Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

I’ve had meatballs a few times recently. I made turkey meatballs. I made tuscan-style beef meatballs. I like meatballs. They’re yummy. But for the third time in a month, I wanted something different. I pondered adding chilli. Then I decided they needed more. Well, let’s just see what I did, shall we ? Introducing my spicy, mexican meatballs.

Ingredients

• 500 grams beef mince
• Plain flour
• 2 eggs
• Parsley
• Basil
• Minced garlic
• Oregano
• 2 large onions
• 1 packet taco sauce mix
• chilli powder
• 400g tin of kidney beans
• 200g diced tomato
• 1 jar Bolognese sauce

Directions

Ok, I’ve explained how to make meatballs before but I’d better do it again. I didn’t make crumbed ones this time. Just plain ones. Take your mince, add two egg yolks and add parsley, basil and oregano to taste. Form into balls. Roll them in flour. Putting them in the fridge for half an hour helps them harden up and stick together more as well. That was easy wasn’t it ?

I like my kidney beans mashed in most mexican meals except for chilli con carne, so that’s what I did. Mash them up nicely with a fork. Dice your onions. Add some oil to a large saucepan on high heat and throw in the onion and a generous helping of basil, oregano and minced garlic. Stir briefly and then add in your diced tomato and stir thoroughly for a few seconds and then add the jar of bolognese sauce. You could use tomato paste instead, but if you do, double the quantity of diced tomatoes. Add your mashed beans.

Let this boil lightly for a few minutes then add your packet of taco seasoning and begin adding chilli to taste. Throw in your uncooked meatballs. Simmer on low heat for an hour or more, stirring fairly regularly. I love letting it simmer for a long time. You will need to add water because the beans are going to make it turn quite thick. Taste test and add more chilli if needed.

This meal is a delicious variation on regular meatballs. The mashed kidney beans make the sauce nice and thick, and the taco seasoning and chilli gives it a firey, mexican flavour. I like to serve this meal on its own. It needs nothing. It’s a good meal to eat out of a bowl while watching tv or something. Simple, tasty and it reheats well. No photo because it’s just not attractive enough a meal to photograph sorry !

My grandfather is visiting, and it’s always fun to cook for a new guest. Last night I did Chinese San Choy Bou as an entre, but tonight I wanted to do a main meal. My granddad is a pretty eater, though nowhere near as picky as my dad, so I had to go with something pretty mainstream. I know my dad is very fond of meals baked with tinned soup mixes, and I had a few in my cupboard, but I wanted to go a bit more creative than the usual boring stuff he makes. I decided to make something sort of original, but based on his favourite meal – macaroni and cheese, so I made what I call my “special chicken and asparagus pasta bake”.

Ingredients

• Tin of condensed cream of asparagus soup
• 400g chicken breast
• 1 large bunch of fresh asparagus
• 1 cup of spring onions
• 3-4 large bacon rashers
• 1 small onion
• 4 pieces of bread
• 1 pinch of marjoram
• 2 pinches of ground pepper
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 pinch of basil
• 1/4 cup of cream
• 3/4 cup of grated cheese

Directions

Firstly, chop everything and put it into bowls. Very small pieces. Make the chicken quite fine, make the bacon very small, the onions extremely fine, and slice the asparagus into very thin pieces. Toast your bread and break it into smallish (but not too small) chunks.

Once you have everything ready, heat a pan with some olive oil and throw in the onion and give it a couple of seconds and then throw in the bacon. Cook these for about 30-50 seconds, stirring thoroughly and then put them into a bowl with a paper towel at the bottom to soak up the oil (we will be sautéing most of the items here and we really don’t want too much oil because the dish should be light and creamy, not oily). Set that aside.

In the same pan (a little cross flavour is ideal) throw the asparagus into the existing oil (add a little more if necessary coz you want the asparagus nicely cooked, especially if the trunks are thick) and add a pinch of pepper and the pinch of salt and sauté it thoroughly for about a minute, shaking the pan and turning it regularly with a spatula. Do the same as with the bacon; put it into a bowl with a few paper towels at the bottom and leave the oil in the pan.

Sauté the chicken as with the previous ingredients, adding the last pinch of pepper to this as you do so, but just seal it all over so that it’s still tender and not completely cooked inside because we’re going to bake it for quite a while. Again, put the finished chicken into a bowl on paper towels and empty the oil from the pan and set it aside.

Cook your macaroni, but not all the way. Just a few minutes. Test it by nibbling a piece. It should remain firm. Not crunchy, but definitely not as soft as how you would want to eat it on its own.

Get a large baking tray, preferably a deep one rather than a low flat one. A lasagne tray is ok, but it should have as high sides as possible, so I like a glass cake dish for this, but it will have to be a reasonably big one to hold all the ingredients. Throw all your pre-cooked ingredients in, and add your basil and marjoram. Mixed Italian herbs would be an ok substitute, but don’t add too much. No thyme or anything strong like that. Throw about 3/4 of your broken up pieces of toast and about half your grated cheese in along with your spring onions. Stir it all up well with a fork so that it’s nicely mixed together.

Mix your condensed asparagus soup tin with your cream. You can use milk, but if you do, use less. If you use thickened cream, then add a little milk as well. This dish needs to remain moist. Add the mixture into the baking dish and make sure the mixture nearly reaches the top. Give it a good stir and re-evaluate. Add a little extra cream or milk if necessary and stir it again. Once you are satisfied that the liquid is going to stay covering most of the ingredients, spread your remaining pieces of toast across the top and then your remaining cheese on top of that. Add a little more cheese on top if you like.

Bake on fairly low heat (around 160-170 degrees celcius) for 45 minutes before serving onto plates along with whatever meat you might like. Since this meal contains relatively expensive ingredients (unless you are lucky enough to get very cheap asparagus) you might want to serve it with sausages or some cheap pork chops. Because it’s a creamy dish, it goes well with greasy, bbq’d meats. Optionally, provide a plate of freshly buttered bread so the meal isn’t too heavy. Serve with red wine. We choose Bundaberg rum and coke because that’s what my granddad always drinks.

This dinner went down famously at my my house, because I told my dad that it was “macaroni cheese with bacon”, but he asked “What’s the green stuff ?” and I said “fresh asparagus” and he said “oh that’s ok”. He commented “There’s other flavours in here too. What are those ?” and I admitted that it also contained chicken breast and onion and that the sauce was based on a cream of asparagus soup to give it an extra strong asparagus flavour. Voila, I took a bog standard meal that he loved and made it a little more creative and interesting and everyone loved it ! Sorry, no photo of this one because we served it up and ate it so quickly that I forgot to take one, but here’s a photo of the ingredients, ready to cook. Sometimes when you are dealing with fussy eaters it’s good to take a simple meal they love and just add one or two extra ingredients that you know they won’t hate to give it a little extra flair beyond a regular boring meal. In this case, it was a great success. Enjoy !

Ok, this meal isn’t really very fancy. In fact, it’s mostly out of a packet if you don’t make the sauce yourself, but that’s not really the point. The point is that it’s a simple, cheap meal that can be well presented and that everyone will enjoy, from grandparents to grandchildren. It’s lemon chicken and rice.

Now, I adore lemon chicken, or honey chicken from a Chinese takeaway place, but typically the chicken is battered, especially in the case of honey chicken and I just don’t like that. It tastes too doughey and filling for my liking. Well, the crumbed version is still filling, but I find it a lighter, crunchier, more appealing sort of meal. So here’s how it’s done.

Ingredients

• 300 grams of chicken (You’ll be surprised how far this goes)
• 2 eggs
• Plain flour
• Breadcrumbs
• Salt
• Pepper
• Parsley
• Half a cup of diced spring onions
• Half a red capsicum
• 2-3 slices of fresh lemon
• Rice

Lemon Sauce (if you’re not using a packet mix)

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cup water
• finely grated zest of half a lemon
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1/4 tablespoon finely chopped ginger

Directions

Now, first thing’s first. Break your two eggs (you might need three if you’re doing a larger serving, I like to be generous with the egg mixture) into a bowl and add a generous few pinches of both salt and cracked pepper. Put in a large amount of crushed parsley. Around half a cup. Even if it seems like you have a lot, you’ll be surprised how quickly it disappeared into the mixture. Whisk the egg mixture nicely with a fork. Honestly this is really the only creative part of the recipe and you can see how basic that was.

Chop your chicken into thin strips. Personally, just to be different, I like to dice it into small cubes. It reminds me more of fish that way. But make them pretty small. Kids especially love the little crispy bits, so don’t make them too big, though if they are too small the meal will be a bit too filling due to the all the bread crumbs. As for the breadcrumbs, just buy it if you’re lazy (I did), or if you want to make it, lightly toast some slightly old bread that you’ve had sitting out. If you want to, you can crush up some Arnotts milk arrowroot biscuits or similar as well. I like thick crunchy breadcrumbs.

After chopping your chicken wash it briefly and then lay it on paper towels and make sure it’s nice and dry. Then roll it in plain flour. This will give the egg more purchase on your chicken, since the egg sticks to the flour and the flour sticks to the chicken. Once it is nicely covered in flour, throw it into the egg mixture a couple of pieces at a time and then into a bowl of breadcrumbs, rolling it thoroughly and put it into a deep trying tray.

Once you have your chicken pieces ready, set them aside in the fridge briefly while we make the sauce and rice. Start your rice in the rice cooker now. While the rice cooker will turn off automatically and keep your rice warm, you don’t want it to sit in there for too long or it might dry out. While it’s cooking you can look at making your sauce.

You don’t have to make the sauce to be honest. If you can get a decent packet mix from the supermarket for a dollar or two then go with that, but if you want to experiment with making your own, then go for it. Sometimes there’s a time for creativity, and sometimes you just want to make a decent meal that people will enjoy. Anyway, making the sauce is simple. Just throw all the ingredients into a saucepan and cook on a medium heat for about 5 minutes. Turn it down once it boils, but keep stirring thoroughly.

Start your deep frying on a high heat, and throw your chicken in and fry it until it’s a nice golden brown, but not too dark brown. Meanwhile, put a saucepan on the stove and put about half a centimetre of oil on the bottom. Quite a bit really, because we’re going to sauté our capsicum in it. When your oil is hot, throw your capsicum in it, and about half of the spring onions. Sauté it for about a minute, and then take it off the heat and drain most of the oil off.

