Pho is me...

Its been a few years now since I set out on my goal to see 100 of the 1000 Places to see before you die. What this goal means for my travel partners is sometimes they are dragged to odd locations for a promised once in a lifetime experience. Poor Christopher was the latest victim of this obsession of mine.

Our first mistake was trying to follow the recommendation of the guidebook with respect to transportation. Up to this point we had been traipsing through Ho Chi Minh city on foot, navigating the streets and sidewalks which really seem to be one in the same. I haven't really told you much about the traffic here. It is stupidly insane. There are literally, as in not my usual exaggeration, 1500 motos per block. The street lights seem to be merely suggestion. Motos drive on the sidewalk and people walk on the street. If I chose to stand on the road and wait for a break in the traffic, it would take me an average of 4 months to cross the road. For any future travelers to the area; to cross the street simply point your body in the direction that you wish to go, stare straight ahead and go. Never, never, never look at the traffic bearing down on you - it shows weakness. Think about it, if I can make it across without dying...you should be just fine.

Anyway, we decided to abandon walking for a night and take a taxi. These taxis were unlike any other that we had used so far on our trip. They were clean, metered and they didn't stalk you down the street for your business. We finally flagged one down that had "Saigon Tourist" written on the side. Fantastic I thought - guaranteed to speak English. Of course this was not the case...despite having the name and address of where we wished to go, he had no idea. We drove over much of the city itself, stopping every now and then to ask other taxi drivers, pedestrians, street vendors etc for directions. Although I don't speak Vietnamese, I could tell that their conversations went something like this, "Hey! I've got these 2 idiots in the back of my taxi. They keep gesticulating wildly and pointing to this piece of paper with random squiggles on it. I have no idea where they want to go, and quite frankly I don't care. I plan on driving them around for a while and then dropping them off in the middle of nowhere. Yell something back at me so they think I have actually tried to get directions". As luck would have it we randomly drove by the restaurant we were looking for and the only English our guy understood was STOP. As for the bill...still no concept of the currency exchange so our hour long taxi adventure was either $1.05 of $630.

But we made it to our destination...Pho Hoa. The best restaurant as recognized by locals for a delicious bowl of pho (according to my very Western book at least) was packed this Friday night. There was no hostess at the front door but I did see a guy point to the second floor. We wandered through the kitchen and up to another large room full of diners. I am sure that this book has brought some additional business to this restaurant in the form of tourists but that was not the case tonight. People stopped mid-slurp to stare at our pale, obviously out of place faces.
Seating etiquette for the restaurant was not covered in the guidebook. I went over to a table that appeared to be waiting to be cleared. Some guy on a cell phone started to yell, while standing right in my face, and pointing wildly in random directions. I responded by blinking. I then gave up and wandered to another table, something similar happened. Christopher was standing at the end of the room asking me what we should do. Hunger and heat were causing me to lose all my coping mechanisms. Mere seconds away from a complete breakdown, we were saved by a Vietnamese family that took pity on us.

Inviting us to join them at their table, we finally felt like we belonged. It was like a bit of Vietnamese street credit - this family had inadvertently vouched for us...we could now be served pho. Dinner was delicious; I went easy with the peppers this time...