Tag: Vietnamese iced coffee

Romancing Saigon

Good luck! Bit it’s better  for you to wait until the scorching heat subsides, before you have a chance.

There are layers to Saigon, like you would peeling an onion.

Cafe Sua Da prices fluctuate from one street corner to the next.

On the main tourist strip, you still find Zippo lighters and even dog tags next to pirated copies of Vietnam War classics.

In fact, you don’t need to visit the museum of war (atrocities) to turn the clock back. The whole city could be viewed as a museum of war. The battle of ideology 1963, battle of Tet 1968 all took place here . Just walk the streets, you can relive the intensity of those struggles. Yet, in danger, there are romances. People live faster lives (translated to shorter ones). Self-immolated monk wasn’t the only one who burned himself to nirvana. Privileged youth are fast-tracking there as well, a phenomenon familiar to US “urban youth” (whose life expectation has  been rumored to be just above the legal drinking age.) Here, it’s already an improvement as compared to back then when widows and orphans were common.

A plane load of orphans took off and crashed just before the city itself “fell” to the hands of victors.

Now, you find bars. reincarnated versions of what used to be night clubs, hang-out places for GI‘s and their unspent payrolls. Today, beers popped open. Conversation started, most of which like two ships passing in the night. And young backpackers, many of  whom with Lonely planet’s guide, searching frantically to geo-ID themselves.

Oh well, drop those guides. Follow your instincts. Live a little. risk a little. Romance it. Don’t expect everything is set.

But then, what do you expect. War time might be over, but it’s still a “war zone”.

Can’t miss that tank on permanent display at Independent Palace.

Yes, you will find romance, but the price is to drop your guards, your expectations and prejudices. Saigon and Vietnam always reward seekers. But serious inquirers only. And the down payment is stiff, once paid in blood during the conflict.

And pain lingers on. Someone has to pay for reparation. It might as well be you. And you, and you. Sorry to pass on the virus which I myself have contracted while romancing Saigon.

Cafe sua da

Lately, articles about “banh mi” started to appear in the Bay area publications.

What should have accompanied those articles was Cafe sua da (Iced cafe-au-lait).

The coffee chamber sat on the cup. Hot water drips down, one drip at a time, on top of condensed milk.

Bitter and sweet, hot and cold.

It’s a night-and-day difference from coffee found sitting all burned up at a 7-11 near you.

Because of the long wait, friends start chatting.

So and so just got another divorce.

So and so is still alive.

The Brits got their tea from India. The French got their coffee from its former colonies, among them Vietnam.

Gotta have that coffee. You can hold the OJ.

“Cafe sua da” is found at practically every corner of Vietnam.

I found it in Dalat, at 4 AM, Hanoi at 1PM.

In Orange County, you can have it served by half-naked coctail waitresses.

Everything social seems to revolve around Cafe Sua Da.

Between the Banh Mi, Pho and Cafe Sua Da, you pretty much complete your hunt for Vietnamese export cuisine.

And the interesting thing about all three: you can order them at all hours in the day and anywhere from Bellaire (TX) to Bolsa (CA), from New Orleans to New York.

When cultures collide, there are gives and takes. In this case, Vietnamese contributions abroad have been mostly in manicuring,  cuisine ( as mentioned) and fashion (ao dai).

Last week, in the suburb of Washington  D.C, police moved in to make arrests at some coffee houses (charges false or true remain to be sorted out).

But one thing for sure, the crooked and straight both want their Cafe sua da.

I stopped by there once, jet-lagged and all, to find out I was their first customer. Traditionally, the first customer is supposed to usher in either luck or curse of the day (during Tet, it’s for the entire year).

So, to avoid this superstitious entrapment, I ordered my cup to go.

It did not come out right, because Cafe Sua Da is meant to be shared with chatty friends.

It’s a culture of coffee that Howard Shultz of Starbucks found fascinating during his visit to Italy. In the Vietnamese American case, it offers a half-way home at a Starbucks price, without the pretense of having your name scribbled on the  cup to be belled out later as if you were a regular. The difference between Cafe Sua Da and Cafe Starbucks was more pronounced during this downturn: Starbucks lost customers to McCafe, while Cafe Sua Da still holds, one drip at a time.

Cafe Au Lait has survived , transformed and migrated from North to South Vietnam, and from Southern Vietnam to Southern California. It’s still coffee, but the way it is served, sitting on top of the cup, has been the beverage of choice for many of us to start the day. When the coffee is right, everything seems to go all right from there. Now you know my hang-up and why I can’t stand the burned coffee smell at 7-11 or McDonald. Perhaps because of the way it is served there or the speed at which they collect your money. Yet who am I to ask for more, when for years, on campus, I could make do with vending machines. Those machines, I heard, now serve instant noodles. They said when you were hungry, your brain picks unhealthy food. Hungry or not, between instant noodles-vended coffee and Banh-Mi-and-Cafe- Sua- Da , I pick the later every time.