It’s taken me quite a while to settle in the madness that is Ho Chi Minh but now I feel I’m finding my stride. The place I’ve living is right in plonk in the middle of downtown, which is in the middle of a consumerist explosion. Marc Jacobs and Chloe both opened new stores just around the corner and there are more places to buy pearls than pho but it’s still Vietnam and so there is great food tucked into little corners and alleyways and sometimes sitting in plain sight.
Today it was the xoi ga (sticky rice with chicken) place just two blocks over. I’ve walked by this place a lot and it’s always busy at lunch and I’ve wanted to try it but I have a place I go to that has really tasty cheap xoi ga and delicious che (sweet soup: a drink made with coconut milk and jelly bits and mung bean paste which tastes way better than that sounds), the xoi ga is in the form of nuc mam fried chicken and it’s delish. So faced with the decision of the known, tasty, and cheap vs. the unknown there just is no contest , … until today
And the title of best xoi ga and che goes to old faithfull., Che Xoi. However I may need to create a new category for xoi ga with eggies. Eggies are eggs before they’ve left the chicken and honestly I wouldn’t have eaten them if I’d known that but I didn’t so I did. Tasty little nibblets too. Though now I might have more trouble chewing through the membrane that connects them.
The eggies and sticky rice were snack sized and I was curious about a soup I saw someone order that looked like it had blood pudding in it. So I ordered what turned out to be crab soup. Crab soup with shrimp to be exact, and chicken, and fish, and pork. Banh canh cua has a weird gelatinous texture that I will never be totally at ease with but this was quite tasty with none of the mud flavor that can sometimes accompany seafood streetfood and there was a little piece of blood pudding after all. And there is something so Vietnamese about a soup with five distinct types of meat, though pork is really a vegetable here.
If you happen to be in Ho Chi Minh. The eggies place is on Nguyen Trung Truc and my favorite che place is at the end of Bui Thi Xuan. Enjoy.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Mixed media: cotton, stainless steel
Doctor's appointments abroad are always interesting since non-American doctors have their own perspective on professional behavior.
I went in for a gyn check up (annual exams are an important part of maintaining your health) and it so happened that I was wearing a dress. The doctors response was unexpected, instead of having me undress and put on a robe she told me to remove my underwear and lift up my skirt!
This would NEVER happen in the US, it's far too informal. In the US you must put on the paper robe. Even if you're wearing a miniskirt so short that strangers can admire your brazilian, you must disrobe and done the appropriate clothing to transform yourself from person to patient. In Vietnam there is no person/patient barrier. They'd give you a colonoscopy on a street corner if they could find one that wasn't already populated with a cafe, a soup stall, and a barber. So I guess my doctor saw the skirt and thought "well now, isn't that convenient, save me a paper robe to boot."
Side note here on the nature of underwear. Underwear has weight and significance that other clothes lack. If you see a guy in shorts with his shirt off that's one thing, see the same guy in his tighty whities then you've "seen him in his underwear". Showing someone your underwear is fraught with significance and can change the course of a relationship so you have to considering the implications. Aside to my aside, one time I was on my way to sushi with T and A and we passed some underwear lying on the road and I swear to god A said she would chew the waistband if I would spring for sushi. Casual-T wouldn't let us do the dare because he said he wouldn't be able to eat. Would he have had the same reaction to A chewing on t-shirt? Would it even have been suggested?
Point is that you can't just leave your underwear lying around and once my panties are off I have to figure out what to do with them. There are these little hooks on the wall next to the examining table where one might hang ones' clothes with the underwear tucked discretely underneath the other clothing ... but I am still wearing my other clothing. However, my doctor and I seem to have a pretty casual and intimate relationship; I'm about to hike up my skirt and doctors must see loads of underpants, so okay fine, I will hang my underpants on the wall. (Hands off post-mods, I'm already planning a whole show) The underpants are a bit, ahem, not-newly-purchased, this is why the french always wear nice underpants because you never know who is going to see them, especially if you are french. But there is no time to consider the ramifications of not being French and my not-newly-purchased panties are hung above the examining table.
Vietnam has a la carte health care and following the exam the good docotor asks if I'd like a sonogram. (Would you like a side salad with that? Very good.) I figure why not and I ask if I should "get dressed". No need she assures me then she leads me out of the room, points me toward the reception area, and to my surprise waves another patient, with whom I do not have a casual yet intimate relationship, toward the room where my not-newly-purchased, weighty, significant post-mod piece is still hanging on the wall. Flustered I mumble just a second and step back in and grab my panties off the wall.
