Acetic Acid in Beer Land!

BANG, BANG, BANG!

I sat straight up. Where was I? The room was dark and it took a minute to adjust.

BANG, BANG, BANG!

Vietnam. Someone was knocking on the door. I got out of bed, unlocked the door to the room and cracked it open. A small man began talking in Vietnamese. He was pushing his way into the room, motioning to the supplies stacked behind him in the bright hallway.

“Just a moment, just a moment!” I said and pushed him back out into the hall way. What time is it? I thought and checked my phone. It was noon but you could never tell through the light darkening curtains. I threw on a bra at lightening speed, ran my fingers through my hair and fixed it into a messy bun. I stepped into my cut off jean shorts and flip flops, grabbed my wallet and my passport and jammed them in my back pocket. I tucked my suitcases into the wardrobe.

I opened the door and the man came back into the room. I began quickly making the bed. The man set up a ladder and started laying out his tools and spools of something. It appeared that he was there to wall paper the room. After the bed was made, I brushed my teeth, left the strange man in my room and headed downstairs with my computer to find this good coffee I'd heard about.

“Good Morning! Good Morning! You sleep good? I sorry to wake you but the man need to work in the room! Good Morning, you want coffee? I'm Mai.”

Mai was a small woman with a huge energy. Her smile spread from ear to ear and encapsulated her eyes. She was dressed in shorts, a t-shirt and had a baseball cap covering her chin length bobbed hair. She was barefoot and had a fanny pack strapped around her waist.

“Good morning” I said. “It's nice to finally meet you. And yes please, I would love a coffee.”

Mai motioned to the young man who was standing behind the bar and spoke to him in Vietnamese. He began making me a cafe sua da. First the sweet milk in the glass, then the cold coffee on top. Then he gave it a stir with a long spoon. He topped it off with ice and added a plastic straw. Mai set it down in front of me. “Welcome to Vietnam” she said.

A woman's' voice, clamoring in Vietnamese came barreling down the stair case, following a little boy who was holding a blanket. The boy slowly made his way down the stairs and the woman appeared behind him. She was tall and serious looking. She wore a matching spandex shirt/shorts outfit in an odd floral print. Her hair was tied back into a neat ponytail and a thick row of bangs were cut across her forehead. She saw me sitting with my coffee and her serious expression immediately turned to a warm smile. She spoke to Mai.

“This is our nanny, Thu” Mai explained. “And this is Khoai tay.” The little boy smiled shyly at her and spoke to his mom. She bent down and embraced him and answered him in English “This is Alissa. She has come here from America to make beer. Alissa lam bia.”

“OOOOhhhhh” he cooed as he buried himself into her hug.

“Khaoi tay, Khaoi tay” Thu chirped and moved him to a small plastic chair and table where food was waiting.

“Hey, good morning. How'd you sleep?” Now Mike appeared from down the stairs. He was shower fresh and smiling. He sat down across from me at the table. “I see you've met my wife.”

“Yes, and your son and the nanny.” I said. “I slept good thanks for asking. Until a guy started beating on my door.”

“Oh yeah, the wall paper. We meant to have that done before you got here. Sorry bout that.” he said.

It was fine. It was nearly noon and I needed to get over the jet lag anyways. Although a shower would have been nice. After a proper English breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, fried tomatoes and toast, I decided to walk around the neighborhood. We had planned to hang around Saigon for another day and then head to the brewery.

It was early afternoon and the air was hot and thick. The sun was bright in the sky and the street was less busy than it had been the night before. The clubs that had been open the previous evening were gated shut in the daylight sun. On their stoops now sat women with baskets of hand made goods for sale. Wallets and hats. Dresses and bracelets. Some had vegetables. Some had raw meat.

Not being much of a shopper, I walked to the end of the street, where there was a park nestled in between two busier streets. The park had a palm tree lined pathway in the middle with rows of empty benches along the sides. I sat on one of the benches and took in my new home. I had been to some major American cities and London as well but this was my first time in Asia.

Saigon is a port city of nine million people on the southern coast of the country. A thousand years of Chinese occupation brought Buddhism to Vietnam and 19th century French occupation brought heavy cultural influence as well. The Vietnamese alphabet was developed by a French priest and adopted during the French occupation. French culture is commonly seen in other cultural areas like cooking as well. Independent since 1954, Vietnam has worked successfully to build their own cultural identity of strength, resilience and cheerfulness.

I sat in the afternoon sun and looked at the buildings that surrounded the park. Off this main drag the buildings were larger, like you'd see in New York or Chicago. They housed banks and offices and Kentucky themed chicken restaurants.

I noticed though, if you stray at all of the main drag, the buildings were tiny, and packed together, like the one that housed the taproom. Zoning laws and building permits were different here and the smaller buildings housed constantly changing shops and multi-generational families.

As I sat people watching, I noticed a woman crossing the street at the far end of the park. I'm not sure what it was about her that caught my eye. She was older, with long stringy, grey hair. She wore sheets of fabric wrapped around her body that she held up with one hand that was also holding multiple plastic shopping bags. She used her other hand to gesture traffic out of her way as she crossed the first set of lanes and made her way into the median.

Here, a hundred feet from me, in the traffic median in the middle of the afternoon sun, she stopped. She set down her plastic bags on the grass and used both hands to hike up her gypsy skirt. Then she squatted and began to poop.

Holy smokes. Was I seeing this correctly? I didn't want to stare and be rude, but I also could not look away. Was this really happening? Mike had said that people had different bathroom habits here. Was this what he meant? Just then, the lady looked up, saw me sitting on the bench and locked eyes with me. She immediately finished her business, grabbed her bags and began crossing the second set of traffic lanes headed right in my direction.

What is happening? I thought. What did I do? Did I break some kind of Vietnamese public pooping privacy etiquette? I had no idea. Certainly, the lady wasn't coming towards me except she was, still gesturing with her free hand and yelling in a language I didn't understand. When she was about thirty feet from me, I got up and quickly walked in the other direction. After what felt like a safe silence away, I turned and looked to see her sitting in the exact spot I had just been sitting in. I guess that was her seat.