Wednesday

This is another side to yesterday's post. These are some things I'll not really miss about Vietnam (volume two) when it comes to restaurants. One: the excellent food occasionally comes with the addition of flavor-enhancing scoops of monosodium glutamate. While I'm convinced that the western demonization of MSG is completely based upon a slight allergic reaction suffered by a slim margin of the US population, it's hard to convince myself that I have not been poisoned with Borax whenever I eat phở or bún or some other bowlful of food brimming with this traditional chemical. About halfway through the meal, the skin on the back of my next starts heating up. Soon, the outer layers of my body seem to be rising off my musculature like Marilyn's white dress. Twenty minutes later it's over. Two: there is something about southeast Asian beer that gives me a headache. It's too bad. Nobody is about to confuse the local brands--Saigon, Tiger, 333--of being award winners, but I prefer them to most Mexican beers. They are light, drinkable, and surprisingly good with food. But every time I drink even one of these beers, within half an hour, my head feels like it's been blown full of cold talcum powder. This is not necessarily isolated to Asia. There are beers at home that do the same thing: Miller products, for example, most beers proclaiming themselves "cold filtered." But back home most beers do not give me a headache; and even here the situation is slowly improving. Sometime around this latest Tết, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam began allowing the importation and sale of American Budweiser beer, one brand I have no trouble drinking. But it's weird when the universally accepted and costly premium quality ideal is Bud in a can. [Cavin]