Traveler with a Cause

In December 2010 I went to Ho Chi Minh City. I spent a week eating my way through the city. I tried the French and the Vietnamese on the streets, in little dives, and a couple of meals with linen. I ate well during this week. I tried fruits like mangosteen, rambutan and sapodilla that were new to my palate, as was the balut (the fertilized duck egg) and the various fruits of the sea both fresh and fermented. I was satisfied and full. Yet I wanted more.

I began to wander south. I went through My Tho and Ving Long. I was traveling by catching rides (while paying a small fee) on the back of motorbikes and once in the back of an old pick-up. My culinary goal during this journey was to find some rice field mice in a roadside bbq somewhere. This finally happened on the fourth or fifth day near Ving Long. I must say the meat was wonderful, a juicy if less gamy squirrel or cuy. But this is not why I write. This is not where I found the culinary and cultural heart of Vietnam.

After meeting this goal, I met a couple of Vietnamese university students in Can Tho who were on there way to the island of Phu Quoc. They described it as a paradise. So I decided to begin to head in that direction (although at a slower pace than they). I stopped in a small village in my second day's journey between Can Tho and Rach Gia (from where I would take the ferry). I found a small house that rented one hut behind the house to the occasional traveler. Only a few days earlier I heard, an older German couple had stopped in.

The arrangement called for me to eat with the family. I did. The food was good but unremarkable. Stewed chicken and the like. In the morning the family was out and about in the trees around the house picking sapodilla. I joined in and spoke as I could. The conversation was spartan at best. We picked and we ate the remarkably juicy and mildy sweet little fruits. I knew that this was my one Vietnamese meal.