Throw your chicken pieces into the saucepan and put it back onto a medium heat stove and then pour your lemon sauce over the mix and stir thoroughly. You really want the crumbed chicken to soak up the lemon sauce, but you don’t want it too soggy. I think about thirty seconds is plenty. Some people just pour the sauce over the finished meal so that the chicken is crunchier, but I prefer it to be more saucy, so you can go either way, but I do like to make sure that the capsicum and spring onions do get adequately covered in the lemon sauce as well.

Serve onto a bed of rice and attempt to arrange the capsicum nicely on top for effect. Sprinkle the remaining uncooked spring onion over the top so that you have the lovely colour combination of the yellow, saucy chicken, the red capsicum, and the green spring onion. Chop up the lemon slices you have into small pieces and sprinkle it over the dish for extra colour. Some people might prefer to use lemon zest instead for flavour but I think it’s unnecessary and I’m aiming for the lemon to be a part of presentation rather than the flavour because the meal already has enough lemon flavour and we just want the lemon to remind the diner that they are eating a lemon dish. Add a sprig of parsley to the top as a final garnish and serve with a nice white wine, although I’ve chosen to go with a lovely sweet pink moscato. Enjoy !

Recipe time ! This one isn’t really all that fancy or complicated as it’s mostly just based on a packet red curry paste mix, but it came out so delicious that I just had to tell you about it. The ingredients you choose to use are up to you, but I just used whatever I had on hand. Ok, let’s begin.

Ingredients

* red curry paste
* coconut cream
* 300g of beef
* one medium sized onion
* two medium sized potatoes
* two over-ripe tomatoes
* fresh basil (coriander would be good but I didn’t have any)
* chilli powder
* pepper (finely ground preferably)
* rice (optional)

Directions

Ok, the tomato is a fairly traditional ingredient in a red curry, but the potato isn’t quite so much. I didn’t feel like chicken because I love the texture of really tender beef in a curry, and also because I didn’t HAVE any chicken hehe. Potato is great in a beef curry and I love the massaman style, so that’s sort of what I was going for, but in a red curry rather than a yellow one. Now normally red curries aren’t very hot, but I wanted it extremely hot, which is why I’ve suggested adding lots of chilli.

Firstly, chop your onion, but not too finely. Don’t leave it in chunks, but do make the individual slices are quite large. It’s good that way. Chop your beef as small as possible however because we’re only going to cook it the slightest amount. Throw your onion into a pan with plenty of oil and stir it regularly to make sure that it doesn’t go brown. We want it soft, but not brown. Throw the beef in and fry it ever so gently. We really don’t want it cooked… we just want the extra flavour of having it lightly fried with the onion and oil. You should still be able to see the redness and juices inside so it should be really close to raw. It’s more about the flavour than the need to cook it. Put that aside for now.

It’s always a struggle to decide how much you want your potato cooked. Sometimes I cook it more and sometimes less. The last thing you want is for it to be soft, but then, I don’t like it too hard either, but we will be simmering the curry for quite a while, so I tend to just put my two potatoes into a bowl with a tiny bit of water in the bottom and put them in the microwave for around about 3-4 minutes in a powerful microwave.

Chop your potato once it’s done. Size is up to you. Sometimes I like small cubes and other times larger. Some restaurants will do massaman with huge chunks but I don’t really like that, and this isn’t a massaman anyway, so I’m going for smaller cubes this time. After it’s chopped, lightly cover it in pepper. Normally I always love cracked pepper, but I chose ground this time because I just want it to sort of stick to the potato.

Now my tomato was deliberately chosen to be quite overripe, and no.. it’s not just because I only had one ridiculously over-ripe tomato that had been sitting in my fridge for weeks. I had to steal the second tomato from my parents and I deliberately asked for an over-ripe one because I knew they wouldn’t want that one for salads, but it would be perfect for my curry. So chop your tomatoes up nice and fine. You may find the skin comes off due to the ripeness. That’s fine. Better it comes off now than you end up with loose skin floating around in your curry.

Throw your curry paste into a saucepan on low heat and add about 250ml of coconut cream and about the same or a little bit more of water. I want this curry to have lots of liquid, like a good soup-style curry. Stir it together, and throw in your basil, finely chopped. Add some of your chill powder. Now throw in your beef and onions and make sure you get the remaining oil in there as well because the curry needs oil.

Throw all your remaining ingredients in at this point (see, I told you this was going to be an easy recipe) and stir thoroughly. You’ll probably notice that the mixture is extremely runny, but don’t worry. It will actually thicken up quite a lot when it cools down. Add more chilli powder to taste. As I said, I wanted this to be a very spicy, oily red curry with lots of tomato.

Cover the saucepan and let it simmer for… well.. an hour wouldn’t hurt. You really want that potato to be nicely cooked. My stove has very large burners so it’s poorly suited to simmering and it goes out easily, so I tended to just put it on the lowest flame possible and then turn it off every now and again so that it sort of gets a boil going, and then you turn it off for a bit. This also makes the curry thicken up a bit.

If you’re not too fond of the potatoes, you can always reduce the quantity of potato and increase the number of tomatoes. You can always add more water (though don’t add too much more coconut cream because you’ll find this curry has quite a strong coconut flavour as you’ll be able to tell from the smell while it simmers) and extra tomato to turn it into a delicious spicy soup.

You can serve this over rice, but I have so many meals with rice anyway and I actually think that this dish is most delicious just served on its own in a bowl with a little sprig of parsley on top as a garnish. I hope your guests or family like spicy food because if you put in as much chilli powder as I did, then this is one spicy curry, and with the pepper on the potatoes it’ll have a lovely bitey edge to it.

This meal also re-heats beautifully. You’ll find that the second time around the sauce will be thicker, so do add more water if you want to bring it back to its soup-like consistency. I enjoyed this meal so much last night that laying in bed at 6am in the morning unable to sleep, I just hungered for some, and I got up and re-heated some and ate it in bed. Delicious !

Recipe time guys. I just got home off the train after an epic 28 hour journey from Cairns and I was hungry as hell because I’d been trying not to buy too much overpriced food on the train. Here’s what I knocked up. Now I’m only going to list ingredients, not quantities, because that’s just how I cook. I don’t measure things. You just chuck it in, see how it looks, how it tastes, and add more as necessary. Typically this means that a small meal quickly grows in size as you try and balance everything out, which is great because you can always save some for later !

Ingredients

* Enough rice to suit your taste and number of guests
* 1 tin of Campbell’s Chunky beef stockpot (or similar beef stockpot, curry etc)
* 300g of diced beef steak (vary this depending on number of guests and how meaty you want it to be)
* One whole potato. More if you want to serve more than three or four people.
* Extra vegetables such as frozen peas, green beans and diced carrots or whatever you happen to have laying around
* An onion, diced
* Beef stock cube (though any stock cube will do really)
* Curry powder. Lots of this
* Chilli powder. Lots of this too, but vary to taste. I like it spicy
* Cajun spice (to fry the steak in)
* Misc other spices. Basil, mixed spice, Chinese spice, anything is ok
* Gravox (this is to thicken the sauce so that we have a very rich sauce after we add…)
* Copious quantities of red wine. (I chose a $2.70 bottle of Bowler’s Run Merlot that I got cheap by the dozen.. I probably used about a third of a bottle, maybe more)
* Flat bread (any type will do) or even regular buttered bread. Toast is ok if your bread isn’t that fresh.

Directions

Start the rice in a rice cooker, because that way it will stay warm if you take longer to perfect your curry mix, and you really want to let it simmer for a while, and I like my rice to sit for a while in the warmer. Also half-cook your potato in a microwave. Not too long. If it’s just a small potato then just give it a few minutes on a low setting in the microwave. You want it to be soft enough to stick a knife through but not soft enough that it starts breaking apart.

Very lightly fry your onions and beef in a frying pan, while adding the cajun spices and other misc spices in a generous amount of oil, but don’t fry it too long. You just want to very lightly warm it and brown it on the outside. Don’t let the onion brown too much and don’t overcook the steak because you want it nice and tender. Make sure to turn it regularly. You want to seal the meat and cook it evenly, but still leave it soft and not completely cooked in the middle. A couple of minutes at most. Less is more. If your pieces are small enough, noone is ever going to complain that the meat in your curry isn’t cooked enough, but they sure will if it’s tough.

Throw your potato (after dicing it into small pieces), meat and onions into a pot with the stockpot mix, add your stock cube, a generous amount of curry powder, and a decent helping of chilli powder (you will adjust this to taste as you are cooking). Make sure the stove is on as low a heat as possible. You just want to simmer this stuff. No more than a very light boil.

Add wine. I mean LOTS of wine. You’re going to be adding a lot of extra veges, meat and curry and gravy powder so you need heaps of extra liquid. Remember, this is no longer some plain old tinned stock pot meant to be eaten by itself. We want a nice, rich, saucy curry. If you have added enough meat and veges, you can spread this meal out to serve as many people as you desire, though if you want to serve more than five people it might be wise to make it two tins of of the beef stockpot, though it’s just a base, so you don’t have to, but if it’s cheap, it makes a great base for this meal. Also you could consider one tin of the stock pot mix and another packet beef soup mix or similar. You just want a nice rich sauce. That’s the key.

Once you have had everything bubbling away nicely for a while, decide on how much quantity you have and whether you are happy with your ratios of vegetables, meat and sauce. This is how I cook. You throw it all in and then judge how the ratios are working. Taste the sauce. Is it spicy enough ? Chilli is great because it makes people feel full and content more quickly and they eat less but still feel like they’ve had a great meal. If you are adventurous you can even add diced fresh chilli if you have some. But if you have something like fresh chilli in your garden, you probably know what you’re doing and don’t need my help. Add SHITLOADS of red wine. No, serious, the red wine will give it a very dark colour and a really nice taste, though be careful because it can make your meat more chewy, which is why we don’t add it too early. Remember, wine never killed anyone (in the short term). Besides, if you’re serving kids, it’ll probably help put them to sleep early. Oh don’t look at me like that. A little alcohol helps kids sleep better. It isn’t going to turn them into alcoholics if it’s in their food. Don’t mind if your sauce is still watery at this point, because we’ll fix that in the final step.

