Canine Cuisine
Hello Everyone,
A long delayed update on my adventures in Vietnam.
The weather is getting cooler. It dropped down into the high fifties last night. They tell me it gets own to the mid-forties and is bitter cold because of the humidity. Evidently, during the winter, there is a constant drizzle, just enough to keep things damp. Clothes won’t dry and the cold settles in your bones. So far, it hasn’t been too bad. I’ve worn a light jacket a few times and have been comfortable. Bought a space heater which I will carry around the house with me if I need to. The Vietnamese have complained about the COLD since the temperature got down to the low 70s. Course, riding around on a motorbike would create a chill factor, but they often sit in my class and never take off the jackets or sweaters. There is no heat in most of the buildings so it will be interesting to see what develops.
My teaching schedule is horrendous, the reason for my lack of communication. We are supposed to get a day and a half off per week. I finish at 4PM on Saturday, have Sunday off and then go in Monday at 2PM. The problem is that I then teach two classes, the second of which ends at 9PM. So I’m at the school 7 hours on Monday. Doesn’t really feel like a half dya off. Worse than that, actually, is that there is no time to get out of town. Full time teachers have no opportunity to make overnight trips outside of the city, something which was a mainstay in Prague. We can’t get a feel for life in the countryside. At a teacher’s meeting the other day, I brought this up and there was immediate support from the other teachers. Don’t know that anything will change, however, as the main focus here seems to be the bottom line. I’ll give them until Tet which is the big New Year’s Holiday in mid-February. If nothing is done, I’ll either go on a part-time basis or quit entirely. I want to be able to travel, at least within the country.
Classes are good and students are friendly and enthusiastic. My largest class (22 students, too large for a communications class) is composed of employees of the Customs Department. Ages range from mid twenties to mid fifties. This is the class which took me out to a restaurant for National Teachers Day. (If I didn’t tell you about that, please let me know). Last Saturday they invited me to a local restaurant having discovered that I had never indulged in one of the local delicacies, dog meat. They drove me into the Old Quarter with it narrow,shop lined streets. We drove in a sea of motorcycles and pedestrians. I’m always amazed that people are not crushed in the melee. They parked on the side of the street and walked down a dark corridor between two shops. I had to duck my head to get through. Then up a cflight of rickety stairs to a room with a balcony overlooking the street. Our “waiter” was asleep in a loft above the room when we arrived. He came down a ladder to take our order. In Vietnamese restaurants, at least those which primarily serve the locals, the food is served family style. They brought out three platters of dog meat, each cooked in a different manner, which, of course, I can’t fully explain since I don’t cook. One was broiled or steamed (I got different explanations) and the other two were fried or something but in slightly different manners. There were vegetables, some kind of green plant, maybe spinach and an onion like thing they insisted was good for my health. It was very bitter. And they had Vodka which was used to toast the occasion and, I hoped, to deaden my tastebuds and my olfactory mechanism.
The dog meat actually wasn’t bad. The texture was somewhere between steak and chicken. The taste was OK but not something I would order again from a menu. There was too much fat on the portion that was steamed. The other too were well cooked and, if drowned in tomato ketchup, might have been OK. There was no Ketchup, of course. But I got it all down. The biggest thing was to try not to think that you were eating dog. Here, you often see puppies and small dogs playing on the street. I wondered where they found the dogs for the restaurant. Was it one of the two puppies wrestlin on the side walk that I had stepped over on the way in? I tried not to think about it. I didn’t here any barking coming from the kitchen. But I’m not sure where the kitchen was. Things went well with one exception.
The fish sauce! The most vile smelling stuff I have ever found on a dining table. It’s purple, not my favorite color for something I’m going to eat. They told me it’s made with a layer of shrimp covered in some sauce, then another layer of shrimp, more sauce, etc. THEN, it is allowed to sit for THREE months, I assume, not refrigerated. So, essentially, it’s a sauce of rotten fish. And it smelled like it. It was nauseating, literally. I had them move it down the table from me. I tasted it on the dog meat and it wasn’t bad but the smell was awful. It kept my stomach doing flip flops all night. Without the sauce, it could have been a pleasant evening.
I have yet to try snake but I’m sure that’s on the agenda for the future.
Must run. Have do go to the American Embassy to get something signed to get working papers. And then to school.
Love to all,
Tom
higgiro39