gastronomical adventurism

durian 

gnome sauie

I recently tried two new foods endemic in Cambodia.  The first was the infamous durian, that limburger of fruits famously banned from hotels, public transportation and the like.  To me the pungent smell is kind of like strong garlic--very unbecoming of a fruit.  When the lady at the market cut open the green, thorny shell for me, it was a little like dissecting an arthropod.  After extracting the meat, she cocooned it in several layers of plastic and styrofoam, presumably to keep in the smell.  (It didn't work, the whole fridge smelled like durian once I brought it home).  The appearance and texture make it seem more like something you would dig out of the belly of a whale than fruit, but I gave it a try anyway.  Thankfully the taste is milder than the acrid aroma, but it was still quite rich.  It's richness and texture made it almost like eating very ripe avocado.  I still can't decide whether I like it or not.

My second new gastronomical exploit was a breakfasty thing served out of a cart.  Normally I strictly avoid street food in Cambodia, but this looked good and hygenic and steaming hot.  It's hard to write the name of it in the roman alphabet, but the first word sounds like 'gnome' (a prefix attached to bread/cake-like foods) and the second word something like 'sauwie' (pronouncing the W without moving your mouth).  Inside a crepe are white rice, black rice, fresh shredded cocounut, sugar, and a few beans.   It's mildly sweet and very hearty, good energy to start the day with.  They also cost 25 cents apiece, making them my new favorite breakfast.

Khmenglish

Just as there is an Espanglish which is neither English nor Spanish, there is a nebulous area between English and Khmer as well. The most common might be Cambodian words appropriated from English: Kah-FEY (coffee), mah-SEEN (machine), mah-SAW (massage), though I think they can legitimately be considered part of their language at this point.

One of the funniest to me is the word "Chuh", which I get called all the time. It's Khmenglish for "teacher": The first syllable is dropped, and the pesky r at the end is too tricky to pronounce.

Then there is the doubling down on certain one syllable words, which is common in the Khmer language. (For example you really can say "chop-chop" for hurry/soon). So in Khmenglish we have small-small instead of small, and same-same instead of same. And of course same-same's ever present cousin "same-same but different". (I think this means similar). If you're a male out on certain streets in the late evening, you may well receive solicitations for "boom-boom."

Another area might be sentiments that when expressed in English (however well spoken) just sound odd. For example, Cambodians sometimes ask, "Last night, did you have a good dream?" along with "Hello, how are you?". I also often find people wishing me good luck out of the blue.

Me: "So you'll be here to pick me up at 5:00, right?"

Motorcycle taxi driver: "Yes, good luck for you! Bye." (Hangs up phone).

This sort of thing leads me to worry whether or not he's actually coming at 5 pm, but it's not intended that way at all. Cambodians also sometimes like to say "See you when you see me" as a goodbye. If you speak enough Khmer this apparently has a humorous double meaning. ("me" is the word for noodles, but I don't get the rest of it).

One of my favorite English-that-isn't episodes took place when Jenny and I were traveling in Vietnam over December. We were visiting a royal tomb outside Hue, and there was a banana vendor along the path from the parking lot to the entrance. A local family's orchard abutted this pathway, and so they had posted one of their daughters to lean over the fence hawking fruit. As I mentioned in an earlier post, despite fluttering hammer and sickle flags on every government building, the Vietnamese are the most doggedly entrepreneurial people on Earth. (God help those lazy fatcats on Wall Street if the Vietnamese ever switch systems of government). The girl spoke no or very little English, but had memorized a single sales pitch "Hello lady you like banana!" It didn't matter if you were a couple, a group of old men, whatever, you were still 'lady'. She had clearly been chanting this pitch for hours upon hours, slowly warping the rhythm, pronunciation and stressed syllables to create a kind of sound poetry. It was really hypnotic and actually kind of beautiful.

The Cult of Uncle Ho

So I don't want my negative take on HaLong Bay to be my only record of Vietnam. We experienced a lot of cool things on our visit. One of the more interesting was the reverence still given Ho Chi Minh. Every museum shop has its own collection of Uncle Ho bric-a-brac, even those with no connection whatsoever to the 20th century. For example, I got several items (pictured) at The Temple of Literature, a Confucian temple and the first university in Vietnam.

Of course in Hanoi it is also possible to view Ho Chi Minh himself. His corpse is laid out á la Lenin in a mausoleum on public display. It cannot be photographed. There is a whole procession visitors must go through, putting one's camera in a little numbered bag at one station, then surrendering it at the next station, and finally picking it up again at a third station at the exit. The Vietnamese get dressed up to visit the mausoleum--three piece suits for men, traditional dresses for women, uniforms with medals for veterans. (It was kind of Twilight Zone to see decorated Vietnam vets from the other side). If you don't dress conservatively, you are turned away.

The exterior of the mausoleum is very Soviet--heavy, imposing, without embellishment. Filing along there was a lot of red carpet and velvet rope, with young soldiers standing at attention in crisp white dress uniforms. Inside it is cool and dark (presumably to prevent damage to the corpse). The vitrine housing his mummy sits on a pedestal rising out of a recess in the floor about three feet deep. There is a soldier posted on each corner (bayonets gleaming in the dim light), but because they stand in this hollow, Ho lies resting above their heads. His face was waxy, fuzzy and unreal, yet sublime and contented. I couldn't help but pause and strain to look a second longer, which prompted a guard to clench my upper arm in his white glove and firmly move me along out the door.

The rest of the museum campus (sort of like the mall in Washington DC) was generally less interesting. There was a museum where the first floor contained deathly dull letters and black and white photos of Vietnamese revolutionaries and a second floor that was baffling beyond description. It was notable for a scam artist posing as a university student giving a survey about tourism and then suddenly asking for Red Cross donations.

There was also the house where Ho Chi Minh lived during the critical such and such period, which, if I had grown up in Vietnam and studied the minutia of his life during history class, might have been more interesting. Or possibly not, as the school children there were singularly fascinated with feeding the ducks. The western tourists in turn were all singularly fascinated with über-cute Vietnamese kindergardeners in precious little school uniforms feeding ducks. So if you're curious why Vietnam has fallen short of the Marxist-Leninist paradise envisioned by Ho Chi Minh, it's possibly the counterrevolutionary activity of the ducks.