Erroneous Egg

A few days ago, I went strolling off down the street to my favourite com binh dan.  The ladies there know me now and welcome me in with smiles and hand gestures.  I picked out two dishes from the cart and went inside and sat down.
About two thirds of the way through my lunch an old lady walks in and starts looking around for somewhere to sit.  Me being the only westerner in the shop, my table was empty and all the others were full.  She looked at me and I motioned for her to sit with me, so she did.
This is when the weirdness began.  She immediately starts talking to me, flat out, in Vietnamese.  I look blankly at her but she continues.  After she had finished saying whatever it was she needed to tell me, she began wiping down the table with a napkin in an irritated fashion.  Then she spotted my smart phone sitting on the table next to me.
She begins leaning in and squinting while pointing at it abruptly.  I open the case and show her it is a phone, then put it back down.  This seemed to only make things worse as she began another tirade of Vietnamese while gesticulating wildly at the phone and into the air.  I had absolutely no idea what was going on and a local man seated behind her at a table is watching and laughing.
When I return my gaze to her, she pokes out her top false teeth at me and wiggles them, sucks them back in and continues to talk and gesticulate.  Enough awkward weirdness for one day; I quickly eat the rest of my food, pay and leave.

Chilling in the lounge room

In the evening, myself and my housemates had planned to go back to the bia hoi place in the alley for some cheap beer and interaction with the locals who frequent the place; but first it was off to the ban xeo shop for dinner.  Ban xeo is a fried rice crepe/pancake with prawns, pork, bean sprouts and egg inside.  You break it apart with chopsticks, put it in a rice paper roll with mint, basil, cucumber, lettuce and various other herbs, roll it up then dip it in a supremely delicious fish sauce.

Ban Xeo

Om nom nom

Yuko's pro ban xeo skills

Very delicious and filling and all for a paltry $1.75.  We return home to drop off our scooters and walk to the bia hoi place.  Daniel, our other housemate has already been there for several hours at this point and is well on his bia hoi journey.
Yuko walked off to find a stationary shop before coming to join us, so it was us three guys sitting together with the locals.

Alex and Dan

It wasn't long before the inebriated groups of locals sitting around us began attempted to talk to us, with a little bit of English, Vietnamese and body language.  The local people are so generous if not a bit cheeky.  We were given tiny roast quails to eat for free as well as peanuts.
One man sitting next to me managed to convey to me through body language that in Vietnam, apparently peanut husks are ground up into powder and used in hamburgers.  I'm not sure if he meant the bun or the patty though.
A short while later, one of the locals handed each of us one third of a century egg.  I had seen these before from my time living in Taiwan but I never wanted to try one.  They do not look at all appetising, however since they had given us this food for free and were all staring at us, we pretty much had to eat it.

an example of some century eggs

I peeled the shell away from my third of egg and put the whole piece in my mouth.  It tasted like a regular egg, except the egg flavour is amplified about ten times and it was really salty.  These two things were not too bad; the killer however was the revolting gelatinous texture of the whole thing.  It made me almost gag, but I steeled myself and swallowed it whole.
My face must have revealed my thoughts because they all started laughing and asking me "good? good?"
Blergh, never again.  It sat like a stone in my stomach for hours and made me feel slightly queasy.  Not to worry, beer fixes everything.
Yuko arrived shortly after and being the only female sitting in the alley, all eyes turned to her, as well as the questions.  "What your name?" "Where you from?" "How old?"
We stayed for a little bit longer then went back home for the night.  In hindsight it was a really interesting and funny experience.

It is the little things such as these that create memories that will last.