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By Root 690 0

forced to one end – and then pop loudly between my hands. Everyone claps encouragingly. This sound, the pop pop pop of plastic-wrapped hand towels exploding, is the backbeat to Saigon. You hear it everywhere. Inside the wrapper is a cold, fresh, clean towel to wash and refresh with. The pho is fantastic – spicy, hot, complex, refined, yet unbelievably simple. The astounding freshness of the ingredients, the brightly contrasting textures and colors, the surprising sophistication of the presentation – the whole experience is overwhelmingly perfect. The proprietor beams at me before I even take a mouthful. He knows it’s good. I wipe my bowl out, wash it down with a little clear plastic sandwich bag of lychee juice, and hand over a few moist dong.

At the beginning of a fierce compulsion to eat everything in sight, I bounce around like a hungry pinball from stall to stall. A woman crouches by a doorway with a wok of oil sizzling over a few coals. Crisping on the surface are a few tiny little birds, head, feet, wings intact, their entrails bursting yellow, billowing out through golden fried bellies. They look good. They smell good. I buy one, pick it up by the feet, the smiling woman urging me on, letting me know I’m doing it right. I wolf the thing down, gnawing it right up to its feet, beak, brain, tiny crunchy bones and all. Delicious. And again, so fresh. Everything, everywhere, is fresh, astoundingly fresh. And not a refrigerator in sight.

Another woman beckons me over and offers me a slice of jackfruit. I accept and offer her money. She declines, simply watches, smiling as I eat. I am loving this. I am really, really loving it. I order a spring roll at another stall, watch as the owner wraps freshly hacked cooked prawn, mint, basil, lotus root, and sprouts in rice paper, then eat that and order a shrimp kebab, a sort of shrimp cake wrapped around a stick of sugarcane and grilled. It’s a wonderland of food here. Tiny intricately wrapped and shaped banh – triangular bundles of rice cake and pork inside carefully tied banana leaves – dangle from stalls, like the hanging salami and cheese you see in Italian markets. I try some. Smashing. There’s food everywhere, inside the market, outside on the street; anyone not selling or cooking food seems to be eating, kneeling or squatting against walls, on the floor, in the street, tucking into something that looks wonderful.

I leave the market and head toward one of the many little coffee joints, picking my way through the stream of motorbikes and cyclos, past more food vendors, men and women carrying yokes, a pot of pho hanging from one end, utensils and garnishes from the other. Everything I see, I want to put in my mouth. Every pot of soup or noodles over a few sticks of burning wood is fresher and better-looking than any stuff in a New York market.

Sitting down on a tiny plastic stool, maybe a foot off the ground, I order coffee. I feel short of breath from the rapidly building heat, the humidity, all those delicious, intoxicating smells pulling me in every direction at once. An empty coffee cup and a banged-up strainer over a tin receptacle hits my wobbly little table. The grounds strain slowly, drip by drip, into the lower container. When it’s all gone through, I pour my coffee into my cup and take a sip. It’s simply the best coffee I’ve ever had: thick, rich, strong, and syrupy, like the dregs at the bottom of a glass of chocolate milk. I’m instantly hooked. The proprietor, a toothless old woman, has a suggestion. She brings out another coffee, this time with a tall glass of ice and a can of condensed milk. When the coffee has filtered through, it’s poured over the ice. Mingling with the milk below, it’s a slow, strangely mesmerizing process, delightful to watch and even better to drink. As the black coffee dribbles slowly through and around the ice cubes, swirling gently in dark-on-white wisps through the milk, I feel Vietnam doing the same thing to my brain. I’m in love. I am absolutely over-the top gonzo for this country and everything in it. I want to stay forever.

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