The piece about my namesake was an introductory epitaph, a warm-up before the brunch gastronomy.
From day one, things didn’t click between me and the girls on reception.
I put it to them simply:
— Where’s the best pho bo in this village?
And they told me, without ceremony:
— Hello, mister, we have our own speciality here: Mắt cá ngừ đại dương.
If you want pho bo, stick your thumb out and hitchhike north.
My ignorance is explicable.
A status chaser goes wherever the miles are thicker and the points are fatter.
So after country number eighty on the UN list, I don’t travel by tourist logic.
Had I travelled like a tourist, I’d have known in advance that Tuy Hoa is Vietnam’s main supplier of tuna.
People come here to eat stewed tuna eyes with medicinal herbs (known locally as “ocean headlights”).
These eyes — the Can’t Take My Eyes Off You of Vietnamese cuisine — rank among the country’s ten best-known dishes.
In the end I untangled it, more or less.
We made up.
These days they’ve stopped deliberately over-salting my breakfast eggs 🏃♂️