When you consider that it’s nearing completion, add your Gravox powder. This will thicken it up and give it even more of a rich, beef flavour (though there’s no reason you can’t use chicken gravy for a more unusual taste.. experimentation is the spice of life). Don’t add too much though, because gravy mix takes a minute or so to coagulate, and by the time you serve this, it will be even thicker than it is in the pot. Trust me, a light, runny sauce is going to go over great when you pour it all over your rice. You will be giving your guests spoons rather than forks and serving the result in a bowl.

Taste the mix and make sure it’s curry enough and spicy enough. If you overdid the gravy mix, then add more wine. If you overdid the wine, then add more gravy. If necessary, throw in more vegetables to balance. No need to add more meat, because more vegetables never killed anyone, especially considering how much wine we’ve added. Feel free to add more wine at this point ! Drink heavily while cooking as well. It’ll make you more confident and more open to experimentation… and I don’t just mean in the kitchen (rrroawwr !)

Make sure your bread is slightly warm if it’s flatbread, or butter your regular bread if you’ve gone that way. Serve the rice into bowls and pour the whole curry mix that you’ve made over the top. Let people mix it up themselves because you want them to taste the delicious curry you’ve made first, before mixing the rice through it for the final taste. Remember, this is going to be a surprisingly filling meal, so don’t over do it. Plus, make sure you have AMPLE bread, because people love bread with this sort of curry, and the bread is pretty filling too. Serve with even more wine… for the guests this time. Though make sure that any guests that need to go home have a designated driver.

So… how did that go ? I’m not going to post a photo of my creation, because it’s just a curry and it’s not like it looks that appealing, but if you are trying to show off, then definitely add some garnish. If you want to be really fancy, add a small five or six pointed arrangement of yellow capsicum on top of the curry bowl with a sprig of parsley in the middle. I guarantee it will go over well and your guests will think you are a master chef.

I hope you have a lovely dinner and learn the value of experimental cooking. Good cooks can make something great from whatever is left over in their fridge and cupboards, and people always love it when you serve them a great meal and you just say “Oh, I didn’t have much, so I just threw together whatever I had in my fridge and cupboard”.

Enjoy, and look forward to my next recipe. I figure that since I love to cook and show off what I’ve made, I may as well turn it into some sort of cooking guide. Maybe I’ll post some videos of me cooking. I have made some, but they’re mostly private for friends, so if you liked this, I might do some for the public.

Ikadakimasu !

Tonight ? Well. This.

It’s a Chinese beef stir fry with green beans, baby corn, carrot, bamboo shoots, red capsicum and Japanese udon noodles with a variety of fresh herbs out of the garden, with sides of savoury mince rolls and chicken shu mai. Oh, and a lovely McWilliams Inheritance Shiraz-Merlot to wash it down with of course.

I bet you wish you were at my place for dinner, right ?

I wonder what Suki’s eating for dinner tonight. Probably spaghetti-o’s knowing her mother. Nevermind. One day she’ll have me cooking delicious dinners for her.

Not everything in your life is always how you’d like it. So the best way to avoid being depressed about it, especially if are likely to suffer from depression, is to find some small pleasures in your life that do make you happy.

How would I rather my life right now ? Well, I’d rather not be in Australia. It’s unbearably, nightmarishly hot and humid. So unpleasant that I can’t think, sleep, concentrate and I’m very liable to get extremely grumpy. The internet here fucking SUCKS, and I don’t have a car anymore, nor have I bothered to renew my license, so I can’t even borrow one, which means I have to walk everywhere or wait for lifts.

What would I rather be doing ? Well I’d rather be sitting in a nice airconditioned apartment somewhere far, far away. Perhaps in Manila, perhaps in Saigon, maybe even in Bangkok. Anywhere would better than here. Ideally I’d have a cold beer in my hand… probably a Saigon Red or a Chang, and I’d have some fast internet and some friends nearby while we listen to good music.

But, I certainly am able to make the best of what I have. I have a lovely private apartment on my parents’ property for which they are not asking me any rent. I have a collection of great new foreign DVD’s to watch that I bought overseas. And I take pleasure in the little things in life that I don’t always get to do while travelling. Like what things ? Well like cooking especially.

When I was on my last trip through Malaysia, Thailand and Laos, I only got to cook once. I borrowed my landlord’s kitchen in order to cook up a big spaghetti bolognaise for everyone to treat them to a western meal for a change. It was a lot of fun. I got all the ingredients ready, then I put on some good music and everyone sat outside the kitchen drinking beer while I ran around cooking it up in the landlord’s big wok. I had to substitute pork mince because beef was simply not available at my local supermarket despite it being a large Tescos, but noone even noticed, and when I told them they said it tasted great anyway.

I love cooking for other people, and in general I hate cooking for just myself and I will either make instant meals or I’ll cook up a large batch of lasagne or something and just eat it microwaved for the next week. But when you don’t get out much (I haven’t left home in a week) sometimes you need a little more in your life, and I find cooking always makes me immensely happy. A few nights ago I purchased some kangaroo steak, marinated it all day and then BBQ’d it with some fresh asparagus and vegetables. It was very tasty and a pleasure to eat a good steak for a change, especially something as exotic as kangaroo.

So last night, as you know if you read the previous article, I put on my new Morning Musume DVD and I cooked a nice meal again. It wasn’t overly complex, but it was varied and interesting and tasty. I had some Argentinean-style marinated steaks that I’d bought from the supermarket, and I BBQ’d those while boiling a large potato in which I put sour cream, lots of high quality New Zealand colby cheese, chopped spring onion, fresh basil, lemongrass and parsley from the garden, and short-cut rindless bacon strips. Needing an additional side dish, I lightly grilled some garlic bread.

I didn’t even eat it all. I wasn’t really that hungry, and the potato was very filling, but the steak had to be eaten as it was approaching its best before date. But it was just so much fun cooking it, while dancing around the house listening to Morning Musume and briefly chatting on IRC while I waited for things to cook.

I mean, anyone can wish they were somewhere else more interesting, but it’s much better to enjoy what you have. I mean, I could bitch about my Macbook and my Lenovo both being broken and needing repair, the heat, the substandard internet, and the lack of a good, SE Asian beer in my hand. But hey. I have a nice apartment, I have a bigass stereo on which to belt out Momusu, I have a TV and 5 computer screens on my desk, and I got to cook a delicious meal while talking to friends online. How could that not make me happy ? And here’s my delicious dinner as proof.

I’ve been stranded in Singapore since Thursday. I’ll tell you more about that later but right now I just want to tell you about some of the amazingly nice people I’ve met just wandering around Singapore. Sure, everyone in Vietnam is very friendly… but you know why of course. They either want your money directly or they want to rip you off. There are very few truly genuine Vietnamese people who will treat you with respect. But Singapore is not Vietnam.

Firstly… It cost me a lot of money to change my flight. Pretty much every cent I had left in fact. I had just enough money to arrange another flight home and then I was basically so broke I couldn’t afford to eat. I mean a Double Whopper with Cheese in Changi Airport is about $12.50 … and that’s not a meal… that’s just the burger ! Seriously !

I was sitting at the internet terminals and everyone was having problems because the primary Wifi access point that the information desk was telling everyone to use (You have to show them your passport and they give you a 4 hour password to use the wifi) didn’t work and everyone was confused.

Fortunately I knew that SG and Starhub are the same company and so I was providing tech support for everyone in the airport lounge, advising them how to get online since the information desk were as useless as tits on a bull. A Filipino guy joked “Sounds like you should work here. You obviously know more than they do. Maybe they should be paying you since you’re in here doing IT support for everyone.

He started chatting to me more and asked where I was headed and I told him Brisbane and he said “Wow. Me too ! What suburb ?” and I said “I don’t live there anymore but I used to live in Inala” and he said “That’s amazing. My family live in Archerfield… right beside Inala. That’s where I’m headed now. What a coincidence !”. I reluctantly said to him “Hey I don’t mean to sound like I’m hustling… but I missed my connecting flight and I’m out of money. You don’t want to buy a laptop hard drive do you ?” He asked how much and I said “I’d sell one for $60 ? At least that’d get me out of trouble and let me eat a couple of meals here”.

He said “No thanks I don’t really need one. But look. I’ll do something for you because you’re a fellow Brisbanite. Take this” and he handed me a large wad of Pesos from the Philippines. I said “Oh wow. Thank you so much. How much is that worth if I exchange it ?” and he said “Mmmmm. A bit less than a hundred dollars Singapore. About 80 Aussie dollars”. I said “Oh my god. I can’t possibly accept that ! Not unless you take a hard drive or something”. He said “Don’t worry about it. I’m the CEO for an aircraft engineering company. A hundred dollars is nothing to me. That’ll help you get buy in Singapore because it’s a really expensive place. I recommend you forget about getting accommodation and sleep upstairs in the lounge. Everyone does it. And go to the 7-11 and buy some cups of noodles. They have hot water there and you can make it on the spot and even buy bread and cheap sandwich ham. You don’t have to pay $25 a meal at these bullshit restaurants that way”.

I was just flabbergasted that this guy I’d never met was just being so generous to me. He then asked what I did for a living and I told him I made web pages. He said “Oh. Maybe we can do business then. I will need a web page for my new company in a couple of months. Are you good ?” and I said “Been doing it for 16 years mate” and he said “Wow that is impressive. Here’s my card. Send me an email. When I need it done. You’re my man”.

So not only did this total stranger just GIVE me close to a hundred dollars so that I could afford to eat and get into the city to buy some clean clothes in Chinatown but he even offered me a job.

But he wasn’t the only amazing person I met. When I went into the city on the train I went to a Japanese restaurant because I swear they have MILLIONS of Japanese restaurants here. I think there’s probably more Japanese restaurants than all other countries combined. So at first I went into MOF, the Japanese Sweets store and restaurant that I love so much in Saigon. But when I looked at the price of a beer… it was $11 for a Sapporo. I just couldn’t afford that. So I went to another place nearby. It was an “All you can eat and all you can drink for 80 minutes Sukiyaki and Shabu Shabu” place. The price wasn’t cheap, but I knew that at least I could finally enjoy a few beers without spending every cent I had.

