A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [27]
Don’t make television. Ever.
The Burn
Back to New York, Christmas dinner, wake up, exchange a few presents, and it’s back on the infernal machine: New York to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Singapore, Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City, another marathon of smoke-free flights, my personal circle of hell, sitting next to the smelliest man on earth, the engines droning on and on without variation, making me yearn for turbulence – anything to break the boredom, the gnawing, terrible sense that I’m in some gruesome state of suspended animation. Is there anything so expensive and yet so demeaning as tourist class on a long flight? Look at us! Stacked ten across, staring bleary-eyed straight ahead, legs and knees contorted, necks at unnatural angles, eagerly – yes, eagerly – waiting for the slop gurney finally to make its way down to us. That all-too-familiar brackish waft of burned coffee, the little plastic trays of steamed food, which would cause a riot in a federal penitentiary. Oh God, another Sandra Bullock film, another Willis. If I see Helen Hunt squinting at me from a hazy airline screen one more time, I’m opening the emergency door. Being sucked into thin air has got to be preferable to that. I find myself looking for any diversion, anything to take my mind off the nicotine yen: Focus on the snoring human compost heap across the narrow aisle, pretend that if I stare hard enough, he’ll explode.
By now, I’ve come to know the smoking areas of airports all over the world. I find similarly afflicted passengers speed-smoking about twenty feet from the gate in Frankfurt. In Singapore, you have a choice of two – count ’em, two – smoking lounges: a foul-smelling glass fishtank inside the mammoth shopping arcade, and an al fresco area where there’s always an interesting bunch of Asian adventurers. They sit on benches in the roaring heat and humidity, nursing Tiger beers, happily sucking up cigarettes and jet fumes in the blinding dawn light. The accents of those talking are Aussie, Kiwi, Brit, French, Dutch – all drunk and red-faced, exhausted. Each carry-on bag tells a story of a long time away from home.
Tan Son Nhut airport. Ho Chi Minh City. Everybody still calls it Saigon. You can light up a smoke the second you’re off the plane. The customs inspector has a butt in his mouth. I like Vietnam already. The last pitched battle of the Vietnam War (what they call the American War here) was fought on these tarmac strips, in these lounges. Crumbling American-built Quonset huts still line the runways. You’ve seen the movies. You’ve read the books. Do I have to tell you about the blast of heat that hits you in the stomach when you make it past the baggage claim and through the glass doors? The wall of humanity waiting outside? Saigon. A place I never thought I’d live to see.
I wake up at 3:00 a.m., chest pounding in the cold, damp room. I’m on the tenth floor of the New World Hotel. I’ve sweated through the blankets after yet another violent and very disturbing dream. It must be the antimalarial pills. There’s no other explanation for the vivid, full-color nightmares I’ve been having since I arrived. I can smell blood and motor oil still – the dreams seem to be in Sensurround, fully textured affairs, where I can actually feel vibrations, physical exertion. This time, I was rolling and rolling in an out-of-control car, spinning off the asphalt of a dream highway and down a steep decline. I could feel myself bouncing off the door frames, the seats, the crumpling dash. I could hear the glass on the instrument panel shattering, the windshield safety glass cracking in starburst patterns.
I wake up, my arms sore from bracing myself against the collision. Absentmindedly, I run a hand through my hair to brush away nonexistent shards of safety glass.
Maybe it was the snake wine.
Earlier in the evening,