If it is strange for an American woman to be wandering this place, it is even stranger for Vong who was imprisoned for ten years by the same VC forces after they won the war. Now here he is trading jokes with the young English-speaking tour guide who shows us around. The guide isn’t a real Viet Cong, of course, just a kid dressed as a Viet Cong, but he looks authentic enough to make Vong a little tense.
“What did they do about rats?” I ask.
“Rats!” the guide says, and he and Vong have a good laugh.
“Yeah, didn’t they get rats in the tunnels sometimes?”
“That would be a dream to have rats in the tunnel,” Vong says. “What did they do with them? They ate them! A good source of protein.”
Of course they did. What a silly question. Vong and our guide get such a kick out of my naivety. I don’t mind, though. They are bonding. Former enemies, now sharing a laugh about the squeamish American tourist.
Robert and I don’t worry too much about how we would respond if someone offered us rat. We figure that isn’t likely to happen. But we do decide early on that we will not refuse dog meat if the opportunity arises. We won’t actively look for it, but we won’t turn it down if it is offered to us. The idea was kept alive by an Australian cop we met during our trip to the Cham ruins at My Son. He told us about some really tasty dog meat appetizers he’d had at a sidewalk grill and beer place in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. “It was about a block away from an old stone gate,” he said. I knew the gate… it was the Quan Chuong gate, the only remaining portion of the wall that had originally surrounded the commercial guilds from 1010 until the nineteenth century.
“There was a bia hoi place right on the corner.” Bia hoi is local brew made without preservatives, which means it typically has about a 24-hour shelf life. It’s good, cold and cheap, less than $1.50 for a two-liter pitcher. Bia hoi places in the Old Quarter are popular with the backpacker crowd; they tend to be great places to meet other travelers but not so great for meeting locals. “This isn’t your ordinary bia hoi place. This place is packed with locals,” the Australian cop said. “If you sit there for a while, someone will come over from the kitchen next door and offer you appetizers. It’s all dog. Really flavorful stuff.”
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| Bia hoi |
“Aren’t you supposed to eat dog at the end of the lunar month?” we asked.
“Nah,” he said. “That’s just if you want to get rid of bad luck. They eat dog any time.”
Well, we said, we won’t seek it out, but if we happen to run into some…
It is our last night in Hanoi, dog meat capital of Vietnam. I’ve been trying to give Robert a unique culinary experience for his birthday, but I haven’t hit on anything really satisfying. I bought him a bottle of Da Lat wine last night while we were on a boat in Halong Bay, a stunning warm water bay near the border with China, studded by some 2,000 limestone islands jutting straight up out of the water. The Halong Bay trip had not started well. Before we were even out of the city, our minibus pulled up to the sidewalk for an unanticipated stop. A murmur went up among the passengers. “We wait for two people,” our guide said. That made sense. We’d stopped at one hotel without picking up any new passengers. “They take a taxi and meet us here,” he said.
Fine, but why were those mechanics digging around underneath the minibus? He didn’t explain that part.
We were only supposed to be there for a few minutes, so he didn’t want the passengers to get off. By the time the well-rested German couple caught up with us in their taxi, though, the mechanics had come inside, ripped open an interior console next to the driver’s seat and started some serious wrenching. Every once in a while they would have the driver start the engine and the bus would fill with exhaust. It was a French woman who finally couldn’t stand it any longer and the rest of us followed her lead, piling out into the street looking for bathrooms, cold water, cigarettes, snacks, air. Our guide wasn’t too happy about it but he had limited options at that point – it was clearly a mutiny.
The mechanics fitted us with a new oil filter, revved up the engine a bit, and declared us good to go, only about an hour behind schedule, but we had to make one more quick stop. Not even a stop, really… more of a slow-down-drop-off like you would imagine people do when they’re delivering illegal drugs. We slowed to a crawl in the middle of a busy four lane road. At first I thought the driver was trying to avoid hitting a man who was just standing there in the middle of the street, cars, buses and motorbikes missing him by inches, but instead the driver reached over to grab the used oil filter and handed it out the window. How long had the man been standing there in the middle of the street waiting for us? And what does anyone do with a used oil filter? Even here in Vietnam where they can fix anything, it’s hard to imagine that someone is in the business of refurbishing oil filters. But apparently they are.
It did make us wonder what kind of filter they’d put on in its place, but we were all pretty happy to be on the road again so we didn’t ask too many questions.
