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Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown
Vietnam
Aired April 17, 2015 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANTHONY BOURDAIN, HOST (voice-over):Welcome to my place of dreams. My spirit house. The city of ghosts.
(MUSIC: THEME SONG)
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Way in central Vietnam is someplace I've never been before. But it's still Vietnam, where all the things, the smells, the sounds, the details, I love so much. First night in country, it's like sliding into a warm, deeply comforting familiar bath.
I've been all over Vietnam, a place I feel a special connection to. My first love, a place I remain besotted with, fascinated by.
(on camera): So back in Vietnam, one of my favorite places on earth. And all of the things I need for happiness. Little plastic stool, check. Tiny little plastic table, check. Ooh. Something delicious in a bowl. Check.
(voice-over): In this case a local specialty, tom hen (ph), clam rice, sweet, meaty little local clams out of their shells, tossed with a wild swirl of mung beans, white rice, spicy green chilis, crunchy roasted peanuts, fried pork rind, and cilantro. And a similar variation with rice noodles.
(on camera): That fish sauce with chilies in it, and oh, that'll just singe your eyebrows off. Some chilies in.
(voice-over): Hit with some hot clam broth, and you're on your way. I'm back. Back in Vietnam. Shit-eating grin for the duration. A giddy, silly, foolish man beyond caring.
(on camera): And a cold local beer. My preferred brand, in every way. Ah. Clams with pork cracklings. How could that not be good?
This is the way so many of the great meals of my life have been enjoyed. Sitting in the street, eating something out of a bowl that I'm not exactly sure what it is. Scooters going by. So delicious. I feel like an animal. Where have you been all my life?
Fellow travelers, this is what you want. This is what you need. This is the path to true happiness and wisdom.
(SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) BOURDAIN (voice-over): Located on the north and south banks of the Perfume River in central Vietnam, mountains behind, sea ahead, an arrangement determined by criteria both military and spiritual. For 143 years, Hue was the seat of power for the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled the entire country until the late 1800s, when the French started taking power and land under their control.
The French allowed the imperial throne to rule nominally the center of the country, until the end of World War II in 1945. Hue has been celebrated for its dynastic architecture since the early 1800s, vast palaces, pagodas, and tombs. The center, as well, for the intellectual, artistic, culinary and religious life of the country.
(on camera): Oh yes, that's tempting. It's around here somewhere.
(voice-over): This is Dong Ba market, and deep inside, somewhere in there, is what I want.
(on camera): My way of thinking, in the hierarchy of delicious, slurpy stuff in a bowl, Bun Bo Hue is at the very top.
(voice-over): Nguyen Qui Duc is an author and journalist who spent much of his childhood in Hue.
NGUYEN QUI DUC, AUTHOR/JOURNALIST: If I'm going to die, I'm going to go to prison, they give me a last meal, this will be it.
BOURDAIN (on camera): This will be it.
NGUYEN: This will be it.
BOURDAIN: Let's do it, man.
(voice-over): Here Kim Shao (ph) creates an elaborate broth of mixed bones scented with lemongrass, spice, and fermented shrimp paste. At the bottom, rice noodles garnished -- nay, heaped -- with tender slow- cooked beef shank, crab meat dumplings, pig's foot, and huyet, blood cake. Garnished with lime wedge, cilantro, green onions, chili sauce, shredded banana blossoms and mung bean sprouts, it's a wonder of flavor and texture. The greatest soup in the world.
(on camera): Look at that, man, that is just unbelievable. Blood cake.
NGUYEN: Blood cake.
BOURDAIN: The sauce. I want to see how much he put in there.
NGUYEN: You've got to make it look really red in there. It has to be blood red.
BOURDAIN: And the broth is wonderful. People are put on earth for various purposes, I was put on earth to do this. Eat noodles right here.
NGUYEN: When I was a kid, we used to tell each other, do not take a date to go out to eat this stuff, because if you start sweating, your hair will stick up.
BOURDAIN: Really? I would definitely bring a date to this, because if she doesn't like this, there's no hope of a relationship.
NGUYEN: Exactly.
BOURDAIN: If she said, "Oh, I don't know, there's, like, blood. There's icky stuff in there," that would be a relationship ender to me. I mean, I'm not kidding.
NGUYEN: I mean, here you are having it in a market like this. She makes this in a place like New York or Paris, it would be real cuisine.
BOURDAIN: It's just -- I mean, this is as sophisticated and complex a bowl of food as any French restaurant. It really is the -- just the top of the mountain.
How long has she been here?
NGUYEN: She started out when she was 12.
BOURDAIN: You live in a great country, man. Any country that could produce this is a superpower, as far I'm concerned.
I'm getting down to, like, the pepper residue at the bottom. How long does that broth have to simmer to get good?
NGUYEN: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NGUYEN: An hour.
BOURDAIN: Wow, really? I would have guessed, like, 14 hours.
Yum. Happy. Nice burny feeling on my lips, flop sweat, check. Happy. So, we can pretty much cancel the rest of the show. I've achieved the -- my happy zone. It's really all downhill from here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOURDAIN (voice-over): My oldest friend in Vietnam, Lin (ph). Originally assigned to translate, to guide, to escort, and to report on me back in 2000 when I first came to this country.
(on camera): How are you, brother?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My brother.
BOURDAIN: Good to see you.
(voice-over): His responsibilities to his employers have never been an impediment to our friendship. We meet in Zui Yan (ph), where you pick your own seafood out of the tank and you cook it yourself.
(on camera): You really do look exactly the same. You look good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes? BOURDAIN: Oh yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You also look the same. No trace of time on your face.
BOURDAIN: My hair is white. I have the pictures. I looked completely different in 2000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People told me that all the seafood is from the lagoon over here. Tam Giang (ph). Tam Giang (ph) lagoon is one of the biggest ones in southeast Asia.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): I'm going for some eel. Season with lemon grass, green chili and pepper, drizzle with house special sauce, grill over charcoal and dig in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have the picture with you.
BOURDAIN (on camera): You have some old photos? Oh, look at me, come on. I look like my Aunt Sonia. Look at this. I look like I'm 30 years younger. And that's...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My son, Ming.
BOURDAIN: Ming?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's now 17.
BOURDAIN: Oh my God, he's going to college soon. Wow. This is the island of Mr. Sang.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From Cho Island. In Halong Bay.
BOURDAIN: Hanoi.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hanoi, by the West Lake (ph).
BOURDAIN: Oh my God, look at that. We look cool. We totally look cool here.
But does everybody fall in love with the country like I did? I came here, and it stole my heart. You know?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's a very good meeting point between Vietnam (ph) and America. But in the past, it was over, and now is a new time.
BOURDAIN: Mm. Wow, that's great. Dude, that's pretty spicy. Perfect with beer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need more drinks.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Lobster from the South China Sea. Give it a nice haircut tableside, and it's perfect.
(on camera): Mm, sweet. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sweet?
BOURDAIN: Sweet, just like I remember.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BOURDAIN: Yes. A sentimental guy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sometimes at work I try to be serious, and I just think about work, but I don't know why. When I meet you, I just think about drinking and getting something good to eat.
One more cheer.
BOURDAIN: Good to see you again, my friend.
(voice-over) It's been a long time since my old friend and I met. A hell of a lot of road with this guy.
One of the great joys of life is riding a scooter through Vietnam.
To be part of this mysterious, thrilling, beautiful choreography. Thousands upon thousands of people -- families, friends, lovers -- each an individual story glimpsed for a second or two in passing, sliding alongside, pouring like a torrent through the city. A flowing, gorgeous thing.
As you ride, you not only see but overhear a hundred intimate moments in miniature. You smell wonderful, unnamed things cooking, issuing from store fronts and food stalls. The sounds of beeping, laughing. Announcements from speakers, the putt-putt and roar of a million tiny engines.
Hue's place in history, long regarded as the heart of the Imperial Dynasty, changed forever during the Vietnam War. In 1968, Hue became the site of some of the most bitter fighting in the war.
During the lunar new year, the Tet holidays, when usually there was a cessation of hostilities, more than 100 cities all over South Vietnam were attacked by the North Vietnamese and V.C. Hue quickly fell.
You have seen these images. It was footage like this that turned, finally, a great part of the American public against the war. The U.S. Marines fought house to house to retake the city. A vicious three-and- a-half-week-long battle. Eventually, artillery and air support were called in. The city was saved. And of course, largely destroyed in the saving.
The civilian population caught in the crossfire were equally devastated. The North Vietnamese, to their enduring shame, had while controlling the city, rounded up anyone seen as a potential enemy and either disappeared them away to unknown prisons or killed them outright. Most notoriously when they massacred almost 3,000 people, rolling them, many of them still alive into mass graves in and around Hue. Duc knows full well the horrors and heartbreak of that time. In his
memoir, "Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of an American Family," he captures the terror of a nine-year-old boy, the son of a high-ranking South Vietnamese civil servant, caught up in the nightmare of war.
(on camera): Where were you in 1968?
NGUYEN: I was at the place where it's now a hotel. My parents were staying there, we were staying there. We were surrounded during the night. We didn't even know. My father looked out the window and just thought it was South Vietnamese soldiers. Everybody was surprised. In those days, we thought that the war was something happening out in the battlefields and the mountains, out in the countryside, and all of a sudden, we come here, and there's the flag of the National Liberation Front, and to see that was just a complete shock.
So we stayed for a week in the basement, and the American soldiers came. By that time they had marched my father away, the North Vietnamese soldiers. We didn't know where he was taken to, and we had no idea whether he was alive or not. My mother went out to the mass graves, when they were discovered, and she saw the bodies in there. And she said, "I can't go there and look for him."
BOURDAIN: A lot of people died here.
NGUYEN: You cannot help thinking about these people who died when they're young, who died for no reason, who just got caught in the fire fights. We have the day of the dead here, the day of the wandering souls, and we honor those who are not buried within their home village, are not taken care of, their spirits are not taken care of. There are families here who don't have a death date, which is huge. A death anniversary in the Vietnamese is when you do the ceremonies, you pay attention to the dead. You can't do that if you don't know when they really died. You just assume those people are just never liberated, spiritually, that they are stuck in that space.
And it was like that for my father, because he was in prison; we had no news from him. You couldn't set up an altar. You just hoped that he was alive. Ten, 12, 15 of your friends are going out and doing things. You would just have this weight on you that your father is somewhere imprisoned or in the jungles. And that stuff stayed with me for 40 years in my mind.
I don't know how many Vietnamese have that kind of experience. At the same time, I come back to Hue, my hometown, my family's hometown. I'm glad people are alive, people are living, things are happening, things are changing. We need to let the country open up and let the people have a moment of enjoyment, have a better life.
BOURDAIN: I mean, obviously I'm an outsider, but it just seems to me as a casual observer, you can pretty much survive anything.
NGUYEN: oThat's what my brother reminds me, when I used to get all upset about things happening in Vietnam. He said, "Look, it survived 4,000 years. It will do OK." When you ask me to be hopeful, I'm hopeful, because it's a young country. It's a young population. It's energetic and that drives me, that gives me hope that makes me young, that makes me to want believe in this country. And this town. Such a wonderful place to be.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Voy Tran (ph) is a painter, and something of a throwback, an anomaly, a creature from another, earlier time in the life of the one-time imperial city.
She lives in an area called Pienan (ph) Hill, in a magnificently restored compound. These traditional wooden houses were once part of the regal style, with sloped roofs to handle the rainy Hue weather. But most importantly, they feature a garden at the center, which follows the eastern philosophy that all things originate from a single source, and expand in all directions.
Since the loss of her beloved son, she's lived here, surrounded by her garden and her art. Occasionally, she invites guests and friends. There's Duc, writer and food blogger Lan (ph), art collector Jean- Francois Hubert (Ph), and Philippe Damat (ph).
(voice-over): So this is your home; also a gallery?
VOY TRAN (PH), PAINTER: Yes, I design and my people work.
BOURDAIN: She also cooks, magnificently from a repertoire of imperial Hue-era dishes numbering over 100. Back in dynastic times, the emperors demanded variety: in wives, of whom they would sometimes have over 100, and in food. The menus of the 19th Century imperial palaces boasted new dishes every night. Small, flavorful, and beautifully presented. And that culinary tradition, which gave Hue its reputation as a food capital, continues today.
(on camera): How much of that persists? Those imperial roots, that need for variety?
TRAN (ph): (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NGUYEN: Yes, the tradition has stayed, and it will stay forever here, to cook all these different things all the time.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): We start with bird's nest soup, a delicacy to which I am usually immune. This one is unusually flavorful. These are swallow's nests from high up on cliffs near Nyet Trang (ph). They're soaked in water, cooked in chicken stock, and served with crab meat. Lotus seeds, a symbol of purity, nobility and patience, from a nearby lake. Steamed. Crab roe is mixed with red onion, pepper, and seasoning and added to the soup. And simmered.
TRAN (voice-over): The special thing about Hue cuisine is that we use very few spices. The ingredients are so fresh and good they require very little seasoning.
BOURDAIN: The symbolic and health aspects of many of these dishes not to be overlooked. (on camera): This is fantastic. Lovely.
How does Hue differ from the rest of Vietnam?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A wonderful architecture, and very quiet people. If you stay some time in Hue, after some days you feel quiet, you take your time.
TRAN: In Hue, our rivers are in close proximity to the ocean. And the types of fish living where fresh and salty waters meet.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
BOURDAIN: Goi wei (ph) is a traditional dish that's seldom made these days because of the complexity and the time needed to do it right. A fish stock is made from kaban (ph), a fish from the Perfume River. Pineapples, onions, chilies, shallots, and coriander. A salad of quickly cooked prongs, rice noodles, ginger, red chili, garlic and galangao (ph). Layer of rice noodle, banana flower, then the prongs, garnishes. The strained fish stock is brought to the table with the salad in separate bowls and combined just before eating.
TRAN: Spicy for you?
BOURDAIN: No, it's good. I love it.
TRAN: It is very spicy.
BOURDAIN: Oh no, I like it.
What I found when I first came to the this part of the world, Vietnam in particular. My pallet changed. I needed an elevated level of chilies and heat.
Much of Vietnamese cooking abides by principles of yin and yang. Heat and cold. This one, a lobster dish with five spices, balances the coldness of the lobster with the heat of the spices. Red onion, ginger, lemongrass and chilies are added to the boiling water to cook the lobster. Once the lobster's cooked, it's presented in a bowl of lime leaves. And the stock is poured over it.
Whoa. That's beautiful. We're getting into this with our hands, I'm guessing. I like this. Beautiful.
TRAN: The winter here is unbelievable, it's very cold and wet. That's why we have chili to keep us warm.
BOURDAIN: Voy Tran spoils all of with us a succession of dishes. But the past, as it often does in a place like this, intrudes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's dealt with a lot of suffering. The people here are very withdrawn in some ways. Smiling, but of course they remember everything. They have to remember the war in 1968.
I was visiting my grandfather's house, and I got goose bumps because I knew during the war in 1968 lots of people were killed. And they were buried on all the sidewalks there. And I'd walk around there and I feel it. It's dark, it's somber, and the history is there.
TRAN: They say, "every meter of Hue, there's a dead person." My mom, she never wanted me to go home after like 10:00. She'd get angry if I got home at 11:00 or something. She scared me, so when I got home at 9:00, I tried to go home very early.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Riding a boat along the river, you sort of feel there are things living in the water and in the trees and in the darkness out there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOURDAIN: Know your enemy, they say. Know who it is you're facing out there. Who are they? Why do they fight? What are they willing to endure in the furtherance of their cause? These, one would think, are simple questions, useful in any conflict.
Meet the enemy. Okay. He was only an infant during our nine-year long war, but Quio Tan's (ph) experience should be instructive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated on screen): That year when I was born, 1967, the fighting was very fierce.
