I was thinking of all this recently after a rainy, cold winter weekend in Hanoi. (The fact that we live in a concrete and tile house with no heat gives me special dispensation to call 50F "cold"!) I did not go on a bike ride. I did not find a new lake, or ride along the river. I did not find out anything new about Vietnam.
I made pancakes. Now, my pancakes aren't as good as what my wife makes, but they are still fun to make.
We went to the mall. I actually suggested going to the mall, which should tell you how unpleasant it was outside! An out-of-town sort of mall which was refreshingly empty, we walked all four floors, the daughter charmed some bored salespeople, and we left after having fixed my coffee crave.
I made ginger snaps. Round bits of crunchy, zingy goodness, these things were almost as good as I remembered them to be, a rare result indeed! We lacked the hot spiced cider which would have made them perfect, but tea does almost as well. Might have to come back to that recipe.
My wife made eggs and bacon. Now bacon is something, like a good hamburger, that I never bothered to appreciate until I hadn't had it for a long time. Now my dear wife cures it herself, for Pete's sake, and it is worthy of profound appreciation.
My wife made coconut-covered donuts. I don't mean far-from-the-tropics dried coconut from the store, I mean coconut from a coconut, of the Monty Python clip-clopper variety. I don't mean donuts from the store either, I mean donuts from a pot of boiling oil on the stove. Now I know I'm a touch provincial, but this seems extraordinary to me. It's like the muses of Entenmann's and Achenbach's both came to the Orient, collided with a coconut and landed in my kitchen on a Sunday afternoon.
Some days, when I think about how I used to wander around trying to find something new all the time, and eat street food day in and day out, I don't miss it at all. (I still eat street food, just not every day.) A few days after that weekend, it occurred to me how oblivious I am to the blatant domestic bliss which that weekend was more or less drowning in, as is most of my life these days. It sneaks up on you, domestic bliss!
I'm not suggesting that domestic bliss is best represented by food; clearly the food is only one of the more superficial aspects of the thing I'm trying to talk about. But, seriously, pancakes, the mall, bacon, donuts... all in one weekend? How could Vietnam get any better than that?
Ho Soc Son. There is a reason this lake is not on the tourist trail - no Coke machines. No kitch vendors. Not much of a road. Not much shade. Plenty of cows, though, that's always a good sign!
Hang Bac Street. Nighttime in the old quarter. Blackness and neon, hot food and gold shops without customers.
