I've Never Felt So Foreign

The sights, the sounds, the scents of Ho Chi Minh City are very different than those in eastern North Carolina – or any place else I’ve lived.

Zipping through packed streets on the back of a motorscooter offers a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sensory stimulation -- the steady rumble of engines, the constant bleating of horns, the frequent chatter in an unfamiliar tongue, the sudden presence of an exotic aroma.

Horns are used to announce your presence and let the driver in front, back or beside you that you’re getting ready to do something – most probably squeeze into the few available inches in front, back or beside him.

From the looks of it, riding through these packed streets should be harrowing. But it’s not. I soon viewed the traffic as the lifeblood of the city, flowing with surprising precision through its arteries, branching off into ever narrowing veins that feed and nourish its far-flung neighborhoods.



At first, all I noticed was the sound of engines and the smell of exhaust fumes. Soon, however, we turned a corner and the scent of jasmine filled the air. I wasn’t able to determine in those few seconds where the fragrant aroma originated, whether a cafe, florist or tea seller.

A few minutes later, my nose was assaulted by a pungent, slightly unpleasant odor as we passed a fruit vendor pushing her cart down the street. Durian fruit, I learned. Descriptions of its aroma range from unpleasant to downright disgusting. The flavor, however, is said to be scrumptious. We'll see; I definitely plan on trying it.

A couple of blocks later, the toasty scent of rice – a large quantity of rice – cooking grabbed my attention. It’s a common smell here. There is a tremendous variety of rice – long, short, broken, sweet, sticky. It appears at just about every meal in one form or another, including dessert.

So far, the only western-style cake I’ve seen was at the wedding of a Vietnamese bride and her American husband. The groom’s mother, a very gracious woman from Portland, wanted to bring some small part of American custom to the otherwise traditional Vietnamese ceremony.

I was delighted to have been invited to the wedding. Although I had done a bit of online research on Vietnamese wedding traditions, the experience was invaluable since my son’s wedding would follow in less than a week and they don’t have wedding rehearsals here. I now have a better handle on what to expect – and what’s expected of me as mother of the groom.

Weddings are tremendously important cultural and social events here, fraught with tradition and ritual. My soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Thu, was delighted when I advised my son a month before our trip here that my research indicated that tradition requires me to place a pair of earrings on the bride during the ceremony. If that’s the case, I told him, then I want to do it.

She said it is, in fact, the custom, and that her parents were planning on buying a pair of earrings for me to use. I'm told her face lit up when she learned I wanted to give her a pair that had belonged to my mother.

Though we won’t be doing a wedding rehearsal, we did have a trial run of the dinner menu that will be served to around 300 at the reception. Thu and Zach, her parents, an aunt and uncle who live in Houston, and I sampled all the dishes in the eight-course banquet. We rejected an unappetizing appetizer, a skimpy fish dish, and an unattractive beef platter, substituting other more appealing dishes instead.

No wedding cake, though. Instead, for dessert we’re having sweetened red beans.

My first thought upon taking a bite was of field peas cooked with plenty of sugar. It’s served in a small bowl with the cooking liquid, like a cold soup. I know it sounds odd – unless you're Asian – but they’re actually quite tasty.