Walking the walk

Do I talk the talk or do I walk the walk? That's the question I was
faced with on my last night in HCMC... As a general
rule, it seems that Eating out in Saigon is cheaper than going to the
Market abusing your food. So pretty much every meal is at a
restoraunt. Last night was no exception. Jason and his good buddy
Nguya (pretty sure its spelled wrong but it's pronounced Nia) took me
out for a meal in a truely, this is real Vietnamese dinning experence.
Nothing in the western world ever comes close. So we zip through the
streets of HCMC and turn down this little alleyway and pull up to this
building teaming with locals. Pulling into the building, I was amused
to see that the " parking" garage for the scooters was actually in the
restauraunt. A small flimsy gate separated scooters from patron..
The joint was teaming with noise and The place looked essentially
like a large parking garage illuminted by very bright fluorecents.
The ever so present kindergarten stools and tables were de rigour here
so we plopped ourselves down, my back up against the gate and a couple
of tires and thus began my evening's personal voyage of " do I talk
the talk or do I walk the walk?"
Sitting at our table they bring out this small little hotpot filled with a broth and is heated with a little piece of coal. Before we get to this wonderful part of the meal, lets start with the entree. Skewered jumbo shrimp... but not just the
tail that is deboned like we eat in the west... no... it was the whole
god damned shrimp. Head, antennae, legs and tail all still shelled...
yeah. Apparently a real delicasy in Saigon. All eyes baited on me, it
tooka few minutes to muster up the courage to bite the head off of the poor little thing. Basically like a mouthful of shrimp and chips. I know
must this must seem nasty, but it wasn't all that bad. The tough part was the
grilled whole fish. Same deal as the shrimp, except that fish have
skulls. ughhh... brains,organs and a skeletal system. Took me
a while.. but I did it much to the delight of Jason and his friend. Crunch, crunch crunch... mmmm... spine.
Tasty, but seriously, it was hard to crunch down on skull and bones. The dipping sauce made it all that much easier. I guess you just have to close your eyes and do it. Now, the real hard part was the live fish; or should I say the recently
deceased in front of my eyes fish... god... well this one I didn't do
to well... Going back to the hot pot on the table. A young waiter brought to our table a small blue bucket that seemed to have just a little to much resistance for it's own good. Taking our little hotpot and putting it on the floor, the waiter then proceeded to fill the pot with the contents of the bucket... a dozen or so LIVE fish, like the ones we just ate skewered and BBQ'd. A small little bugger escaped and while the dude was holding down the lid on the hot pot so that escapee's brethrin could not escape; the escaped fish flipped and flopped on the floor as if itwas charged with thousands of volts of electricity. Finally when our hotpot was back on the table, the waiter then proceeded to kick the floor fish along until the kitchen all the while trying to scoop it up in his bucket. We chuck in the veggies and wait for the contents to cook... meanwhile, I'm loosing my mind but trying to play it as cool as possible. They open the pot and start digging in. What do I do to try and avoid having to try this? Well, let's have another shrimp!! Crunmch crunch crunch... god damnit! Finally they notice, I haven't even taken a fish out of the pot yet so one is deposited in to my bowl of noodles... ... I just ignored the thing for the longest time until I was cajoled in to trying it. I didn't eat the head. I just couldn't.the other one was BBQ'd and for some reason that makes a difference to
me. So I put the thing in my plate and then pulled off the flesh from
the bones and only ate that... I somehow manged to eat part of the
spine, but that wasn't too too bad.
So... I'll leave it up to you. Did I walk the walk or just talk the talk? I guess this will be really put to the test when I go back to HCMC when I'm confronted with snake...