Needless to say I had the waitress who was serving me running back for more beers pretty damn often ! I’ve never a met a Singaporean girl before and to be honest I actually thought she was Japanese. At many of the Japanese places they are trained to speak basic Japanese but this girl was new and knew nothing and when I said a couple of things in Japanese she asked politely what I was saying. I said “Oh I didn’t realise you weren’t Japanese. I’m sorry. You’re Singaporean ?” and she said “Yes. But I’d like to learn some Japanese so I can do my job better. Could you teach me some ?”

I laughed and taught her how to say good morning, afternoon and evening and say thank you and please and excuse me and she dutifully wrote it all down and then made a fairly decent attempt at thanking me in Japanese. I chuckled and asked if I could get a photo of her. She said “Wouldn’t you rather get one with both of us ?” and I said “Sure ok” and she called over another girl to take a photo of us together with our arms around each other’s shoulders doing the victory sign and everything. It was so cool. Her name was Audrey. She even gave me her email address !!!! I doubt I’ll have a chance to see her tomorrow before I go because she’ll be working and I can’t afford to eat there a second time but at least I can chat to her a little later. Not every girl you have to meet has to result in a relationship. Sometimes it’s just nice to meet someone nice… make a connection… take a photo… and then go your separate ways thinking “Wow. That was a really nice person I just met”.

Then I met some real Japanese women. I was at the hotel in the airport because I had bought some cheap (by Singaporean standards) clothes in Chinatown and I was so desperate for a shower I was willing to pay the $8 they were asking for a 10 minute shower. Two middle aged Japanese women came in and I heard one introduce herself as Misaki. When they realised there was a 40 minute wait on the showers they walked out in disgust but as they were leaving I called out “Kombanwa Misaki-san” (Good evening) and she turned and looked at me puzzled, probably wondering how I knew her. I said “Genki desu ka ?” (Are you well ?) and she nodded and said “Hai. Genki desu.” (Yes, I’m well) I said “Watashi wa David. Hajimimashite” (My name is David. Nice to meet you).

Unfortunately that was about the end of my conversational Japanese abilities so I reverted to English and said “Excuse me for asking, but I’m collecting foreign coins from around the world for my daughter and even though she has a Japanese name… Suki actually and no, her mum isn’t Japanese I just like Japanese culture. But I’ve never met anyone who could give me any Japanese Yen. You don’t have any small value Japanese coins on you do you ?”

She said “Wow. That’s so sweet that your daughter has a Japanese name, and such a pretty one too. Yeah I have a few Yen on me. Here’s a few for your collection” and she gave me some Yen and I thanked her profusely in Japanese and she just chuckled and said “No problem. Nice to meet someone so interested in Japanese culture”

I had to go collect my bag of stuff that I’d left at the lock-up room while I went into Singapore City and when I got there the guy was out and had a note saying he’d be back later. On the counter was a small bowl of tips that people had left. Just like 2 and 5 cent value pieces but they came from all sorts of interesting countries including some I had never gotten coins from. I knew there were cameras there so I felt weird about it but I took all the small coins that I was interested in and then I left a 1 US dollar note in the plate and sat and waited for him to return.

When he came back the first thing he noticed was the dollar bill sitting in the bowl and said “Is that from you ?” and I said “Yes. I hope you don’t mind but I collect coins and I took a few of the small coins you had in your tip bowl and I gave you a dollar to replace them”. He said “No that’s more than ok. Those coins weren’t even worth 20 cents. A one dollar tip is much appreciated. You’re very much welcome to them” and then he got me my bags and said “Thanks for being so honest. Most people would have pinched the coins and just left” and I said “I couldn’t do that. They may be small change but stealing tips is a low act. I’m just glad you didn’t mind me replacing them with a dollar note instead” and he said “Of course not. It’s a pleasure. Those coins were useless to me. I can’t even exchange them because the currency places don’t take coins so at least a dollar bill is worth something to me. You’re doing me a favour if anything”. So we both left happy and satisfied that we’d somehow helped the other person out.

Later this evening I was sitting packing my stuff. I had bought a few small souvenirs. I bought some really nice Vietnamese rice wine before I left Saigon and I didn’t have enough space in my two carry on bags to carry them so I had to buy a small bag that I could squeeze my camera and my souvenirs of Singapore into so I’d bought a cute “Angry Birds” kids travel backpack because it was the cheapest bag I could buy in the airport. Many places wanted as much as $800 for a bag but this kids backpack was only about $50 and I needed it so I bought it. Anyway I was packing my stuff into it and I realised I’d bought TWO boxes of the gigantic imitation Pocky they sell here and there was no way I could take them home.

I had been listening to an American woman talking to her daughter in the lounge chairs next to me and her young daughter wanted more snacks but her mum said she couldn’t have any. I said “Hi. I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but I have this gigantic box of snacks that I can’t possibly take back on the plane. If it’s ok with you, your daughter can have them”. She said “Really ? Thank you ! That’s so nice of you. Abigail. Thank the nice man for the treats”. But Abigail, who was probably four or five was far too shy and shook her head and clutched the huge box to her chest. I chatted to her mum a bit and asked where she’d been living and she said “Kuala Lumpar” and I said “Oh. You don’t happen to have any small coins from there do you ? I collect coins for my own daughter” and I showed her the MASSIVE collection I’d just finished sorting and putting into a smaller bag.

She said “Wow.. that’s impressive. Yeah I do actually. Here’s one of each of all the denominations of coins from Malaysia. That’s hardly a fair trade for the huge box of snacks you just gave Abby but I hope it helps your collection” and I said “Yes. That’s wonderful. Thank you SO very much” and she just said “No. It’s my pleasure. What’s your daughter’s name ?” and of course I told her and showed her my tattoo and she thought it was so sweet that I had a tattoo of Suki’s name written in Japanese. She asked if I would mind keeping an eye on their stuff while she took Abby to the bathroom and I did and then they had to leave. By that time Abigail had opened up and when they left she waved at me and said “Bye bye mister. Thank you” and I nearly cried in happiness just from meeting such lovely people.

That’s what travelling is about. It’s not about taking photos of old buildings and buying postcards. It’s about meeting really wonderful people and talking to them and finding what you have in common and then parting ways knowing just a tiny bit more about another human being and feeling a tiny bit happier for the experience. Sure, getting out on the train and seeing a tiny bit of Singapore was amazing and Chinatown was pretty cool (though I’m disappointed I didn’t have time to see Little India which I believe is another cool suburb of Singapore) but even just sitting around at Changi airport I still met the most wonderful people and we shared stories and random people helped me out when I was down on my luck and I got offered some work and I chatted to some lovely Japanese women in their native language and then I gave a little girl and her mother a big box of snacks and everyone was happy.

Don’t travel for the sake of seeing tourist bullshit. Don’t do tours. Don’t go to stupid tourist traps. Get out and meet real people. Whether they’re tourists too or whether they’re locals… just meet people. It’s what travelling is all about.

You know. I’ve said it before. It’s the journey, not the destination.

Oh and I know you want to see what Audrey the cute Singaporean girl who worked at the Japanese restaurant looks like right ? Ok, here’s a photo of us together. She’s not the girl of my dreams, but apparently the girl of my dreams isn’t interested in me and thinks I can do better than her. Which is just code for “I don’t like you but I’m going to say something nice so that you don’t hate me”. Anyway, here’s Audrey.

I’ll summarise in advance. “Great restaurant. Great night. Crazy floods”. Now let me expand on that.

I went out for dinner. But I chose the wrong time to do it. Just like yesterday I went out just as the schools closed but for some reason I don’t understand, it’s not just the schools who get busy at that time of day. It becomes INSANE on the street. The footpaths are filled with thousands of male students in boring white shirts and girls in beautiful traditional style dresses but with pant legs for convenience.

But it’s the way the streets get crazy near the school that is really mad. The streets just pile up and noone moves. It becomes motorbike gridlock. Oh how I wish I had my camera there because it was something to see. There are just hundreds and hundreds of stalled motorbikes stuck in traffic within in a tiny radius. Apparently there are certain times you don’t want to go out in an area near a school, and I guess the worst of those are school opening and school closing hours.

But I struggled through it and headed off for something to eat. I wanted something different and I know there’s a limited number of “nice” restaurants in my area so I was prepared for the possibility of having to choose a tiny little non-English-speaking non-menu-possessing cafe where I had to walk in and just indicate I was hungry and let them serve me anything. But I wanted something substantial because I hadn’t eaten all day, so I sort of thought maybe I would look for something a bit upmarket. By upmarket in District 8 I mean an outdoor restaurant that might POSSIBLY have an English menu.

I walked past my favourite Singapore noodle place, but they’re a bit nosy and intrusive and the staff always buzz around and watch over my shoulder which is a little unprofessional and off-putting at times, and I walked past Cau Xanh but while I love them I’ve eaten everything they have and lately they haven’t had the meals I’ve ordered which is really annoying and I definitely wanted to eat something different. So I just kept walking. There was an indoor restaurant I’ve passed before that looks interesting. They didn’t have it tonight but I have once seen a sign outside that said “Live music” in English and I have always thought “Oh really ? Live music ? I do wanna go there”.

But it was dark and indoors and I couldn’t really judge what it looked like and I tend to pick these things on gut feeling. It looked OK but it didn’t reach out and grab me, so I kept walking. Then I saw another place I’ve passed before. There’s nothing visible on the front but a small darkened room, but a big sign proclaims in Vietnamese and English “Garden Restaurant” with a sign pointing off to the side

Hmmmmm, “Garden Restaurant” ? I like the sound of that. I peered down the side street and saw nothing much but it appeared the restaurant was located down the alley. I crossed the road and walked down. It was very large, sprawling over several hundred meters, having many lovely thatched pagodas out the front and large under cover areas and lots of seating and there were very few people there. There were a couple of Asian girls in pretty traditional dresses sitting outside who smiled at me and waved as I walked along. Ok. I’m sold. This place looks really cool.

I walked up and said “Xin chao” and a girl leapt up from her seat and said something to me. I had no idea what it was and I just smiled and assumed she was asking “Just you ?” and I raised one finger and said “mot”. I must have guessed right because she nodded and led me through the restaurant to a large pagoda with a table and 6 seats around it. I was thinking “Seriously ? You want me to take this whole pagoda just for myself ? Surely you have other people coming who need this more. Why don’t you give me a shitty little table in the corner ?”

But she just smiled at me and pulled a seat out for me and I figured “Oh well, I guess I’m getting special treatment because I’m a westerner and she wants to make sure I’m happy so she’s giving me this huge special pagoda normally reserved for larger groups to myself”. I didn’t complain. It was very nice.

Another guy came out and turned my glass up the right way. I think that was his only job. It was her job to put ice in it and ask me what I wanted to drink. I said “Saigon” and she looked at the guy uncertainly. He said “Saigon ?” and I nodded and said “Mot chai Saigon do” and he nodded and said to her “Saigon red stupid. You heard the man”. Well, I’m only guessing. She presented me with the menu and scurried off.

Oh damn. They may have a couple of English words on their sign outside but their menu is NOT in English. Not a word. But they have pictures. Out of every page that has maybe 20 items, there are about 5 pictures per page. So at least 1/4 of the meals are pictured so you’re not completely in the dark. And of course I’m not stupid and I know a few Vietnamese words. I know what “Bo Luc Lac” means for instance (it’s sauted beef cubes with vegetables), so even though that’s not pictured, I know what it is and I could order it if I wanted.

But I don’t want that. What do I want ? Damn. I dunno. They have such a great menu. I look at the boar page. Mmmmm, it has pictures of whole boars and you can actually order a whole boar for less than $40. Damn I bet that’d make a great night out. But I pick one of the meals of boar ribs of some sort. I point it out to the waitress and she repeats it to the waiter because I presume he’s here to make sure she doesn’t fuck anything up. Not that he can speak English either, it’s just that he has a penis therefore he’s superior to her and therefore she has to defer to him. (Hey, don’t put shit on me, I didn’t invent Vietnamese sexism I’m just telling you how it works)

He says something to me in Vietnamese and raises two fingers and asks “Hai ?” and I don’t really know for sure what he means but I can take a guess. The meal is very cheap, only 39,000 dong which is very cheap for a nice restaurant (that is, one a little bit classier than Cau Xanh) so he’s asking me if I want two servings. I nod and say “vang” because I just learnt that today and I want to say “yes” in Vietnamese even though I’m quite sure they’d understand me if I said “oogabooga” and nodded my head.

The meal comes and it’s interesting. It’s very bony meat, so I get why he wanted to give me two serves. It’s certainly not as big as it was pictured but I’m hardly concerned because even two serves are like $3.50 and when I try it, it’s very tasty. Sure it’s only small bits of meat on the bone but it’s very delicious, flavoursome meat and I pick it up with my chopsticks and shove each piece in my mouth and then chew up all the meat and then pull the bone out and put it gingerly back on my plate.

I’m always a bit nervous about doing this because this isn’t India and people don’t eat with their hands here. I haven’t observed people eating this sort of meal so I really have no idea how they do it, but I’ve eaten bony meals before like this and remove the bones with my hands and left them on the plate and noone’s looked at me in disgust like I’m crazy so I presume it’s fine to do it like that. And even if it’s not, I’m sure they’ll give me some leeway.

Not that I could even imagine another way of eating it. If you’re meant to pick it up with your chopsticks and nibble the meat off it without touching it, well frankly that’s just retarded and I’d rather do it my way and look out of place than try and do it some stupid way just for the sake of fitting in. If I was on a date I would pick a meal I understood so that I didn’t run the risk of looking stupid, but I’m here alone, so I don’t really mind that much. I’m going to reasonable lengths to look as least foreign as I can but you can’t push it to the extreme. Sometimes you just need to eat and stop worrying about whether you’re eating in the right way.

Because I’m a westerner I guess they want to be a bit more careful and the waitresses asks me before opening every beer. Perhaps they’ve been told that foreigners aren’t always used to this “drink until you say no more” custom, because she picks up every beer and looks at me and points to it and says something which includes the word “chai” so therefore must be “Another bottle ?” and of course I nod and she pours it for me.

Suddenly the heavens open up and rain falls from the sky like a cow falling out of an aeroplane (What ? I was out of beautiful metaphors so I went for a funny one. Get off my back !) and suddenly the sky, which has been darkening for hours is lit up with lighting and my ears are pummeled by the thunderous applause of the gods. Damn. When it rains like THIS in Saigon, you know it’s not going to stop straight away. I wish I had an umbrella. I’ve been offered one before by street vendors and refused. I have no idea why, it’s just that I sort of like being caught in the rain. There’s something beautiful and romantic about being caught in a thunderstorm in summer in Asia.

But this is SERIOUS rain. Within minutes, the little ornate carved gutters around my pagoda are overflowing and all the terracotta fish and frogs and hedgehogs in the garden are all drowning under several inches of water. They don’t have storm water drains in this part of Saigon. There are some central locations in the city where they have that, but certainly not in the suburbs, and I rapidly get the feeling I am going to be isolated in my tiny thatched hut island. Fortunately the tiny clay aqueducts around my pagoda are more than just ornamental and they prevent the rising water from spilling over the edge and lapping at my feet.

When I get up to go to the toilet, (which the waitress thankfully understood and directed me to immediately) I stepped out into the rain only to have another waitress nearby scream out “Anh !” and a guy ran over to me with an umbrella in order to protect me from the pouring rain, even though I only had to walk about 5 or 6 meters to the toilet. I mean seriously, that’s service.

You come into a place like this and pay a few dollars per meal and a few cents per beer and people will rush out to hold an umbrella over your head to stop you getting wet in the rain. Maybe it helps to be a westerner or whatever, but ultimately they assume I’m just visiting and probably figure they’ll never see me again, but they certainly go out of their way to make you feel welcome and while I feel slightly embarrassed and uncomfortable and want to say “It’s ok. I don’t care. It’s just water” obviously it’s what they do and it would be rude to reject their hospitality.

I return to my table and since the rain is still pouring down I ask for the menu again and flick through it. I try and pretend that I’m reading the textual side on the left, and to some extent I am browsing it to see if I recognise anything but mostly I’m looking at the pictures on the right hand page, but look, I think I’m pretty brave being here at a Vietnamese restaurant in District 8 where noone speaks English in the first place. I don’t mind taking a few liberties and comforts and ordering based on pictures. I can pick random meals from a Vietnamese menu any time. Tonight I’m going to take advantage of this nice place and order something nice where I know what it is.

They have these very impressive looking shish kebabs on their bo (beef) page. I looked at them before but I wanted something more exotic, and while the boar was delicious, it wasn’t very filling. The shish kebabs aren’t cheap though. 89,0000 dong for three shish kebabs is pretty damn expensive for District 8 in Saigon I think, but they do look tasty and wholesome so I order them. When they come (it takes quite a while) the waitress looks at me and holds up a fork to them and asks me a question. I have NO fucking idea what she asks me but she’s obviously asking something about the serving of them and I figure that if she’s asking me then it’s obviously some convenience that she’s offering me that people sometimes prefer. Whatever. If she thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll go along with it so I nod my head and smile and confirm that I want whatever she’s offering.

As it turns out all she’s asking is if I want all the ingredients removed from the sticks and placed on the plate, which she does for me and I’m quite thankful because I didn’t really want to pick them up and gnaw on them as is because it just doesn’t seem the done thing in Vietnam. I mean, I’ve never observed someone eating this type of meal here so I don’t know, and obviously there must be SOME meals they have to eat with their hands but I figure if she’s suggested that I take the contents off the stick then sure, that seems like a good idea and it’s going to make me look a little less like a caveman when I eat it.

The only thing is she puts a fork in front of me. I look at the fork and look at my chopsticks and then at the fork and figure “oh well, she’s given me a fork so maybe I should use that”. It’s fucking useless. God forks are shitty utensils. Whoever invented that shit was a total dick. I sit there stabbing at this piece of apricot trying to impale it on a fork and just give up and throw my fork down in disgust and pick up a pair of chopsticks. I guess this is the point that I realise I finally am as good as bloody Asian because using a fork feels totally fucking foreign and ineffectual to me and when I pickup the chopsticks I have no difficulty whatsoever getting the contents of my plate into my mouth. Forks be damned, chopsticks are easier to use and more effective. Anyone who doesn’t think so just hasn’t bloody tried them.

The shish kebabs are better than I could have imagined. My parents make great shish kebabs at home on the bbq with capsicum and onion and apricot and beef and tomato and other stuff but to be honest, there’s always something I don’t really like like mushrooms and such and I end up picking a bunch of stuff off and leaving it on my plate. But these ones are fucking fantastic. Perfectly cooked with a tiny bit of singing on the edges of the onion and capsicum, with juicy apricot and … well…. the meat ? It’s not beef. It can’t be. It simply cannot be beef.

Beef does not come in such a tender form. Look I’ve had Japanese Kobe. It’s not like this. This isn’t beef. It’s lamb. And it’s probably THE most well cooked and juicy lamb I have EVER eaten in my life, even in New Zealand. It is A-Maze-Ing. Every morsel just melts in my mouth and I moan in pleasure and savour every last bite. It’s seared and ever so slightly and well-done on the outside and pink and juicy in the middle. Seriously, how can you make a shish kebab that is so good that the person eating it moans in pleasure ? I have never had that before. This is the shish kebab of the GODS it is so good.

It’s so good in fact, that I am reluctant to eat it all at once. I leave several pieces of delicious tender lamb sitting on my plate so that I can eat them later when I’m ready. Fortunately in Vietnam they would never DARE take your plate away without your permission. Even if it’s totally empty they will ask your permission before they remove it, just in case you want to pick it up and lick it clean or something. I dunno, but even if they can’t speak your language, they won’t take your plate without confirming you are DEFINITELY finished your meal, which is good.

I hear this person calling out. Not yelling, just crying out a little louder than everyone else. Since my laptop battery has gone dead due to the long rainstorm which has kept me here longer than intended I don’t have much to do except look around and I glance over and about 6 meters away in the main pavilion area there is this young Asian girl frantically waving at me and saying “Hello !!!!!!!”

ROFL. I thought maybe I had escaped that tonight by sitting alone so far from everyone else but apparently not. She saw me from far across the restaurant and was like “OMG I HAVE to say hello to that foreigner ! I’m going to yell out to him until he hears me and says hello because that’s going to make me so happy if he says hello to me”.

When I finally notice her and realise that she’s the one who’s been yelling out for half a minute to get my attention I feel like facepalming but I just grin in embarrassment and wave back to her and say “Hello”. She quickly slaps all her nearby friends and says something to them and points to me as if to say “The foreigner said hello to me !”. LOL ! A couple of them glance in my direction and one says something to her which is probably “Jesus girl, get the hell over it. There’s plenty of foreigners in the city if you are really that obsessed with them. What’s so special about this one ?”

But I catch her looking at me several more times after that and she waves to me a few times and it’s both embarrassing and charming at the same time. I mean if I ever needed a sign that a Vietnamese girl was into foreigners, this girl has one hanging over her head in 20 foot high flashing neon that says “I TOTALLY DIG WESTERN GUYS”. It’s sort of embarrassing, but it is pretty cool and I do feel really flattered. Man if she was alone and wasn’t with a table full of Vietnamese guys I would totally be like “Hey, come over and sit with me and we’ll have a beer”.

The rain is still coming down, but it begins to almost imperceptibly let up and I wonder if it might be possible to make a break for it soon. I consider the possibility of catching a taxi, but the thing is I don’t know the address of this place and finding it out would be awkward and I don’t really feel like asking them to call me a taxi because I don’t like to impose and look like an idiot who can’t take care of himself. I mean on this occasion I know it’s only going to be about 90 cents to my home, but I figure it’s just not worth the effort. I’m not scared of rain and it HAS to let up eventually right ?

I look at the road which is now well and truly under water. I see someone walk down the road and it’s at least a foot and a half deep. No big deal though, right ? 18 inches is nothing. I order another beer and decide to wait and see what happens. If it doesn’t let up in another half hour I will swallow my pride and ask them to call me a taxi. But the rain doesn’t let up and I’m sitting there looking out in amusement at the warm August monsoon rains falling around me and turning the streets into rivers.

I look around too. For some reason one of the girls at the table with the girl who greeted me is apparently special. One of the staff and one of her guests nearly fall over themselves providing an umbrella to protect her from the 6 inches of uncovered awning between the main building and their building. Why ? Who is she ? She’s definitely not pretty. Not even remotely. I could pick a million girls prettier, but apparently despite being barely 20, she commands some sort of fearsome respect. I’m fascinated, wondering who she is and why people twice her age are tripping over themselves to pull out her chair and protect her from the rain. WHO IS SHE !??! I only wish I knew. She’s obviously very important for some reason and I suspect everyone at the table is probably there either at her invitation or in her honour.

Finally though, the rain dies down enough that I figure that I can leave. Sure, it’s still raining steadily, but it’s not like I’m afraid of getting wet because I’m not THAT far from home and if I arrive home soaking wet, so what ? I can take a hot shower and change my clothes and be fine. But mainly I don’t want to look odd, and Vietnamese people don’t normally walk in the rain. They will shelter under an awning in even a little bit of rain so I’d look pretty weird if I walked home in the middle of a monsoonal downpour.

But it gets gentle enough that I think it’s safe to leave, so I turn to the waitress who’s basically been hovering nearby the entire night and say “Tinh Tien ?” and she immediately nods and runs off. Ahh. It’s quite nice to be understood. Sure I could have pretended to write on my hand and said “Bill” and she would have understood me but given me a second glance and maybe a question to confirm, but it’s nice to just be able to say exactly what you want and for them to understand you and run off to do it. It’s just more relaxing to be able to communicate clearly without confusion and guessing and I love that I can do that.

I remember last night at another restaurant when I was meeting with this American guy over dinner and I called to a waitress and said “Em oi !” and he said “Wow you must have been here a few times if you know their names” and I looked at him oddly and said “How long have you lived here ?” and he said “Bit over a year” and I said “And you seriously don’t know what that means ? That’s how you address a younger person. You say ‘Em’ for a younger person and ‘Anh’ for an older person. How could you not know that ?” and he sorta looked at me embarrassed and said “I guess I don’t come into Vietnamese places” and I just shook my head in wonderment at the idea that you could live here for an entire year and not pick up on the most common way to address a younger waitress when surely he must see people do it every single day.

When the girl comes out with the bill she’s wearing these tiny purple thongs to suit her tiny Vietnamese feet and even in the restaurant there’s easily 6 inches of water in some spots between the awnings and she slips and very nearly goes arse up. As soon as I realise she’s slipped my hand flies out to grab hers but fortunately (or unfortunately) she puts her hand behind her and the railing of the pagoda saves her and she lets out this huge sigh of relief. Had she been standing one foot to the left, nothing would have saved her from going arse up in half a foot of water which would have been incredibly embarrassing for her.

Well, unless I’d have hopefully caught her as she fell. I can’t but wish that had happened and I had caught her hand and prevented her falling into the puddle. Ahhh, that would have been romantic, wouldn’t it ? I reckon if I’d done that I could probably ask her for her phone number and she wouldn’t have been able to refuse. Sadly circumstances didn’t make that happen and she saved herself before she grabbed my hand. Oh well. One can dream, can’t one ?

She brings me the bill and it’s almost exactly $10 Australian. Ok so that is quite a lot, but to be fair this is a nice place and I’ve had a double serving of boar and a serving of fairly expensive lamb shish kebabs and probably nearly a dozen beers so I can’t say I’m really disappointed. I actually think that’s a fantastic price to basically rent this little pagoda to myself for the entire evening and get waited on hand and foot and have people shelter me from the rain on my way to the toilet and top up my beer every time I take a sip and serve me peanuts in between meals and … god I can’t even remember the things they’ve done for me tonight, but for $10, that’s pretty fucking amazing, even for Vietnam.

When I get up and leave, the girl at the table who yelled out to me sees me go and waves frantically and I grin in embarrassment and wonder why she cares. I’m not even an attractive guy. Maybe I have an ok face, but I’m just some overweight Aussie with nothing really special going for him, but this girl is waving to me like I’m Justin fucking Bieber and it’s a little weird to be honest, but I am a little bit used to it because it does happen a fair bit, so it’s not totally crazy. Just a little bit odd from my perspective and a tiny bit embarrassing. The idea that I could be embarrassed by a pretty girl getting my attention like that is something that I could have never comprehended before I came to Vietnam.

I tell you what though, when I get up the road I appreciate the magnitude of the rainstorm. Sure it may have only rained for maybe 4 or 5 hours, but it was solid, torrential rain, and streets in Saigon don’t have storm water drains except in key areas in the city. Around here, the main roads are just built up a little higher so that the water flows off into the side streets, which is exactly what it has done.

I am stunned as I walk past street after street that have turned into deep rivers and parking lots that have turned into lakes. I mean there are literally handlebars peeking up through the water, indicating that there is at least three foot of water in these little streets that have gathered in just a few hours. Holy shit. What would happen if it rained for a week solid like it did during the Brisbane floods ? Even the second storey houses here would be underwater. Millions of people would be displaced. It would be a massive natural disaster. Whoever it was many months ago that tried to tell me that Saigon didn’t have floods more than a couple of feet high was a fucking retard. They have those sort of floods after a mere few hours.

When I get to my area though, my mind is blown. Sure, it was cool looking at the streets to the left of Pham Hung, all underwater by a couple of feet, but when I get into my neighbourhood it’s basically fucking Venice. There is NO land in sight. Every street is far under water and there is nothing dry to be seen and the water is up past steps and lapping inside the ground floor by the looks.

I see two guys standing watching a young kid wade through the water. He’s up well past his waist. Shit. I have to walk through that to get home ? I pull my mobile phone and wallet and everything out of my pocket and slip it all inside my laptop sleeve which I hold above my head as I wade through the water. I must admit, it is beautiful. Don’t even try and say “It’s full of dysentery ! You know they leave their rubbish in the street !” because I just don’t care. There is nothing that could make THIS quantity of water toxic. This is a flood. You could pour anthrax into this water and it wouldn’t hurt anyone due to the massive quantity of water.

When I waded through that water in the middle of my street I was literally up to my waist. It was lapping around the top of my shorts. I cannot believe that in no more than 5 or 6 hours, this whole street has become three foot under water. That’s amazing. But it’s pretty cool. I mean sure, under normal circumstances I would probably be annoyed with this and just want to get home dry, but come on… I’m in the middle of a beautiful, warm summer monsoon thunderstorm of the sort I’ve never really experienced before and not only is the rain itself beautiful and warm but were there not the occasional bag of rubbish floating in it, I would genuinely jump in and swim in this water because it felt so good.

As I get up my street though it gets shallower and by the time I get to my house it’s actually completely above the water level. I guess my apartment block has been built on higher ground for good reason. I probably pay 20% more than an apartment down the road on the lower land for that reason alone. When I open the side gate to my apartment and slip inside the door which has been kindly left open I sigh and try and brush some of the water off me so that I don’t climb the stars dripping wet.

When I get into my apartment and close the door I strip my clothes off and jump into the shower just so that I know I’m safe from whatever was in that water. To be honest, I’m not in the slightest concerned and I would have happily swum in that water (though not put my head underwater) without washing, but just for the sake of all the people who will freak out if I don’t, I take a shower and make sure I’m clean and sanitary before I emerge warm and dry and throw myself onto my bed with a sigh.

Was that another good night ? Yes it was. That was a GREAT night. Sure, I may have spent $10 when I could have eaten and drunk at some shitty little rice or noodle place for a third of the price but it would have been difficult and annoying to explain what I wanted and do basically anything. But that place had free wifi, staff who respected you and wouldn’t even DREAM of making fun of you just for being different, fantastic food the quality of which I would place alongside that great Brazilian place in Q.3 at which I spent a million dong rather than 220,000 like I did here, and I was treated to a special VIP-style pagoda all to myself.

It was awesome. I loved it and if I get a chance, that is the FIRST place I am going to take any friends who visit my area. Sorry Cau Xanh, I am fond of you, but you’re basically just a cheap drinking and karaoke place that happens to have alright meals. This place was really something special and it just goes to show, your gut knows best and when it sees somewhere and says “Go in there. I think that place looks good” then you should listen to it, because it’s probably going to be right.

