- Local time
- Tomorrow 10:15 AM
- Messages
- 189
It began with an Autumn breeze.
I was sitting in the bush. Fourteen Vietnamese were with me. They were cooking a duck in clay over a makeshift fire.
The air was full of it. The thickness of the smoke. The sweetness of the banana blossoms they were using for the stew. The potatoes, the leeks; the gravy, the crisp fat as it broke off the duck itself as they peeled off the clay and the feathers, revealing the broken black skin underneath that they passed across to me along with a serving knife and a bowl as big as my hand. Laughing, I slid the knife down through that white-meat as the blood lay absorbed inside the tissues of fat and muscle, not a single drop left but for the crust that stained the insides pink.
I am laughing, because they are laughing; and because one of them has offered me a pack of cigarettes. He is smiling. The old man smiling. He is orange-faced with no teeth and one blind eye, and his sons — all six of them — are laughing around me as one of them plays a broken down Fender. His guitar strings plink a traditional song like a flute playing in the bush as the crickets snicker as I desperately cut apart the duck with the rusty edge of the knife they've given me. And pulling off a wing, I take the first bite as they all cheer; and it's no surprise as the smell fills my nose — greasy, fat, smoky — that it is good.
I have been travelling up the Mekong River, participating in the floating markets, where they mix coffee inside their boats in a glass jar over a burning wood oven and serve it to me across the river in their dry, cracked hands. I have supped from the glasses they washed in pans, and I can tell you it's better than Starbucks. The sun is beating down on my face and I am alive here, and the face of my companion is still and glassy as he too looks out across the river, eating a bowl of Pho served from the boat adjacent to ours. The merchants actually wait with us whilst we eat to retrieve their cutlery, but they don't care if we take thirty minutes or an hour; as they offer us the occasional baguette or sweet milk to top of our coffee and make it all the more rich.
I begin to realise, this is Asia. This is Vietnam.
Come the night, a tarpaulin is thrown onto the ground and Mister Jao and all his extended family are here to participate in the dinner. And I can tell the man across from me will drink me under the table. He must be eighty three years old, but he is throwing back shot after shot after shot of what can only be white lightning. The river moonshine famous to the Viet Cong. I drink, laughing, because though it burns my throat and bounces off my stomach and straight to my head, the night becomes that much more amusing with it. And as time slips by, and I must be on my fourteenth shot, I wave my hand and say: ''No more.''
I understand then, this is a buffet of all the senses. The singular white electric bulb burns above us, telling me we are out in the jungle. The tarpaulin is a crystal grey underneath my feet. The people are around me are a mix of colours, all of them sunkissed, all of them cracked; and I am swaying, drunk, alive and hearty, full of life and mischief as I realise this is what it means to be held. I carefully deny the thirteenth shot offered to me and name the man across from me the winner, and he works his jaw in amusement as he gives me the eyebrow, as if he knew I would fold from the start. And laughing still I look into the eyes of my companion; who with a similar glassy effect is swaying also, looking at the man singing on the porch. And soon after, we are driven home on the river to the sights and sounds of people getting up to fish as the night turns from black to blue, orange to grey:
I know is a night I will never forget.
I was sitting in the bush. Fourteen Vietnamese were with me. They were cooking a duck in clay over a makeshift fire.
The air was full of it. The thickness of the smoke. The sweetness of the banana blossoms they were using for the stew. The potatoes, the leeks; the gravy, the crisp fat as it broke off the duck itself as they peeled off the clay and the feathers, revealing the broken black skin underneath that they passed across to me along with a serving knife and a bowl as big as my hand. Laughing, I slid the knife down through that white-meat as the blood lay absorbed inside the tissues of fat and muscle, not a single drop left but for the crust that stained the insides pink.
I am laughing, because they are laughing; and because one of them has offered me a pack of cigarettes. He is smiling. The old man smiling. He is orange-faced with no teeth and one blind eye, and his sons — all six of them — are laughing around me as one of them plays a broken down Fender. His guitar strings plink a traditional song like a flute playing in the bush as the crickets snicker as I desperately cut apart the duck with the rusty edge of the knife they've given me. And pulling off a wing, I take the first bite as they all cheer; and it's no surprise as the smell fills my nose — greasy, fat, smoky — that it is good.
I have been travelling up the Mekong River, participating in the floating markets, where they mix coffee inside their boats in a glass jar over a burning wood oven and serve it to me across the river in their dry, cracked hands. I have supped from the glasses they washed in pans, and I can tell you it's better than Starbucks. The sun is beating down on my face and I am alive here, and the face of my companion is still and glassy as he too looks out across the river, eating a bowl of Pho served from the boat adjacent to ours. The merchants actually wait with us whilst we eat to retrieve their cutlery, but they don't care if we take thirty minutes or an hour; as they offer us the occasional baguette or sweet milk to top of our coffee and make it all the more rich.
I begin to realise, this is Asia. This is Vietnam.
Come the night, a tarpaulin is thrown onto the ground and Mister Jao and all his extended family are here to participate in the dinner. And I can tell the man across from me will drink me under the table. He must be eighty three years old, but he is throwing back shot after shot after shot of what can only be white lightning. The river moonshine famous to the Viet Cong. I drink, laughing, because though it burns my throat and bounces off my stomach and straight to my head, the night becomes that much more amusing with it. And as time slips by, and I must be on my fourteenth shot, I wave my hand and say: ''No more.''
I understand then, this is a buffet of all the senses. The singular white electric bulb burns above us, telling me we are out in the jungle. The tarpaulin is a crystal grey underneath my feet. The people are around me are a mix of colours, all of them sunkissed, all of them cracked; and I am swaying, drunk, alive and hearty, full of life and mischief as I realise this is what it means to be held. I carefully deny the thirteenth shot offered to me and name the man across from me the winner, and he works his jaw in amusement as he gives me the eyebrow, as if he knew I would fold from the start. And laughing still I look into the eyes of my companion; who with a similar glassy effect is swaying also, looking at the man singing on the porch. And soon after, we are driven home on the river to the sights and sounds of people getting up to fish as the night turns from black to blue, orange to grey:
I know is a night I will never forget.
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