We are invited to eat with Phoungh, a former teacher in the rural province where we will be teaching next, now a driver in Hanoi. He has heard we are interested in cooking and wants to cook with us. We eat on a low plastic table adjacent to the double bed. His brother and Bien join us. Beyond the bedrooom/sitting room the kitchen is a balcony; people pass through. The communal toilets are downstairs; the type where you fill up your container from a cool deep trough.
The company is delightful and talk ranges widely. Last year when the Vietnam war was broached Bien just said ' that is the past, we look to the future now' but this evening it is different. I contribute the fact that I demonstrated in Grosvener square about the war as a teenager. I still remember vividly the horses and the violence of the police. Peter and Bien talk about their fathers' wartime experiences; our families, their hopes and plans, their country. The cooking lesson has been carefully prepared, with a suitable amount of participation. We squeeze and mix and sprinkle; we throw handfuls of fragrant green herbs in with fish sauce, lime, chillis, we wrap and roll in delicate rice paper. Delicious!
It's late. Halfway back in the taxi I realise I have left behind my marked up map for my first day working in the street kids centre tomorrow. Faster, faster, back over the overpass, blaring horns, a million motorbikes back to the dark impenetrable alleyway where Phoung lives. Then back again to the University Campus 7 kilometers away. It was a good evening. We were treated like friends. I realise that what I loved was its homeliness; eating in someone's home rather than university canteen, food hall, street stall or internet cafe or East meets West restaurant. We resolve to get ourselves a bit more cutlery at the market. Later we hear that we will be living in Phoungh's father's house in the village next month, and his mother is a mean cook. Colin says there is nothing there but buffalo and rice fields and the schools where we will be teaching.