Christmas tree smell, spiced hot cider, nieces and nephews jumping up and down on you, Grandma’s Christmas cookies, my neighbor’s bourgeois Christmas tree decorations and luxurious ‘tea’, Christmas song medleys on the random instrument collection, making breakfast crepes with my sister at lunchtime, family togetherness that is exceptional in a bizarrely mundane way…
Well, not so much this year. This year I just focused on the tea. Not the luxurious kind, the green kind. Not that green kind, well maybe, I don’t know, I mean the still growing kind.
Inspired by a friend of mine who sells Vietnamese tea (among 57 other primarily Chinese varieties, as I recall) in the states, I got up early the morning of Christmas Eve and rode off into the sunrise in search of chai perfecto. In the interest of full disclosure I must say, though, I had a cup of coffee with breakfast; my inner purist wasn’t awake yet… It was cold that early in the morning, my horn button thumb stopped cooperating after about eight minutes in the breeze. Thai Nguyen Province is about 80 km north of Hanoi. Remember Ho Soc Son, the lake with no Coke machines? Thai Nguyen is about an hour and a half beyond that.
On the two and a half hour motorbike ride, somewhere after the ‘cold and stiff’ mode was replaced by the ‘it can’t be far’ mode, I began to notice again things which I ought to have pictures of. A motorbike, a wide rack on the back, with a giant dead hog stretched out on it, hanging out three feet on either side. A bicycle outfitted with something like a hat rack, each hook holding a clear plastic bag of full of water and goldfish, creating a surprisingly sparkling effect. The bicycle saddled with a pair of vases, looking like a pair of larger-than-life six-shooters dominating their hero in a cartoon western. Vases like you might see in a Chinese restaurant, about 5 feet high with classic blue bamboo patterns all over them, presumably expensive and breakable but transported by bicycle anyway. Another bicycle bristling with synthetic dustbrooms, like a psychedelic porcupine, shimmering hot pink and neon yellow with every bump. And a procession of bicycles somehow dragging along an entire haystack each. When you pass the haystack you see a peasant hat on a 4’5” woman trudging along, dwarfed by her load, oblivious to blaring horns and swarms of vehicles of all sizes buzzing by. And Santa. I saw Santa on a motorbike (Rudolph dissed the customs guy and couldn’t get a visa), but he turned out to be a tourist.
Arriving in the town of Thai Nguyen, I got lunch in someplace with a bamboo floor. Ordering was easy – some kind of soup, some kind of beef, noodles, a mystery item for good measure and a Orangina – fake Fanta. The ‘soup’ looked like cranberry jello or something. The peanuts on top were good, the rest of it was bloody. I don’t really like blood pudding, actually the bloody part wasn’t that bad, but the gritty stuff in the bottom was a tad distracting. The beef was good. The mystery was pickled green things, and they weren’t cucumbers. Round, woody, and definitely adding a new tanginess to the pickled flavor. Turns out they were sycamore. Sycamore seeds, I guess, or nuts, or something I don’t know really. Didn’t know sycamore was something to eat.
From there on, I followed my instincts, carefully ignoring the bloody sycamore feeling in my stomach. It was nice to get off the main road, although by the time I got up the Thai Nguyen the main road wasn’t all that main anymore anyway.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment