As exciting as it is to go to Vietnam for two months, it was a little hard for me to leave Connecticut knowing that I'd miss strawberry picking season; imagine my delight then, when Kim, who has been my Vietnamese teacher in Connecticut for most of the past year, set me up to visit our mutual friend Ti's fruit farm in Long Khanh, about 80 kilometers to the east of Ho Chi Minh City. Ti (his name is Thay Thien Ngo--Thay means monk, so Ti is a nickname he invites Americans and the kids at his temple in New Orleans to call him) arranged for a car for us and took us out with a few other family members. His brother grows chom chom at the farm--see pictures--as well as sau rieng (durian). Chom chom look prickly, but are surprisingly soft--they taste a little like lychees, and you can cut them open with a knife or a decent fingernail. I was a little bummed not to get the whole pick my own experience until I saw that this required ladders and long sleeves in the heat to protect against scratchy branches. We brought a trunkload back with us, as well as durian. Durians are as sharp as they look--a cross between an armadillo and that dinosaur with the spikey back, and about as easy to break into. The smell is a unique one and people are either repulsed or thrilled by it--there's no middle ground. I'm a fan. We took one back, which immediately went into the restaurant's refrigerator as a special favor so it doesn't stink up the room. We tied it up good in its plastic bag. My plan is to eat it tomorrow when Tuan arrives for my Vietnamese class. Since he's a monk, Ti eats vegetarian, so we had a nice lunch served to us. Best new discovery--hem chay, which is a soybean product but better than tempeh, I think. "Hem" sounds enough like "ham" in English that you can make the following joke--In American, ham is meat, but in Vietnam, hem is a vegetable. (OK, this sounds funnier in Vietnamese--trust me).
-Ilene
