The fates seem to be against my writing a log entry this week. During the better part of this week, I’ve been under self-imposed quarantine due to a naggy sore throat that still hasn’t gone away. All the locals have been telling me it’s due to the weather we’ve been having - raging rains that put Texas storms to shame one hour, burning hot sunshine the next, and the cycle repeats. Guess it gives a new meaning to feeling “under the weather”, huh? I’m pretty bummed, though – it’s a really mild sore throat, but that makes it the third time I’ve gotten sick while on a major trip recently. My immune system is letting me down!
Then yesterday, I tried to go to the local Internet café, but all the computers were used. So I went this morning, and the place was still closed. Then I decided to drag my lazy butt down to Toli’s workplace to get a few hours of Internet in only to find that their network connection is down! Never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness for dial-up!
Anyhoot, the good news of this week is that chicken is back. Woo-hoo! (Please, no comments about this songbird coming down with bird flu – it’s just a sore throat!) Of course, one of the best things about Vietnamese cuisine is eating poultry, so I wasn’t about to let a little hysteria stop me from indulging. Since last Saturday, I’ve had chicken (twice), goose, and (gasp!) pigeon. It’s been yummyful. The birds here are tend to be farm-raised or mountain-raised, they’re smaller in size and more flavorful, and they’re freshly killed the day you eat them, so the taste is so much better than chicken back home in the U.S. of A.
Of course, it’s that “freshly-killed” part that will get me to go vegetarian before any disease does. One of the main factors in choosing to come back to Vietnam and living smack-dab in the heart of Hanoi was to try and get a feel for what local life is really like. Toli and I eat street food at least once a day (and yes, there are health effects to that as well that I will delicately put aside for now), we walk *a lot* or occasionally take a “xe om” (motorbike taxi), I watch too much cheesy Vietnamese television (and have gotten hooked on an evening Chinese soap as a result), I’ve taken to bargaining for silk at the local market (still can’t get the local price though, I’m sad to report), but most often, I go to the grocery market with a friend when she grocery shops.
Warning: Some rather icky descriptions up ahead. Don’t read if you recently ate or will be disturbed by this kind of thing.
Even if you frequent the Chinatown markets in the U.S., visiting a market in Vietnam can be a rather stomach-churning experience. The markets are usually located outdoors with these rickety-looking booths. There’s no such thing as a refrigerator case (unless they’re selling something dairy-related), and I daresay there is very little in the way of sanitation standards. You’ve got people packed to the gills all chopping meat or scaling fish or pushing produce, as well as motorcycles and bikes squeezing by as you shop – yes, “drive-by shopping”.
The produce stands are a bit tatty-looking, but all the vegetables are freshly picked that morning. You do have to keep an close eye on the seller, though, to make sure that they give you the best of their produce selection, rather than the stuff others won’t buy. There are also stands that sell rice, freshly-made rice noodles, tofu, and other dried goods.
The crazy part is the meat area. You have to imagine what your local butcher shop would look like if there were no electricity available. Everything is chopped by hand with these really-old-looking but razor-sharp cleavers or put through an old-fashioned meat grinder (you know what I mean if you ever watched “You Can’t Do That On Television”). You pick out your cut of meat, the butcher chops it off on a well-used wooden block, slaps it onto a scale (that he weighed everyone else’s meat on – none of this butcher paper business), argues with you that it’s the cleanest and best cut of meat he’s sold all day, and then shoves it into a thin plastic bag. And God forbid he even puts down his cigarette during this entire transaction.
If you can stomach this part, you move on to the area where the lady is scaling the fish…while it’s still flopping. It is unbelievably creepy! She’s got these little tubs the size of a kiddie pool jam-packed with fish swimming around, and you know deep inside that these critters aren’t going to survive past dinner time. The other day, I walked by one where the fish jumped out of the tub and started flopping around on the floor for nearly a minute before the fish monger grabbed it and dunked it back in the tub. And fish bleed – a lot! You just can’t tell when you’re buying it at $4.95/lb in H-E-B.
So now…if you’ve read this far, and you haven’t thrown up breakfast yet and are still eager to know more…there’s the poultry shop. The one my friend goes to is separate from the market, and thank goodness, because one visit was enough for my lifetime. There are these large bamboo cages, which hold something like a dozen birds. The poultry guy reaches in and picks out some poor sucker and hands it to you, the customer. You’re supposed to hold it by its feet and make comments about its size and condition. The guy then weighs the chicken, ties up its feet, and then…well…you know. But in Vietnam, they don’t go chopping off it’s head – that’s the good part. They hang the bird and bleed it. Then, I think after it’s good and dead, they blanche it in hot water and pull the feathers. I don’t know because I stopped looking when the knife came out and distracted myself by playing with the ducks. (I know…ducks.) There was also this sad moment when this neighbor brought over a live goose inside a shopping bag for them to slaughter, and the poor goose kept trying to peck itself out of the bag. Anyway, they end up presenting you with this nice clean carcass (head, beak, feet and all) in one of their ubiquitous plastic bags, and you go along on your merry way trying not to think about how this creature was alive just fifteen minutes ago.
Anyway, I don’t relate all these details to gross you out, but rather to point out how far removed we are from our food sources and how we take for granted the long process it takes from growing a living being from an egg to a chick to something that we buy in the meat section of the local grocery store. I don’t want to advocate that we all become vegetarians (especially when judging by my intake of poultry this week) or creep everyone out a la “Fast Food Nation”, but I think it would do everyone a lot of good to think about where our food comes from and to show a little respect for the creatures we eat and the underpaid workers who make it possible for our food to show up on our plates.