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Vietnam, surfer shorts, bánh mì, coconuts, motorcycle traffic, sweet porridge, duck eggs, Saigon & the war.
The street is not a street. These shops will disappear. The woman butchering the rump end of a pig at 3 a.m. is gone. It is breakfast time in Phong 22, Bình Thanh. Fish swim in buckets while duck eggs with fetuses inside boil.
No one sells me the duck eggs. They hand me sweet porridge with coconut. It comes in a small plastic bag, the kind you take a goldfish home in. In a narrow storefront—four tables, four chairs—bowls of soup come with a plate of shredded stuff you’re supposed to put on top. It looks and tastes like celery but isn’t. Later I find out it’s banana blossoms. Down an alleyway, a man comes out of his building, sets up an awning and brings out pots of food. He has bleached-blond hair, surfer shorts and a flip-flop swagger. He sells broken rice, a fried sheet of pork and pickled vegetables. A couple of police officers eating there hunch over their plates.
Diesel exhaust seems permanent, baked in. A wrinkled man in a wife-beater peels durian and wraps the stinking fruit in plastic. Usually I’d walk home after breakfast, but today I keep going. I trip into puddles of fish water. The only way out is to cross the street. I put my head down the way I’ve been taught. Don’t stop.
They hand me sweet porridge with coconut. It comes in a small plastic bag, the kind you take a goldfish home in.
I memorize the vendors: porridge cart, watermelons on a tarp, three moto-taxi drivers. Bread for bánh mì, coffee to go. It has taken me a week to build up enough courage to leave my neighborhood. I walk along the Saigon River, on the new path fringed with tidy lawn. On the opposite bank, wooden shacks stand on stilt legs. Kid monks ride by on bicycle, orange robes flapping. I see them later at the internet café, three to a computer, playing kill games.
Walking back takes twice as long. The only thing I recognize is a yellow altar nailed to a tree on the corner. The incense in the empty Tiger beer can is done burning. There is hardly anyone in the street. Four stale baguettes in a sandwich cart. The man at the coffee shop leans back in his chair, snoring. I recognize the hardware-store sign, but the metal door is rolled down. There are mannequins set up in front now. When the sun hits them in the afternoon, a woman runs out to pin sheets to their shoulders. In the soup café, the tables are pushed to the corner. Three young men strip sugarcane, green-purple stalks tall as the room, to squeeze into juice later. A few stray dogs mind their own business.
I sit down and order a coffee from the coffee seller’s mother. There is nothing to do except watch the flies.
Vietnam is confusing. Places change names; places change places. There are three green-and-white taxi companies with phone numbers a digit off from each other. At home I run a sponge along the counters, collect the tiniest ants that walk about in endless drunken circles. A month from now, on a plane to Sydney, a newly hatched colony of them will swarm out of the USB port of my reading tablet.
Vietnam is confusing. Places change names; places change places. There are three green-and-white taxi companies with phone numbers a digit off from each other.
The sky fades. Motorcycle traffic builds. Produce is piled on blankets and in baskets. Vendors squat beside them. Bundles of herbs, fruit with spikes, green-skinned tangerines. I want to finger everything but the traffic pushes me forward. People stop, make a quick bargain, hang another bag from the handlebars.
Most of the meat sellers have home-rigged fans, the flat ends of fly swatters fastened around a motor. On a table: thick beef hearts, a couple kidneys, an intestine. It seems unkind. A few thin chickens stick their feet up, beaks hanging open. A woman in gray pin curls sells soft crabs marinating in chili oil, minced garlic in bowls, nubs of ginger. She counts my change back in English and mentions the war.
On my balcony I eat instant noodles and spongy fish-balls fried by the woman on my corner, her legs splayed around a portable gas burner, hot oil popping. I’ve bought nothing I intended to. I don’t really know what’s what. Not even bananas. They come in chandeliers, dozens on a stalk. It’s enough to feed a family of five for a week.
I have no family. I have a bed and a fan and a desk. I share a kitchen and a living room with an English teacher from Ohio and a man who calls himself Swami. In the evening, Swami falls asleep on the couch watching the financial report, tufts of graying hair kinking above his nipples. It’s the closest thing to home I’ve had all year.
The traffic slows. A man with a wagon picks up leftover bananas. The coffee shop is a movie theater. The rows spill into the street, faces glow blue.
By midnight the dinner vendors are cleaning up. They fill buckets, wash dishes, balance everything on scooters and bungee it into place. Potholes are full of runoff. The rats are out. The flies are gone. The butcher comes back, throws a half carcass across the table, sharpens her knife.
Colleen Sarkisian is a teacher, wanderer, and graduate of UCSB’s College of Creative Studies. She currently lives in New York.
Lead Image by Gareth Williams