BOURDAIN: In 1965, the United States initiated a sustained bombing campaign called Rolling Thunder, hoping to destroy an elusive enemy in villages like this one. Vinh Moc (ph), which was less than 20 miles from forward U.S. Marine fire bases just south of the DMZ.
This is where Tan was born. As the target of frequent bombings, the village of Vinh Moc moved underground. Up to 100 feet down into darkness.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated on screen): My mother came down here to give birth to me. And I lived in here for six years.
BOURDAIN: The villagers carved over 5,000 feet of tunnels out of the earth, creating a complex that would house all 90 families of Vinh Moc. 13 entrances and exits leading from the inland to the beach. Showing me through the labyrinth is Con Taq (ph). Born in Huawei during wartime, she has since moved to the DMZ to work as a guide.
How did they dispose of all of this earth and rock without revealing the tunnels?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The craters, the craters were everywhere like on the landscape of the moon, and you know, the dirt of the craters are so fresh, look new, so they just left them there.
BOURDAIN: This was the maternity ward where Tan was born.
Where did people sleep?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have sleeping places. Just like this, but smaller. Two square meters only, just enough to put a bed. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated on screen): At the time, we were a
family of four people, all living in that one room.
BOURDAIN: How long did it take to build?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 20 months of digging.
BOURDAIN: 20 months of digging.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: By hand.
BOURDAIN: By hand.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, the farmer, they dug with their tools.
BOURDAIN: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Under the bombing.
BOURDAIN: While the bombing is going on, they're down here digging this out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated on screen): No need to be scared. The earth moved, but the noise was not loud. In here, it would not collapse. This side vibrated strongly. These two sides only gently. All was vibrating like that, but did not collapse.
BOURDAIN: Wow. How many children here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated on screen): At that time, there were about 30 kids, because older kids had to evacuate. Those who were still too small and young stayed in here.
BOURDAIN: How did they play?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated on screen): Running back and forth. Lit up the lamp and chasing each other back and forth. When mom said, "come home for sleep," then we came back.
BOURDAIN: So much of the time you were in total darkness?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
BOURDAIN: You don't even see -- you can't see your mother.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some people said that even when the parents, you know, feed the children, they need to touch their face and find their mouth and feed them.
BOURDAIN: Wow.
Children played here. But people also emerged from these tunnels to kill or cripple Americans. To shoot them, to plant bobby traps, and that's what they did. Six years in darkness. And at the end of the war, the people of Vinh Moc emerged from that darkness. And what did they do? What was that like, after living in darkness for so long? What was it
like to come out and be able to spend the rest of his life in the sun?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE), (UNINTELLIGIBLE), then I started fishing, following after my father as a fisherman.
BOURDAIN: Thank you, wow, ready.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
BOURDAIN: Looks kind of like a mackerel. Good.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good?
BOURDAIN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Really?
BOURDAIN: Yes.
Last question, hypothetical, if the French or the Japanese, or the Americans, suddenly decided they wanted for some reason to come back, would he fight?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated on screen): If they came back to cause trouble, of course I have to, because our people (UNINTELLIGIBLE) but happy and welcome.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's different. They're all welcome if they're tourists.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOURDAIN: There are particular sounds that come with waking up in rice country. At Tanzang (ph) lagoon however, early morning is the end of a workday. As fishermen who have been out on the water tie up close to shore and sell their catch in the early mist. I'm meeting up with Lac (ph) for what she promised would be a very tasty afternoon snack. Quan Banolet (ph) is set back from a quiet lane in the outskirts of town. It's a neighborhood place specializing in this. Ban bayo (ph), little pancake-like things made of rice flour, steamed in molds, and topped with crispy fried shallots and cassava paste and crumbled fried shrimp.
So show me how you eat this. What do we do?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had this when I was a little girl. So you try to pick it up like this.
BOURDAIN: Right. I got it. Just cut around the edge here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel so clumsy. It's been a while.
BOURDAIN: Fold it over. Oh, it just -- mm. This is great. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is so nostalgic to me. When I was younger, at noon, my mom asked me to take a noon nap, say if you take a noon nap, then I will buy you (inaudible), and I will sit there in front of our house waiting --
BOURDAIN: Waiting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Waiting for her, with a dish, an empty dish waiting for her. She would come, and then my mom would buy it for me. (inaudible), at the end of the day, we see who eats the most.