Once we got there, Halong Bay was a perfect place to spend Robert’s forty-second birthday. After a day of sunning on the top deck of the boat, exploring the enormous Cave of Surprises and paddling sea kayaks around the islands, our group of sixteen tourists plus crew was ready for dinner and drinks. Our dinner companions were the German couple – a six foot nine doctor and his girlfriend – who had been to Phu Quoc Island. I would be going there myself the following week and it had been hard to find good information about the hotels so I was eager to hear what it was like. There was also a couple from New Zealand riding their bikes across Vietnam. We’d enjoyed talking to them earlier so we were really happy that they joined our table for dinner. I figured it was a good time for us to all try a bottle of Vietnamese wine together. We drank a toast to the birthday boy but, yech, the Vietnamese vintners in the hills of Da Lat still have their work cut out for them. Strike one as far as culinary birthday presents go. The durian was almost strike two.
The durian fruit really gets a bad rap in my opinion. Yes, it has an aroma, but the guidebooks exaggerate when they describe it as a mix between turpentine, moldy cheese and pig shit. That’s just not fair. With all the build-up about how much the thing reeks and how non-Vietnamese can barely stand to go near it let alone taste it, my imagination ran wild during my first couple of days in Vietnam. Every time I passed a fruit stand I wondered which one it might be. I kept my nose on alert for the most disgusting smell in the area and wondered if it was attributable to durian. So I was surprised when Huong said we were having durian for dessert on only my second day in Vietnam. Does she really think I’m ready for that? And how could it be in the house and I haven’t noticed it already? I expected to smell it before it even came through the door.
After dinner, the fruit made its grand appearance. I recognized it. I’d seen it in lots of fruit stands all over town. Apparently, its smell is mild enough that the fruit vendors see no need to separate it from their other goods… it sits proudly next to the lychees, longon, rambutans and pomelos and the vendors don’t seem to lose any business because of it. I examined its spiky skin. It was large – about ten pounds – brownish-yellow, and unevenly shaped, like a potato. From the outside it looked pretty impressive, but it was hard to cut into. The cook spread newspaper out on the floor and started hacking away… here it comes, I thought. Any moment I’m going to get a whiff. But with a crack and a slice it was open; she began pulling the huge fruit-custard-covered seeds carefully out of the middle for us to eat. It wasn’t exactly what you would call visually appealing, I’ll admit, but still no hideous smell. To me, it smelled of a fresh and mild buttery cheese mixed with avocado and a hint of pineapple. Enticing to me, but lots of people have a quite different impression.
The night before his birthday, also the night before we left for Halong Bay, I bought Robert a durian. We only wanted a small one, but all they had left at the late night fruit stand were a couple of large ones. Somehow we left with the most enormous durian I’d ever seen. “Happy birthday,” I said, handing him the bag.
“Thanks,” he said, “I think,” and he gave the bag a whiff. “It does have a peculiar odor.”
It was past 11:00 pm and we had to get up early the next morning to catch our bus for Halong Bay. We asked the night duty guy at the hotel if the cook would be able to cut it open for us for breakfast. He wrinkled his nose a bit. “We’re happy to share it with anyone else who wants to try some,” I added.
He didn’t seem interested. He cocked his eyebrows and sniffed at the bag. “I ask her.” And he put the bag down behind the reception desk.
“Should we put it in the kitchen?” we asked.
He looked at the small kitchen, windows closed up tight for the night. “No,” he said. “I ask her first.”
The next morning, Robert swore he could smell the durian from the third floor the moment he opened his door. But when we got to the breakfast room, it wasn’t there. We peeked over behind the reception desk and there it was, still in the same spot but wrapped up a little more tightly than it had been when we left it. The day manager seemed a bit alarmed. “We can’t serve this,” he said. “Some people like the smell.” He plugged up his nose for effect. “And some people don’t like it.”
“But it smells good,” I said.
“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Robert chimed in.
“You don’t like it?” I asked.
“Well, maybe not first thing in the morning.”
Hmm, now what? Our bus was picking us up for the Halong Bay trip in thirty minutes. There wasn’t time to take it back to the fruit lady and get her to cut it for us. We definitely couldn’t do it ourselves without a good knife, and even if we had a good knife we didn’t really know what to do with it. “Maybe we could bring it with us and the boat crew will open it for us,” I suggested.
Robert hesitated. It was his birthday present, after all. He was trying to like it, but he knew I wouldn’t want him to pretend. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
I didn’t push it.
“Well, can we leave it here?” I asked the manager. When we get back tomorrow we’ll take it back to the fruit lady and have her open it up for us.”
