A Walkabout with your Mouth

Not having a job is a bit of a drag. But it has an up side as well – I spend inordinate amounts of time psychotically analyzing pieces of life that no one (with an actual life) would ever bother to think about. Like, for example, an average evening walkabout with street food – is that cost effective? Is it healthy? Or toxic? Or photogenic? Can I talk about it for a whole blog entry without anyone going to sleep on me??

pre p.s. Some of these things I have linked to recipes, just click on the name...

From my apartment to the amusing part of town (where I can buy a newspaper in English, and restaurants have bad English scattered about on the menu, ex. “Beep Steak”) is about a half hour walk at a good pace. Or I can take a cyclo, for about $1.50. Not much faster, but cooler and I can practice Vietnamese with the driver. The conversation invariably includes: Where are you from? How old are you? Are you married? Vietnamese women are very beautiful, yes? My vocabulary does go a bit farther than that, but not all that much farther.




Having bought my newspaper, I am dragged kicking and screaming (irony alert) into the next sinh to place I see. That is fruit shake, as in mango shake, as in I have never been anywhere else in the world where they have so many fruits that are so good, particularly on a hot day (pretty much any day here is hot) when the fruit is mixed with ice and costs $.50. ‘Nuff said.






After reading the first couple articles in the paper and slurping mango, I am called out to the banh bao box on the sidewalk. These are steamed buns, a cousin I expect of baozi, for anybody who has been to China. Stuffed with ground pork, mushroom and onions, they usually also have a quail egg in there somewhere. Sometimes it is a pickled quail egg, or maybe that is just an old quail egg, I’m not sure… They are sold on the sidewalk where they sit neatly stacked inside a glass case. There is a charcoal fire next to it with a big aluminum pail on it, which is piled full, with water in the bottom I guess, since that keeps them steamed and warm. Anyway, all that to say they are highly delicious (ngon qua) and they cost a good $.32.







If banh bao are not exciting enough for the taste buds, then I can go around the corner and get nem chua. Nem chua are, well they look a bit like skinned hot dogs, but they actually taste much better. Pork, I am told. I'm also told that they are made of the ears of pork, plus assorted other stuff. I don’t know, but they come wrapped in banana leaves and newspaper, and (most importantly) with hot sauce to dip them in. I think of them as boneless buffalo wings – you eat them for the sauce (which is worth eating), not for the thing itself.




And finally, a glass of Che gives me energy for the walk home. Not as in Guevara, I see his picture occasionally here but this is something completely different and uncontroversially good. Che is a drink usually made primarily of mung beans. Ice and sugar, of course, I don’t know what else. You can get lots of different flavors, but it usually comes with chunks of beans and jello-like stuff floating in it. I don’t know what it is, only that it is good.


All this would probably set me back about $3.50, or maybe $3.75 with the newspaper. Cost effective indeed. Healthy? Well I do usually have vegetables at least once a day, and fresh fruit pretty often too, so in context I will declare it nutritionally balanced. Toxic only occasionally, if you mix the wrong kinds of sinh to’s together it can be pretty brutal on the stomach. I’ve been warned about bad nem chua but have never had any problems with it myself. Photogenic, well that is all opinion anyway, you tell me.