So thanks to the wonderful staff of the restaurant who’s name I don’t even know for keeping me dry. Thanks to the waitresses for paying so much attention to me. Thanks to the chefs for serving me literally the tastiest lamb that I have EVER eaten. And um… I dunno. Thanks to District 8 for being the sort of area you can even FIND a place like that !

Peace out and if you’re bored and want a great meal and this sort of experience, catch the first flight to Saigon and head to District 8. You’ll have to be brave, but it will be rewarding I can assure you.

I don’t think I’ve talked about this. Maybe I have. I can’t remember. It’s hard to distinguish between the stories I tell in my head and the ones that actually make it online. But I’m enjoying telling these tiny random short stories. Not every story has to be a 12,000 word epic tale. So here’s a simple one.

Have you ever had a girl (or guy, if you’re a girl, or whatever sex appeals to if you if you’re that way inclined) feed you ? By which I mean she cuts up something on her or your plate and holds it out to you on a fork (or chopsticks) for you to eat ?

It’s so cute and it’s really friendly and caring. It’s not like it’s incredibly intimate, here at least. It’s just… I struggle to find the right word. It’s just somehow sweet. It’s amusing and it’s a teensy bit embarrassing and a teensy bit exciting all at the same time. It makes you feel shy but also open and cared about at the same time. It doesn’t always mean a lot, but sharing a meal is sort of significant.

Some people hate sharing meals. They hate when they take someone to dinner and they want to share meals with them. I dunno why. I guess I can understand. You choose what you choose and it doesn’t mean you want what the other person has. But of course there’s no harm in them saying “Hey, this is really good. You should try some”, and then they cut a piece for you and add salt or pepper and hold it out for you to eat on the end of their fork and you open your mouth and they feed it to you.

To watch two people do this is really sweet and in a western society you tend to see it and think “Awwww. That’s really sweet. They must be deeply in love” because you don’t see it all that often. But I think it’s done much more commonly in Asia. Asian people don’t seem to have this absurd fear that by sharing a fork or a glass that you’re going to catch herpes off them and it’s not uncommon for someone you barely know to be willing to share their drink with you or share their food with you or even cut up their food and offer it to you on their fork for you eat.

I guess it’s more meaningful to me because we don’t really do that back home. Back in Australia, two people sipping out of the same bottle is serious freak-out stuff. It’s like “OMG that’s an indirect kiss” and it’s only done between people who desperately like each other. Here… not so much. Sure it’s sweet and friendly and not without meaning, but it doesn’t mean that just because you share your drink or your fork with someone that you want to sleep with them, which is pretty much what it means in many western countries, Australia at least.

I’ve had it happen a few times to be honest. In fact, I’ve had it happen so many times I’m not even sure I can count all of them, hahahahaha ! I know this probably sounds weird but yeah, I’ve had a few girls feed me from their fork. It’s really cute. When it happens you half blush and suddenly become aware of your surroundings and wonder who’s looking, but of course there’s no choice but to accept, so you lean forward and take the offered morsel from their fork and then you munch it up and say “Mmmmm. That’s very good” and then you chuckle and she grins happily at you.

I dunno. It’s just one of those things you do I guess. But it’s a cute experience. I’m not sure that I ever had that happen with my wife in 8 years together. Maybe once early on in our relationship. In western cultures it’s something you do when you’re in love to show how much you want the other person. Here, it’s simpler. It’s just sharing food and being friendly. It doesn’t come laden with quite the same amount of significance and connotations. It certainly doesn’t (necessarily) mean the girl wants to sleep with you, so if you’re in Korea or Vietnam or Japan or wherever and a girl holds out some food on a fork for you, don’t freak out and read too much into it. She’s just being friendly.

But enjoy it all the same. It’s a sweet gesture and I personally love it.

My mum said to me some months back “Don’t eat too much exotic food”. LOL. Seriously ? I eat nothing BUT exotic food. You get addicted to it and the thought of eating regular stuff just doesn’t appeal to you anymore. I mean, I’m not yet at the stage where I’m eating bull’s penis. I’m gonna save that for one day when I’m reeeeeaaallly drunk and I’ll just go “Yeah, get me another beer and a plate of bull’s cock”.

But I do love the exotic foods they serve at my favourite restaurant. I mean ostrich has become passe to me. I want something more. So tonight I was like “Hmmm. I haven’t eaten a goat before. I might have some goat”. So I ordered goat. The waitress came back and shook her hand. Damn. No goat. I ordered deer instead. She went away and came back only to tell me they didn’t have any deer either. Sigh. I ordered some wild boar because I know that’s delicious. No again. Seriously ? No boar either ? You guys SUCK. You had boar two nights ago.

I scowled at the menu. No way was I going to order something boring like rabbit. I eyed off a nearby cat that had been walking around all evening. “Can I eat that ?” I thought to myself. “Will they kill that cat and cook it up for me ?”. No, probably not. They don’t eat their own pets. They only eat other people’s pets. Hehehe. Dammit. I had to order Singapore noodles with beef. How BORING !

So I was a bit jaded with people yesterday. Westerners specifically though. I’ve just seen them being so rude and obnoxious and untrusting and untrustworthy and it pisses me off. Plus I also had a big argument with some people on IRC who I’d had issues with for ages who were just being assholes for reasons I couldn’t even be bothered going into. So last night I went to bed pretty pissed off and unhappy.

This morning, I woke up feeling much better as usual. Still very sick though. This latest bout of the flu is really nasty. Horrible racking cough that just incapacitates me and causes such spasms that the last two nights after dinner it’s caused me to throw up my meal because I’ve been coughing so violently. I feel like I’m becoming bulimic. But I was at least prepared for a fresh day when I got up.

I needed water because I was almost out so I went to Titan Mart and wandered around aimlessly for a while looking at snacks. I was hungry, but because I was sick, not very much appealed to me, and all I ended up buying to eat was one of these tiny little strawberry filled bread rolls for 12 cents and a teeny container of strawberry rice snacks sort of like Pocky for the same price. As well as the water I also picked up two bottles of my favourite 85 cent brandy. I like it because it’s 39% alcohol and taken straight it’s quite good to treat a sore throat. It’s also pretty good mixed with cola and I mean come on, it’s 6 standard drinks worth of really good brandy for 85 cents. How can you complain about that ? Oh, I also treated myself to a chocolate Paddle Pop. You remember when Paddle Pops used to be 50 cents ? Well guess what? They still are in Saigon. :”)

I mean, people already said hello to me on the way there and stuff which is normal and always gives me a small smile, even when I’m feeling terrible, actually… especially when I’m feeling terrible. But as I’m checking out, these little group of kids no more than about 10 walk in and they pass me, and the first one’s face lights up and he grins at me and says “Hello !” and I say hello back and the next one says “Hello !” just as excitedly, as does the next one and the next one.

The final one decided to go a bit further and he said “Hello. How are you ? What’s your name ?” Now I know from experience that they are taught to parrot these three phrases from a young age and many of them don’t even know what it means and if you turn around and tell them your name and ask them the same question back, they will have no idea what you’re saying, so normally I just say hello and don’t bother responding to the other questions, but this kid just seemed a little brighter than usual and his pronunciation was perfect.

So I said “I’m good thanks. My name is David. What’s your name ?” and he looked at me happily and said “My name Binh. Nice to meet you” and we shook hands. The clerk meanwhile is bagging up my groceries just laughing out loud to herself. But it made me so happy, you know ? For this little 10 or 11 year old boy to just walk up and go out of his way to speak to me in perfect English and ask what my name was and how I was doing and then tell me it was nice to meet me. It made me so much happier and feel so much better about the human race in general.

I know that it’s only because I’m a foreigner and a novelty in this area but come on. What do you think would happen if a 33 year old Vietnamese guy was walking through Woolworths in Annerley in Brisbane ? Do you think a bunch of 10 year old Aussie kids would walk up to him and all say “hello” to him and ask how he was doing and enquire what his name was, in ANY language ? Not in a pink fit. It just would NOT happen. This is one of the things I love about Vietnam. The fact that we were at war with these people less than 40 years ago, but now, you go to their country and they just go totally over the top showing you how welcoming and friendly they can be to you. It really does make your day.

So, feeling significantly better, I thought I’d go for a walk through the markets. I’m still looking for that 45 cent kid’s clothing guy again. I’ve wandered around looking for him at least half a dozen times since I first saw him but I’ve never seen him again much to my disappointment. The only reason I didn’t buy more the first time I saw him was because I was in such disbelief that it was possible to buy nice kid’s clothes for 45 cents each. I so much want to find him again and give him $5 and just go “I want that and that and that and this and that and those and these”. I’m sure that not only would it make my day, but it’d probably make his as well.

I mean, if he sells them for 45 cents, how much does he buy them for ? Is he seriously buying cute Hello Kitty dresses for 20 cents each ? I guess he must be. The guy must spend all day there selling them in the hopes that if he’s lucky he can make $1 profit. I wish I could find him again. I keep looking and looking but he’s never anywhere to be seen. I hope he hasn’t give up selling kid’s clothes and decided to go sell drugs or something just because it’s more profitable.

The markets are quite dead though today for some reason. They normally sprawl for several blocks around the central market area but today they’re very thin on the ground. I’m not sure why but I think maybe today is a bit of a special Saturday because weird things have been happening lately. There’s been marching bands playing a lot lately. Last night they were walking through the streets well after midnight playing loudly and they have been for a couple of days. Something’s going on. It’s not a festival that I can tell, but they’re celebrating something, and for some reason today, many shops are closed that would normally be open all day Saturday, and most of the market folk aren’t there.

I wander into the depths of the markets because I’m feeling curious. I go down the tiny little alleyways full of women selling fruit and meat and fish. I see that they have one small area in one street that’s a bit like Ben Thanh. It’s an undercover market area with very, very narrow aisles that I would have to walk down side ways to avoid knocking anything over and it appears to go back a long way, with many, many vendors inside selling silk and cotton and sheets and pillow cases and other such stuff. I’m tempted to wander in and look because I would like to explore the deepest part of these markets but I’m carrying bags and I’m still feeling sick and I have a headache so I decide to leave that for another day and I just peer curiously in the gloomy, unlit depths as I walk past.