BOURDAIN: Oh, so you'd have a stack (inaudible).
What are they eating in the banana leaf? Can we have one of those two?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we can have everything.
BOURDAIN: Oh, good, I don't want to leave anything out.
Oh, yeah, there's pan potluck (ph), made of cassava or tapioca with pork and more shrimp from the lagoon, wrapped like a tamale in banana leaf, then steamed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, you can open this thing. It's also (inaudible), in Vietnam, we learn how to unwrap the thing. You have to know how to unwrap the things. Unwrap these--
BOURDAIN: I'm watching you. Let's get this right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are doing it right, you are perfect. I think you are an expert. Maybe in the life before, you were born here.
BOURDAIN: In a past life?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
BOURDAIN: So this is shrimp. Pick it up and dip. Right? Hmm. Very nice. They're pretty too. Look at that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's very honest. You can see to what's inside.
BOURDAIN: You call this type of eating an-choi (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: An-choi is like for fun or playing.
BOURDAIN: Recreational eating.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
BOURDAIN: So it's not a main meal. It's for snacking.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
BOURDAIN: Banramit (ph) is a delicious marriage of fried and glutinous sticky rice dumplings. It starts with frying the paste in cooking oil. Then unpeeled shrimp are stuffed into dough. Place the chewy part with the crunchy part and sprinkle with chopped, fried shrimp. Oh, wow, that looks awesome. What is underneath?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rice base.
BOURDAIN: Oh, okay.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But on the top is thin. At the back is fried base (ph).
BOURDAIN: Oh, that's great. Nice and crispy and greasy. I love it. Anybody would love this. It's just amazing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a combination between the soft --
BOURDAIN: The soft and the crispy, crunchy. Delicious.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BOURDAIN: Last ride, a few miles out of town, whip across the rice paddies. Just getting from here to there, this part of the world, it's pure pleasure. I'm meeting my friends for a country lunch.
What's the specialty at this restaurant? Chicken baked in clay?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
BOURDAIN: Another friend from the past, Ha Pham (ph), Lin (ph), of course, Lan (ph), and a new friend from Huawei, Tan (ph). A last meal, some goodbyes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have a question. What make you stay so long? Because normally travelers come to Huawei, they stay only one or two nights. That's it.
BOURDAIN: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's your impressions about it?
BOURDAIN: It's very laid back. The food's great. It's pretty. There's a lot to see. It's a perfect place to go if you want to take your time. It's beautiful to me.
Food's coming.
Out here, there are a lot of dishes like this. Fill a chicken with lemongrass, wrap it in banana leaves, then cover it with muddy clay from the nearby rice paddies. Cook in the coals, or a pile of burning straw, if you like. Unwrap carefully tableside. Section with sheers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Smells so good. Makes me hungry.
BOURDAIN: Serve with a little lime and salt, maybe some chili sauce. Squash, bitter melon and morning glory greens for veggies.
That's good.
Some unexpected last words.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On behalf of people in Huawei, thank you for you coming.
BOURDAIN: Thank you for having me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We wish you would have a blessed trip, safe and sound, and have success.
BOURDAIN: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I learned many things from American. I still remember some poems. (inaudible) on a snow evening.
BOURDAIN: Please.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sometime drink a lot of beer. I forgot.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I know, this house is in the village, though. You will not see me stopping here to (inaudible). My little horse must (inaudible) to stop at a farmhouse near. Between the horse and frozen lake, the (inaudible). He gives (inaudible) a second to ask if there's some mistakes, the only other sound of (inaudible), and something else.
(LAUGHTER)
BOURDAIN: Bravo.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we wish you have a good trip, a good fly. Will you come back after you return to New York?
BOURDAIN: I'll come back to Vietnam, always. Cheers, everybody, and thank you, all of you, for all your help.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cheers one more time.
BOURDAIN: This is who came out of the ground, out of the jungle, the darkness, when it was all over. And this is what they did.
