Sunday, October 18, 2009

One Dolla!


So, I love Anthony Bourdain. He, in turn, loves Vietnam. And his show, No Reservations, has taped five episodes in Vietnam over the past several seasons. And I happened to eat at his ABSOLUTE FAVORITE RESTAURANT in Saigon for lunch today, named Com Nieu Sai Gon. All I'm going to say is the following: deep-fried pumpkin flowers with minced meat, deep-fried muddfish in a sweet ginger sauce AND the best rice pancakes in Vietnam - which, by the way, they break several plates for in order to make, just for one order. And that, my friends, is what filled my belly today :-)

But I also got a taste of home this weekend. Pancakes, maple syrup and Pizza Hut are three things I can officially "check off" thanks to this weekend's venture up north (you will never realize how much you love pancakes and pizza until they are no longer readily available to you.) We also got our hair cut (lookin' fab-u-lous, by the way) and saw a currently released fim, "The Informant." Don't go see it unless you need some sort of sedative to help you fall alseep, which I did. It was pretty awful. But this weekend in Saigon most definitely wasn't!

My favorite part was the Ben Thanh market. While I was winding in and out of the cramped aisles, getting pulled and tugged this way and that by desperate Vietnamese vendors, I stumbled across a baby who was sprawled out on his tummy, on the floor. I found this comical and decided to take a picture of him. The woman sitting a few feet away from him starts laughing and says "One dolla." I laughed too and took the picture anyway, assuming it was a joke.

But then, as I was stuffing my camera back into my bag, she got up and repeated "One dolla!"

I just ignored her and kept going. She didn't follow, but her expression read only one thing: pissed...

Christine also had a similar experience in Cambodia, when a woman holding a baby started to laugh and said, "One dolla!"

I really wonder, if we presented these people with the cash they demanded, if we could actually make away with a child for only one U.S. dollar...

Anyone at home wanna be a mommy?

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