Saturday, September 6, 2008

Missing Pho

I am in Vietnam, and I miss Pho. Is that possible? There are not a lot of food places here around the University within walking distance. And I have not seen a Pho place yet.
We’ve been trying to set up a ‘kitchen’ in the bathroom, and it’s been coming together slowly. In the meantime, we’ve been buying food from the campus ‘canteen’. We would walk to the canteen with plastic boxes and bowls and point at the trays containing the foods we dared to try. One scoop of vegetable costs 1,000VND. We would point and say 1000VND or 2000VND. One boiled egg costs 3000VND. One small bite-size piece of pork costs 4000VND. We would just walk through the line and point at the stuff and hand them the boxes so they could scoop the stuff into the boxes for us. At the end of the line, we ask how much total and pay. We’ve been spending around 2000VND per meal, which is less than $1.50USD. The food is very simple, and it’s always the same stuff every meal. It’s very convenient (especially since we don’t have a kitchen and don’t want to walk out into the heat and want to save money), but let’s see how long we can survive like this. Sometimes, I would have a hard time recognizing the food and would ask the girls what the stuff was and they would laugh at us foreigners.
The kitchen is now almost ready for prime time. We’ve got buckets that we can use to wash the dishes right on the floor of the bathroom, right next to the toilet. The shower hose is just long enough for us to hang the shower head between the pipes underneath the sink such that it points toward the buckets and we don’t have to hold on to it all the time. We have a stool so we can sit and wash the dishes. As long as no one needs to use the toilet during dish washing, it works ok. We got knives, chopping boards, bowls, plates, chopsticks, spoons, a rice cooker, and detergent.
I am still looking for a Pho place though.

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