The manager agreed, but there was one more small problem. Somewhere along the line, the durian had split open. We didn’t know if someone had actually cut into it or if it had just split of its own accord because it was so big. Either way, it had a big gash in it that complicated the situation. The smell would have been milder, for sure, if its skin had been intact, and we weren’t sure how the split would affect its quality. Could we eat it anyway? Are there refunds or exchanges on fresh fruit? Probably it would be fine if we ate it right away, but two days fermenting in a warm hotel lobby wouldn’t do it any good at all.
No time to worry about that now, though. We went into the adjacent room for breakfast and to wait for our bus. Meanwhile, a discussion was brewing behind the desk about what to do with the smelly fruit we wanted them to baby sit for us. One guy ran off for a minute, while another lowered it, careful only to touch the plastic handles of the bag and not the fruit itself, into an empty Evian water box. Really, I thought, they’re exaggerating just a bit.
The first guy came back with a huge roll of packing tape and started wrapping the box. He applied one layer then leaned down to give it a smell check, wrinkled his nose, and went to work on another layer. After several layers of packing tape he decided it was enough. A third guy whisked the mummified box away to the luggage room at the back of the hotel for safekeeping.
In spite of their careful handling, though, even I have to admit that, by the time we get back, the smell of fermenting durian has filled the entire lower half of the hotel.
Robert thinks it is pretty sickening by now and I am starting to agree, especially down in the lobby where the odor of fermenting fruit has stewed with that of stale cigarette smoke for the past thirty-six hours. But I am too stubborn to chuck it and give up on the endeavor entirely.
The hotel staff is so happy when we ask for the box back that they even concede to a little bit of curiosity. “I’ve never tried it,” the day manager says. “One day I will get one so I can try too.” Big mistake. He politely walks us over to the door, which the doorman is already holding wide open for us. Robert takes a picture of me with the laminated box having been politely evicted from our otherwise friendly hotel.
Now we are walking the streets of Hanoi with a laminated durian, hoping to find the same fruit lady who sold it to us two days ago, hoping she will remember us. I am also hoping, though I don’t say so, that I will somehow be able to get her to trade it for one that isn’t already cut open. I realize that might be a challenge to communicate.
They laugh at us when we plop the box down in front of them. They seem to know what is inside even before we rip it open… another durian evicted from an Old Quarter hotel. The young fruit lady who sold it to us isn’t there when we come back so it is quite a chore to explain what we want. I figure it’s going to be difficult no matter what, so I might as well go all out and try for the exchange. “It’s damaged,” I start, full knowing the elder fruit lady doesn’t understand me, but you have to start somewhere. “There’s a cut here,” and I roll it over to show her. The lady stares at me sharply then rolls it back and makes as if she is going to start cutting it for us.
“No,” I stop her. “We’d like to exchange it for another one.”
This provokes a tirade, but probably all she’s saying is “Why does this stupid woman keep talking to me in English? Can’t she see I don’t understand a word she’s saying? What does she want from me?! I try to cut it for her and she stops me!”
But I don’t want her to cut the defective one that has been fermenting in a luggage rack for two days. I want one of the small fresh looking durians that has appeared since we were last here. I look around and catch the eye of an old man leaning quietly against a light post and watching the scene unfold. He has a look on his face I’ve learned to recognize. It’s the look of someone who understands exactly what he is watching and is amused by it. That means he speaks some English, which makes him my best bet as a translator. I walk over. “Excuse me,” he looks up. “Do you speak English?”
He smiles at me and nods to go on. The senior fruit lady is still ranting in the background but Robert is giving her an ear so that’s under control.
“Could you please explain to her that the big one is damaged? There is a big cut in it. We would like to trade it for one of those little ones over there.”
He calls out a few syllables to her and everyone is suddenly happy again. “Is that all she wanted?” the lady seems to say. “She wants a little one instead of a big one for the same price?” She takes the big durian and puts it back on display, and brings us a small one in its place. She looks at us questioningly.
“Yes,” we nod. “We’d like that one, please.”
“Suckers,” she is probably saying. “Now I get to sell that big one all over again.” We wonder how many other hapless tourists have bought the same exact piece of fruit only to be sent back with it by their hotel staff. But never mind, now she’s cutting open a nice fresh one for us. Robert is even back in the mood to try it again, and although it is small, we will still have enough left over to bring some to our kind hotel staff… since they did say they wanted to try some one day.
The lady hands Robert and me some plastic gloves and deftly splits the fruit in half, then pulls out the custard covered seeds from right out of the middle of it. Robert thinks it smells pretty good now. He tries a piece, sucking the custard off a large brown seed. “Wow, that’s actually really good!”
Hooray! He likes it. Now I’ve treated Robert to two new flavors for his birthday, neither of which he would be able to taste back home… Da Lat wine – yuk! so hideous that no one in their right mind would bother exporting it – and durian – yum! worth exporting but not allowed on the airplane. We each have a couple of seedfuls, then bring the rest back to the hotel manager. He thanks us, but we can tell he will probably toss it into the farthest garbage can he could find as soon as we leave.
“Now all we need is some dog,” Robert jokes as we head back out into the street to search for beer and dinner. “Remember, the sandy-haired ones are the best.” He is on a roll. He must be feeling adventurous. We had said we’d try dog if we stumbled upon it, but I have to admit I haven’t been looking very hard. We walk up Ma May street until it turns into Hang Buom, then veer off to the right checking out one street kitchen after another until we find ourselves at the dimly lit corner near the Quan Chuong gate. Too far, we say, and turn back down Hang Chieu, or so we think.
Somehow we lose track of the streets and end up back near Quan Chuong gate a second time. We’ve forgotten, for the moment, about the Australian policeman and his description of the dog meat restaurant nearby. We have no idea how we ended up back here and we don’t want to spend the entire evening walking circles through the maze of Old Quarter streets so we make a point of taking a different way back than we did before. Are we at Cho Gao? On Nguyen Sieu? Thanh Ha? We don’t know. We round an unfamiliar corner and spot a well-lit, welcoming bia hoi establishment sprawling out along the corner sidewalks. We gravitate towards it in unison, both thirsty for a cold beer.
“Hey,” I say. “We’re about a block away from the gate, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And look. That’s the beer place, and right there next to it is an open grill on the sidewalk, just like that Australian guy said.”
“Oh yeah…” Now Robert remembers the conversation with a mix of interest and apprehension.
“That must be the dog place!”
“Mmm hmm…”
We walk up to the grill as a waiter is carrying away a dish of something dark and spicy looking. “What is it?” we ask, pointing.
“Dog,” the girl behind the grill says.
“Dog?” Oh god, the moment is here… again. For some reason, the thought of live beating snake heart didn’t bother me nearly as much as the thought of sandy haired dog.
“Dog,” she emphasizes, and points to the sign. “Thit Cay.” Yup, that’s dog.
I look at Robert. He seems fine – too fine, almost. I wonder what’s wrong with him. Is he holding it in? We nod yes to the grill girl and find a table. “And two beers, please,” we add. We’ll need them.
We meet Le Van at the beer and dog grill. Le Van lives here in Hanoi. He is eager to talk to us, but especially to Robert. Not that he seems to dislike me, we figure he just doesn’t think of women as people worth talking to. Or maybe he is gay. He asks if he can join us, but pretty much turns his back to me so he can talk more closely to Robert. He turns and faces me if I say something to him first, but as soon as he can he turns back toward Robert. He is fascinated to hear what an American man thinks about Vietnam, its food, its people, the changes it is going through as a country trying to find a place in the world economy. He is impressed that I pronounce his name right on the first try, but he is only interested in exchanging email addresses with Robert. Like most Vietnamese, he finds it really endearing that we don’t shy away from trying the local food. He is especially happy that we are willing to try dog because, he says, “It’s not unusual here. Everybody eats it.”
Le Van leaves us to our second round of beer and soon a heaping plate of dark grilled spicy meat appears. Oh god, I think. I’m not sure I can do this.
I take a picture of six foot three Robert sitting in his red preschool size chair on a street corner in Hanoi with a glass of homebrew in his hand and a plate of dog meat on the table in front of him. I figure neither of us is likely to have another moment like this any time soon. We take our first bites in unison. It is good, we decide. Gristly, but good. Dog meat is known for being lean and tender, so we must have made an ordering error by pointing to whatever dish we saw… but what we have is hot and spicy and really quite flavorful. We avoid the bits that look like skin and eat the rest with the fresh greens that have been laid out on the table for us. We wash it all down with plenty of fresh beer.
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| Thit cay |
I have a harder time with the dog than anything else I’ve eaten on the trip so far. It is the only thing I almost lose. I keep thinking about what I am eating and then I feel a gag coming on so I force myself to forget again and take smaller bites. A puppy yaps in the background once in a while and that doesn’t help. Even after flossing I still pull a piece of dog hair out from between my teeth the next day. Snake I would eat again, crickets and durian I would welcome, sea snails and the various pig bits I’ve tried – trotters, ears, tendons, blood cake – would not be my first choices but they are OK. As far as sandy-haired dog goes, though, I think I’ve had my fill.
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