that reminds me how fallible I am, on the off-chance that overconfidenceâor even mere confidenceâwill bring about my end. I am probably not quite as ignorant as I claimhere to be, but I will never allow myself to think otherwise. At most, I will acknowledge a kind of Rumsfeldian progress: I have left the land of the unknown unknown and entered the realm of the known unknown. I do not know what I am doing, or what will happen next, and accepting those limitations has brought me incredible, unexpected joy.
In Kyrgyzstan, the horse budged, and Bakut and I descended the slopes into an apricot grove fed by a natural spring, where we lounged in the shady grasses, ate almost-ripe fruit, and slaked our daylong thirst.
On the flight to Tunisia via Paris, I breathed the clean air of an Airbus A380, drank red wine from little bottles, and stretched my legs as much as I could.
At the Saigon Café, I poured my bottle of beer into a glass filled with a fast-melting chunk of questionable ice, and wondered what might happen tomorrow.
Chapter 2
A Model Organism
      In Which, Craving Culinary Adventure, I Eat My Way Across the World and Figure Out How to Handle the Consequences      Â
        Giardia, blight of my life, fire of my loins. My germ, my joke. Gee-arr-dee-ah: the tips of my toes taking a trip of three steps to the toilet, to squat, to squirm, on the pot. Gee? Arr. Dee! Aaaahhhh . . .
H o Chi Minh City had never been a particularly quiet place. In the first half of the twentieth century, Saigonâas it was then knownâwas the bustling business heart of French colonial Indochina. In the 1960s and â70s, it was the hard-partying base of the American-supported South Vietnamese government. And by the time Iâd arrived, the city was buzzing harder than ever, aswirl with new motorbikes, construction crews, and tourists gawking at how this nominally communist stronghold of seven million was transforming itself into a capitalist powerhouse.
The only time Ho Chi Minh City ever seemed to calm down was just after noon, when everyone was either eating lunch or post-prandially napping through the midday heat. For an hour or two, you could hear electric fans chopping at the still air, you could flip through todayâs Viet Nam News or last weekâs Time magazine, youcould breathe and relax and think. This respite from the perpetual chaos is probably the only reason that one day, two weeks after I landed in Vietnam, as I sat awaiting my own lunch at a downtown restaurant, I noticed the man with the gun.
He was across the street, emerging from one storefront into the brilliant clarity of the sunshine. He was Vietnamese, and maybe in his thirties or early forties. He wore sunglasses. And at his side, in one of his hands, he held an Uziâor what I, who knew submachine guns only from movies and music, recognized as an Uzi. Then he disappeared into the next storefront. If the street had been full of 100cc Honda bikes, as it had been an hour earlier, I wouldâve missed him entirely.
It was a very odd sight, especially in a country as tightly controlled as Vietnam, and I wanted to ask someoneâanyoneâabout it. Was the man a gangster? A cop? This was a mystery that needed solving.
Then my food arrived. I hadnât known quite what to order, but something on the menu caught my attention: luâoân nuâóâng mÃa . A variation on chạo tôm nuâóâng , the popular dish of shrimp paste wrapped around sugarcane and grilled over charcoal, this was made instead with freshwater eelâheld in place with a chive tied into a bowâand as I bit in, I fell in love. The eel was rich and oily, caramelized from the charcoal heat, infused with garlic, fish sauce, and the raw sweetness of the cane. And the cane itself, when I gnawed it, released a burst of sugary juice tinged with the meaty slick of the
In Kyrgyzstan, the horse budged, and Bakut and I descended the slopes into an apricot grove fed by a natural spring, where we lounged in the shady grasses, ate almost-ripe fruit, and slaked our daylong thirst.
On the flight to Tunisia via Paris, I breathed the clean air of an Airbus A380, drank red wine from little bottles, and stretched my legs as much as I could.
At the Saigon Café, I poured my bottle of beer into a glass filled with a fast-melting chunk of questionable ice, and wondered what might happen tomorrow.
Chapter 2
A Model Organism
      In Which, Craving Culinary Adventure, I Eat My Way Across the World and Figure Out How to Handle the Consequences      Â
        Giardia, blight of my life, fire of my loins. My germ, my joke. Gee-arr-dee-ah: the tips of my toes taking a trip of three steps to the toilet, to squat, to squirm, on the pot. Gee? Arr. Dee! Aaaahhhh . . .
H o Chi Minh City had never been a particularly quiet place. In the first half of the twentieth century, Saigonâas it was then knownâwas the bustling business heart of French colonial Indochina. In the 1960s and â70s, it was the hard-partying base of the American-supported South Vietnamese government. And by the time Iâd arrived, the city was buzzing harder than ever, aswirl with new motorbikes, construction crews, and tourists gawking at how this nominally communist stronghold of seven million was transforming itself into a capitalist powerhouse.
The only time Ho Chi Minh City ever seemed to calm down was just after noon, when everyone was either eating lunch or post-prandially napping through the midday heat. For an hour or two, you could hear electric fans chopping at the still air, you could flip through todayâs Viet Nam News or last weekâs Time magazine, youcould breathe and relax and think. This respite from the perpetual chaos is probably the only reason that one day, two weeks after I landed in Vietnam, as I sat awaiting my own lunch at a downtown restaurant, I noticed the man with the gun.
He was across the street, emerging from one storefront into the brilliant clarity of the sunshine. He was Vietnamese, and maybe in his thirties or early forties. He wore sunglasses. And at his side, in one of his hands, he held an Uziâor what I, who knew submachine guns only from movies and music, recognized as an Uzi. Then he disappeared into the next storefront. If the street had been full of 100cc Honda bikes, as it had been an hour earlier, I wouldâve missed him entirely.
It was a very odd sight, especially in a country as tightly controlled as Vietnam, and I wanted to ask someoneâanyoneâabout it. Was the man a gangster? A cop? This was a mystery that needed solving.
Then my food arrived. I hadnât known quite what to order, but something on the menu caught my attention: luâoân nuâóâng mÃa . A variation on chạo tôm nuâóâng , the popular dish of shrimp paste wrapped around sugarcane and grilled over charcoal, this was made instead with freshwater eelâheld in place with a chive tied into a bowâand as I bit in, I fell in love. The eel was rich and oily, caramelized from the charcoal heat, infused with garlic, fish sauce, and the raw sweetness of the cane. And the cane itself, when I gnawed it, released a burst of sugary juice tinged with the meaty slick of the
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