Pho' Ga

My first attempt at a Vietnamese breakfast this morning at the Hilton buffet. Granted it's no street stall, but we all gotta start somewhere.

I ordered a chicken pho (pho' ga) for breakfast from the uniformed sous chef at the Egg Station. He does omelettes, fried eggs and pho' ga.

The Ph is an "f" sound. The o is like ö in German. Or œ as in œfs as in French, which explains why the Egg Station makes a good fit.

So pho' is pronounced like "fer". As in "Oh ... fer fuck's sakes, Cheesel!".

The "ga" is like in "ga ga", but halved. Or like "gaaarn", as in "gaaarn Cheesel ... one more durry can't hurt".

So it's fer ga.

It made for a better breakfast than I had anticipated. Even the extra chilli worked.

Pho doesn't pair nicely with coffee, mind. I blame the coffee.

Emergency Ditching

I have just arrived in Hanoi so not much yet to say about Vietnam.

On the plane, about 30 min before landing in Saigon when we would normally be preparing to descend, they played this announcement:

"Attention all passengers. We need to perform an emergency ditching. Please return to your seats immediately and remain calm."

She had a dulcet English accent with a calming timbre that demanded "Please people. No need to panic or scream. Just keep yourselves together as long as possible. Because before long you'll be torn from arsehole to breakfast."

I looked around this fairly empty flight and made eye contact with some other passengers. We communicated via a series of eyebrow raises and taciturn shoulder shrugs: outwardly trying to appear nonplussed while inwardly doing the survivor math and wondering when the oxygen masks were going to appear.

A couple of minutes later the dulcet English accent had been replaced by a clipped Vietnamese woman:

"Dear passenger. