Platter of Vietnam - Part 2

Deepa woke up early the next morning and walked to Café Bamboo. It was a misty morning and a cloudy one too. Halfway through her walk, she couldn’t see anything. She turned back. She was hit by a gust of wind and the mist covered the lane she was walking in. All Deepa could make out was a small red-brick house in the distance. She walked up to it and knocked on a quaint door.

A young lady in a silk tunic and leggings opened the door. “Hello. Did you get lost in the sương mù?” she asked with a mild accent. “Um, yes if sương mù means mist. Could I borrow a torch from you?” Deepa said. “Of course. I am Ai Luong. What’s your name?” “I’m Deepa. Well, thank you for the torch. Goodbye!” 

She walked the remaining distance to the Café and settled in a comfortable chair. She ordered a dish of Cháo Hà. The waitress served it while it was still hot. Deepa devoured the generous serving of porridge, which was full of acorn barnacle, pepper, fish sauce, onions, and cooked rice, garnished with onion, pepper, and coriander. Acorn Barnacle was new to her. It tasted like a mix of crabs, clams, and scallops. It was unusual but tasty. 

But Deepa couldn’t linger for long. She had to leave the coast to explore another wonderful city.

                    ****

Ho Chi Minh was a busy city, with tall skyscrapers and plenty of markets. Deepa was going to go through the Cu Chi Tunnels, the tunnels through which the North Vietnamese army went through during Vietnam’s war against America.

The tunnels were quite narrow. Thuy Lay, her tour guide had warned her about getting stuck, but Deepa batted the warnings away, testily remembering the video conversation with her grandmother the other day. “You are becoming very thin, Deepa. Eat more. Don’t just eat that pho for a meal,” her grandma had croaked. “Avva, pho has beef, beans, and noodles. I also ate Banh xeo with it!” Deepa had retorted. “Aiyo, my girl is using these foreign words! Deepa, when I was a girl we used to have simple names for dishes. Delete all those fancy names from your brain…” Deepa had pressed the delete button on her laptop and closed it instead.

“Thuy Lay! Shall we enter now?” Deepa hollered. “Sure!”

Deepa understood now what it felt like to be squeezed. She was in the middle of Cu Chi and barely fit into the tunnel. It was a dark, grim place with tiny breathing holes every ten feet. When Deepa got out of the tunnel she had to stretch 15 times before her joints came back to normal. “Well,” she thought “It wasn’t exactly a fancy foyer to pass through for soldiers either.

 

She took a bus back to her hotel and threw herself onto the bed. The only thought that came to her mind was- ROOM SERVICE! 

The hotel served a diverse variety of cuisines, including Indian, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Italian. Deepa decided to order the most finessed and different dish on the menu.

                           ***

 Well, things didn’t go exactly as planned. Deepa had gone through the menu twice before she ordered some country-style Indian Kadai chicken which she ate all the time in Bangalore. She realized she missed Indian food.

Just as she was polishing off the chicken drumstick, her phone rang, showing yet another message. Dear passenger, your flight scheduled for 11:45 pm on the 25th of April has been canceled due to weather issues. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your cooperation.

Deepa tried to remain calm. That was the last flight that was leaving on the 25th. She looked at the flights for the 26th. They were all at inconvenient times, like 1:00 am, 2:45, and midnight. At last, she checked for flights leaving the current day. She found a few flights at reasonable timings. But she couldn’t cut her trip short. She just couldn’t. Her documentary had come along so well that she couldn’t leave it hanging at the finishing point. But she had to face the facts. She had to leave. She gloomily booked a flight for 10:00 o’clock.

At six o’clock, Deepa trudged up Main Street and stopped at a tiny stall, and snapped out her order of pho the lady running it. The lady looked at her with concern. Soon, everything came pouring out. Deepa explained about the plane, how she would miss Vietnam, and her documentary while gulping down the delicious pho.

The lady listened and then said “How about taking my recipe of pho with you to India. It would be like taking a bit of Vietnam with you. And you can cook pho whenever you want. You can end your documentary with you making pho.”

And that’s just what Deepa did when she got back to Bangalore.