I pass a pharmacy and I stop in. I already have “Robotussin” written down on a post-it note because I went out hoping to find it. At first I can’t see anyone in the store and then I look down and there’s a woman fast asleep on the floor. I mean, that’s totally not uncommon. It’s 1pm in the afternoon and many Vietnamese people break for a siesta and many stores close between 1 and 3pm. But even at any time of the day it’s not at all uncommon to walk in and find the owner fast asleep on the floor.

I mean this woman probably has a second job as well, working at night time in a warehouse or something, not to mention taking care of her family. If I was her and I had to work all day Saturday at a quiet pharmacy in the suburbs where I knew I wasn’t going to get many customers all day, I’d have a snooze too. I wander around, making a little bit of noise but she doesn’t wake up, and I can see pretty much everything they have on their shelves and I don’t see Robotussin anywhere. I’m not sure they sell it here, at least not in the smaller places.

I bet I could get it at the big MediCare place on Tran Hung Dao in the city. They have everything there, but apparently not in a little place like this and I’m reluctant to buy a weird local brand because it’s probably going to be flavoured with something I can’t stand that’s going to make me want to vomit, so I just quietly walk out and head back home to relax in the air conditioning since it’s such a hot afternoon and I’m sweating profusely already.

My electricity bill was pretty high this month. About $60 for the month, which doesn’t surprise me because I have been home most days so I’ve pretty much run my airconditioner 24 hours a day 7 days a week apart from a few days when I’ve gone out for the day, so it’s no surprise that my electricity bill is so high. But I mean, back home in Australia I’m used to $300-400 a month electricity bills, so a $60 one is quite a relief. It’s also very convenient to pay all your bills straight to your landlord.

Stuff getting bills in the mail and having to go and pay for each thing separately. Here, once a month, on rent day, I come home and my landlady or her son silently present me with a little slip of paper which has my itemised bill for the month. $138 for my rent, $9 for my new aircon, $63 for electricty $2.70 for my shower water, and $2.30 for my internet. In other words, $216 AUD for my rent and all my bills for the month. Her son handed me the bill the other day, and I had been expecting it so I had the money ready and I paid him and he smiled and I thanked him and went upstairs. Easiest shit in the world. My rent and all my bills paid in a matter of seconds.

I am starting to learn to live pretty cheaply now that money’s become tight too. I’m still adamant I will NEVER become one of the western tightarses that I’ve seen around the place, but I’m at least cutting my expenses down. I eat cheaply wherever possible. If I’m in Pham Ngu Lao I will get a 70 cent hamburger. If I’m at home in Binh Hung I will either eat Pho or I’ll go to my favourite karaoke place with the cheap meals. The other night I went there with very little money and the woman came out and grabbed my glass to put ice in it and get me a beer as soon I sat down and I said “Em. Khong bia” and shook my head. She was shocked. Why wouldn’t I want a beer ?

Mainly it’s just because I was sick. A beer is only 36 cents there so it wouldn’t have broken the bank, I just wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t want a beer. I asked for the ostrich luc lac as usual, but she came back and said something quickly in Vietnamese and handed me the menu. I know what she meant. She meant they didn’t have that available. I was disappointed because I had been hanging for it, but I settled for a plate of sauted, diced steak and chips with a fried egg which is almost as good, though not as tender, but I do love the fact that it comes with an egg.

When I first got it I was like “How the hell do I eat a fried egg with chopsticks ?” I wasn’t sure how to break the egg up so that I could eat it without picking up the whole thing, but I worked it out. You use your chopsticks in reverse. You hold them together and stick them into the egg, then you pull them apart instead of closing them like you would to pick something up. By doing this you can break the egg up into manageable pieces to eat it.

I know there are some things I don’t do right when eating. When you eat, you get a large plate of food and you always get a small bowl as well. You’re supposed to transfer a smaller portion of your meal into the bowl and then add condiments to taste and then you eat out of the small bowl. But I don’t think you’re necessarily supposed to do it with every meal. I do it with rice and with noodles. I had a fantastic meal of Singapore fried noodles with seafood and meat the other night at another place where I did this and added soy and chili to the little bowl and then picked it up and ate out of it.

But when I’m just eating steak and stuff, I don’t see the point, and while I haven’t watched others eating this sort of steak meal, I don’t think you’re expected to do that. Red meat meals do come with an interesting condiment though. You get this tiny bowl of this fine salt-like powder and a tiny lime, and you squeeze the lime over the powdery stuff and it mixes together and then you gently tap your meat onto this mixture before you eat it. It’s amazing too. The difference it makes is phenomenal.

It’s this amazingly tart, zingy taste, and it accentuates steak or ostrich so well and makes it such a pleasure to eat. I think it’s probably the one thing I’ll miss most of all when I’m eating steak back in Australia and I totally get now when when Asian people come to Australia they bring all this weird food with them. It’s because their food is so much more interesting and flavoursome compared to ours. Australia is so bloody boring when it comes to food. We’ll knock up a steak and you’ll either get gravy on it or some tomato sauce.

Here, it comes sauted in these delicious natural juices mixed with what could possibly be some sort of sweet red wine and then you dip it in this delicious salty, sour mixture on a little plate before eating it. I don’t think eating steak will ever be the same for me again, and whenever I get a steak in Australia from now on I’m just going to sigh and wish desperately that I had my Vietnamese seasoning and condiments on hand. I may very well be one of those people who try and come into Australia with bags full of weird food and customs will be like “What’s this ?” “Seasoning” “Hmmmm. And this ?” “Food condiments” and then I’ll have to explain where they all come from and what they’re made out of.

I always used watch border control and shake my head and think “Why are these people trying to bring all their own food into Australia ? What’s wrong with our food ?” Well, it’s because they LIKE their food. It’s good. And you tend to like what you’re used to. I’m still not familiar with it all, but I try new things bit by bit. At first when I ordered pho I would just eat it as is and not add anything. Nowadays I will always add fresh spouts to it when they’re given to me, and sometimes I will squeeze a little fresh lime juice into the bowl and I always add sliced chili and I sometimes add a little of their spicy bbq sauce.

I don’t normally add the weird herbs you get though. I’m not sure what they are. You get provided a massive plate full of them when you walk into a pho restaurant. They’re a bit like mint, but not exactly. I once just chucked a whole stalk of it into my bowl for the hell of it before I saw other people picking the individual leaves off and throwing the stalks away but I didn’t know that’s what you did so I tried not to feel too stupid, but pho is pretty flavoursome already so I don’t feel an incredible need to add lots of things to it.

The other day at my favourite pho place where they serve nothing but pho, 24 hours a day and they don’t even sell drinks, I walked in, and they all smile at me and chuckle because if I’m not the only westerner who’s ever been there then I am at least one of very, very few and I drop in at least once a week. I sat down and without a word they just brought me a bowl of their 7 flavour pho with all the different stuff in it. I don’t like all the stuff in it. There’s this stuff that seems to me like chicken cartilage which isn’t very pleasant and I never eat that, but I love the sliced up pieces of pressed chicken luncheon sausage with pepper through it which is really nice.

I started on my meal and I’m watching the young guy who’s been roasting nuts over the coals start putting things into the big pot. They have a huge big drum that’s about 40 gallons and he just picks up a whole side of beef and throws it into the pot which is sitting on the coals then he adds a whole chicken, then a big leg of pork and some other stuff. I bet they stew it for days. That’s why pho broth is so tasty and one of my favourite things about eating pho is sitting there just sipping the delicious broth with a spoon. As I’m sitting there the older woman walks over and pulls something out of a different pot with a ladle and brings it over to me.

I have no idea what it is and they’ve never done that before but she doesn’t say a word to me and I don’t refuse, so she dumps this white lump of stuff into my bowl. I look at it and wonder what it is. I try and break a bit off with my chopsticks to taste it but it just disintegrates so I figure it’s obviously not supposed to be eaten like that, so instead I just break it all up with my chopsticks and then I pick up my spoon and I take a spoonful of broth with a small bit of this white stuff and I gingerly taste it.

I think it’s lard of some sort. I don’t really know. It’s definitely fat of some kind, but it’s not unpleasant at all. It doesn’t have a particularly strong taste and it’s neither delicious nor repulsive. It’s just something you add to the meal I guess. It makes the meal a tiny bit oily and I guess it gives you some nutrients or something. One thing that my mother would be proud of is that I eat a lot more healthy stuff when I’m in Vietnam. Other than the odd home-made hamburger when I’m in Pham Ngu Lao, I would be lucky if I ate fast food once a week here in Saigon.

Every meal I have comes with vegetables and salad and I always eat them because they’re really good. They’re simple uncomplicated vegetables that I like too. Any sauted or fried meal will come with onion and green capsicum and any noodle meal will come with bok choi and often bamboo or spinnach and some other sort of stuff that’s sort of halfway between celery and bok choi. I sort of know what it is, because we have it Australia too I think but I don’t know what it’s called.

Anyway I feel very good about the fact that I eat quite healthily here. Certainly more than back home where I’m likely to eat pizza and burgers for at least three quarter of my meals. Here, no way. Sure sometimes I do think “Gee I could go a nice simple burger”, but the fact is that a shitty fast food hamburger is like 45,000 dong here, whereas I can get a much more nutritious and tasty proper meal of low-fat ostrich meat and vegetables for only 39,000 dong, and I can get it just near to my house without walking the km or so into District 5 where you find those sort of places.

But Pizza Hut ? I wouldn’t even dream of going there. Sometimes I will get a small gourmet pizza from a restaurant like the one I shared with Joy the other day, but I certainly don’t go to pizza joints and pick up huge family sized pizzas and take them home and munch all night like I would back in Australia. I pretty much eat one meal a day here, and maybe a few light snacks. If I’m hungry I’ll have pho in the afternoon and then a proper meal at night. If I haven’t lost some weight in the next month or so I’m going to be bitterly disappointed.

It’s very cheap to eat out and everyone does it because the country is geared that way. When a restaurant can knock up pho in huge 40 gallon vats and serve hundreds of people a day for $1 a bowl it’s just not worth cooking at home and I always see mothers bringing their children into a restaurant for dinner. I’m sure that really poor people do have to settle for white rice at home, but if you’re an average person, it’s no big deal to drop into a pho restaurant for a cheap bowl of noodles with beef and pork and chicken and prawn and whatever other weird stuff they put in it.

God I’m making myself so hungry talking about all this. I think I need to go out for pho. I’ll catch you later !