Standing in reception, naked under my clothes, and holding my panties, my next thought is "put underwear on". That's it. No details about "go to the ladies room" or "maybe not here" and distracted by trying to come with a catchy name for my art show that includes references to underwear that aren't puns I step into the first leg hole. Mental alarm bells start going off triggered by the pain ripping through my thigh. I suddenly remember that I had a motorbike accident and can barely lift my legs. All thoughts of my show immediately evacuate my mind as I realize I'm in a reception area with multiple doors, hallways, a stairwell, and an elevator opening directly onto where I'm standing with one foot in my underpants. My response is panic. As I rush to put my other foot in my underpants without wrenching my recently damaged hip further, the leg hole catches on my flipflop.
So there I am; bent over, knickers around my ankles, trying to free them from my flipflop when the receptionist walks back in. What can I do? I look her in the eye, pull up my underpants, un-tuck my skirt (I of course tucked my skirt into the waistband of my underwear) and sit down to wait for my sonogram with as much poise as I can muster.
In life I have found that how you do something is as important as what you do. If you can manage to pull up your underpants in the middle of a waiting room, looking a total stranger in the eye, and still maintain your dignity, then I think you probably managed not to almost fall off the couch laughing when you sat down.
I went in for a gyn check up (annual exams are an important part of maintaining your health) and it so happened that I was wearing a dress. The doctors response was unexpected, instead of having me undress and put on a robe she told me to remove my underwear and lift up my skirt!
This would NEVER happen in the US, it's far too informal. In the US you must put on the paper robe. Even if you're wearing a miniskirt so short that strangers can admire your brazilian, you must disrobe and done the appropriate clothing to transform yourself from person to patient. In Vietnam there is no person/patient barrier. They'd give you a colonoscopy on a street corner if they could find one that wasn't already populated with a cafe, a soup stall, and a barber. So I guess my doctor saw the skirt and thought "well now, isn't that convenient, save me a paper robe to boot."
Side note here on the nature of underwear. Underwear has weight and significance that other clothes lack. If you see a guy in shorts with his shirt off that's one thing, see the same guy in his tighty whities then you've "seen him in his underwear". Showing someone your underwear is fraught with significance and can change the course of a relationship so you have to considering the implications. Aside to my aside, one time I was on my way to sushi with T and A and we passed some underwear lying on the road and I swear to god A said she would chew the waistband if I would spring for sushi. Casual-T wouldn't let us do the dare because he said he wouldn't be able to eat. Would he have had the same reaction to A chewing on t-shirt? Would it even have been suggested?
Point is that you can't just leave your underwear lying around and once my panties are off I have to figure out what to do with them. There are these little hooks on the wall next to the examining table where one might hang ones' clothes with the underwear tucked discretely underneath the other clothing ... but I am still wearing my other clothing. However, my doctor and I seem to have a pretty casual and intimate relationship; I'm about to hike up my skirt and doctors must see loads of underpants, so okay fine, I will hang my underpants on the wall. (Hands off post-mods, I'm already planning a whole show) The underpants are a bit, ahem, not-newly-purchased, this is why the french always wear nice underpants because you never know who is going to see them, especially if you are french. But there is no time to consider the ramifications of not being French and my not-newly-purchased panties are hung above the examining table.
Vietnam has a la carte health care and following the exam the good docotor asks if I'd like a sonogram. (Would you like a side salad with that? Very good.) I figure why not and I ask if I should "get dressed". No need she assures me then she leads me out of the room, points me toward the reception area, and to my surprise waves another patient, with whom I do not have a casual yet intimate relationship, toward the room where my not-newly-purchased, weighty, significant post-mod piece is still hanging on the wall. Flustered I mumble just a second and step back in and grab my panties off the wall.
Standing in reception, naked under my clothes, and holding my panties, my next thought is "put underwear on". That's it. No details about "go to the ladies room" or "maybe not here" and distracted by trying to come with a catchy name for my art show that includes references to underwear that aren't puns I step into the first leg hole. Mental alarm bells start going off triggered by the pain ripping through my thigh. I suddenly remember that I had a motorbike accident and can barely lift my legs. All thoughts of my show immediately evacuate my mind as I realize I'm in a reception area with multiple doors, hallways, a stairwell, and an elevator opening directly onto where I'm standing with one foot in my underpants. My response is panic. As I rush to put my other foot in my underpants without wrenching my recently damaged hip further, the leg hole catches on my flipflop.
So there I am; bent over, knickers around my ankles, trying to free them from my flipflop when the receptionist walks back in. What can I do? I look her in the eye, pull up my underpants, un-tuck my skirt (I of course tucked my skirt into the waistband of my underwear) and sit down to wait for my sonogram with as much poise as I can muster.
In life I have found that how you do something is as important as what you do. If you can manage to pull up your underpants in the middle of a waiting room, looking a total stranger in the eye, and still maintain your dignity, then I think you probably managed not to almost fall off the couch laughing when you sat down.
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