“Finally, I realized that Vietnam is about the present, about transcending the past and forgoing the future. This dinosaur of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, now letting chinks of free-market economy lighten the gloom, follows its own determined path. It is tough, poor, hard-working, ambitious—and, of course, beautiful. The Vietnamese can be charm itself, inquisitive, highly informed, gentle, or downright rude, obsessed by stockpiling dong or, preferably, dollars. But the sense of equality is there, together with an extraordinary capacity for survival.”
In the months to come, I would remember this paragraph as hauntingly precise, may even, in the silliness of my character, become the first to be brought to tears by the simple beauty, the exactitude, of a travelogue.
Not everybody who approaches looks at me. Saigon’s too busy to
be bothered by one more white guy who happens to be deft with a pair of
chopsticks. The woman too deflects much of the inquiry, motioning to me
occasionally. “Nguoi my,” she explains proudly to the group
of businessmen who squat on the edge of the curb like so many black birds.
He’s American, she says. She never stops moving. A red ribbon strapped
beneath her smile keeps her hat in place. She trades one pan for another,
setting the one with oil from the spring rolls in the street beside her.
Two round bricks of coal keep her corner of the world cooking. A big pot
of broth-water simmers in front of his table. A metal can of cooked rice
is between her feet with a plate of greens resting on top. She quickly
dashes oil in the pan, which steams immediately. Two hills of meat rest
on a lily of green plastic. One is raw beef, the other cooked chicken
bits. There is a bowl with sauces, salt and MSG heaped on little plates.
Squares of pink toilet paper are neatly folded into a napkin holder. Dozens
of chopsticks protrude from another looking like so many cattails or incense
sticks bending effortlessly from warp. From a cold pot on the ground she
lifts a handful of pre-cooked rice noodles. These go into a small basket
of woven bamboo which is then submerged into the broth. The long handle
curves over the lip of the pot, holding the basket in place. Greens—spinach
maybe and scallions—are tossed in and left to float about the eddies.
The oil snaps and hisses with the addition of garlic. Tending to the broth
with one hand, the other snatches up a pinch of the raw beef and plops
it into the pan, stirring constantly. A half spoon of red pepper paste,
a spray of cilantro, a dash of nuoc mam and she’s through. The whole
process takes no more than a minute. The noodles are then divided between
two bowls. The greens skimmed out of the caldron with another bamboo instrument
not unlike a woven spatula. She adds the hot beef to one, cold chicken
to the other and spoons MSG over top of each. Broth from the big pot is
ladled in. Another dash of nuoc mam, a sprig of mint and the businessmen
are squatting happily over the day's first meal.