Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (free biff chip and kipper ebooks txt) 📗

system remains almost exactly as it was during the war: back then the standard currencies were American dollars (or American military scrip) and Vietnam piastres. Today they are American dollars and Vietnamese dong.

The famous Bun Ho Hue soup, a thin scallion-flavored meat broth sold at stands everywhere for a few cents, is still sold at stands everywhere for a few cents. As it did then, it fills me with awe and respect for a people who relish hot soup in ninety-five-degree heat. One newfangled idea that has taken hold is the emergence of pizza delivery. I ordered a large pie from Annie’s Pizza—“Annie is the long form of Ann, which is an Americanization of “Anh”—and it was delivered to my hotel in a cardboard box bearing the catchy slogan “When the taste of home beats ya, call for Annie’s Pizza.” I didn’t return to see Vietnam. I didn’t see much of it during the war.

I went back to see Saigon. Almost every night during my tour of duty, while most officers hung out at Camp Davies’ sorry excuse for an officers’ club and watched a movie projected on a bedsheet, I got in my jeep and went to town. I loved Saigon, especially the women, exquisitely F O R K I T O V E R

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dressed in the traditional flowing, high-necked ao dai. I ate out almost every night, and I learned to say “No nuoc mam [fermented fish sauce], please.” I survived the heat, which was so intense I had difficulty writing home—the perspiration would pour down my arm and smear the ink.

This time, I made certain I had air-conditioning. The Majestic did, and that’s all I needed to know. I wasn’t concerned that it once had a reputation as “the CIA hotel,” or that it served as a Japanese barracks during World War II. For $65 a night, single occupancy, I got a platform bed as hard as a tank turret, a couch covered in an oilcloth-like bright-yellow fabric, a telephone made of red-and-white Lucite, and red wall-to-wall carpeting accented with a lime-green throw rug. The TV received three stations, all providing the same in-depth coverage of foreign dig-nitaries arriving to discuss the industrial development of Vietnam. A warning sign posted on the inside of the door gave the rules: No cooking, ironing, weapons, toxics, explosives, inflammables, pets, or prostitutes. (I cheated and brought a travel iron.) The night attendant on my floor was a former UH-1B (Huey) helicopter pilot for our ally, the Republic of South Vietnam.

From my picture window overlooking the Saigon River, I could see the new Saigon Floating Hotel as well as the infamous My Canh floating restaurant, bombed by the Vietcong in 1968. That attack pointed out the difference between the futile strategy of Westmoreland and the successful strategy of the Vietcong. He went after their hearts and minds. They went after our stomachs.

From Tony Newman’s description, I figured out that Westmoreland’s room must have been 504, a top-of-the line, $120-per-night suite down the hall. Gaudily decorated in chinoiserie, it has lacquered furniture, a Yamaha piano, and a sixties-era sunken tub. I could just picture Westy, immersed in bubbles, walkie-talkie to his ear, learning of the fall of Hue while an aide stood at attention, holding a fluffy towel.

For the REMFs, Vietnam was that kind of war.

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A L A N R I C H M A N

Newman drove over to the Majestic to pick me up. Traveling with me was Ron Wormser, a dentist and old friend. Ron thought I’d invited him along for companionship but he was wrong. You’d travel to Saigon with a dentist, too, if you’d had two impacted wisdom teeth chiseled out in a field hospital in 1969. I asked Newman to choose a restaurant I couldn’t possibly have found on my own, and he headed toward Cholon, the Chinese section of the city, then turned into side streets.

We ended up at Quan Bo Song, or “Riverside Tavern.” Seemingly tiny from the outside, the restaurant stretches far back, ending at the water. Its dimensions reminded me of churches I’ve visited in Venice. Newman recommended fried river crabs with tamarind sauce. After a few bites, I had an accurate premonition that crabs would become my favorite food of this visit. We sat at the tip of a pier-like extension jutting out into a tributary of the Saigon River, listening to the creaking of tired, unpainted fishing boats docked alongside.

Newman talked about the fundamental changes that have occurred in Saigon since his arrival.

He said that four years ago, “this was a pretty paranoid, dark place.

People were not ready to talk to you on the street, we were not allowed to visit a Vietnamese person’s home, and they weren’t allowed to visit us. All meetings took place in lobbies. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly it was no longer necessary.” His organization, acting something like a consulate, assists with the orderly departure of legal emigrants. Of the 350,000 émigrés helped in the past four years, about 30,000 were Amerasians, and tens of thousands of others were men and women who had spent years in the notorious reeducation camps.

The waiter brought us a two-pound river fish that he could not identify, even in Vietnamese. While it simmered in a light coconut-scented broth heated by Sterno, Newman pointed out some of the incongruities of Vietnam.

I asked him why the people of Saigon remain so friendly toward Americans, who abandoned them in 1975. He said, “They blame the Russians for all their problems. The Russians had no money.” He said F O R K I T O V E R

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the government of Vietnam was trying to emulate Singapore, a one-party state that provides everything for citizens, notwithstanding the fact that Singapore is one of the most ardently anti-Communist states in the world. He said that while the opening up of Vietnam will allow more departures, he hears that some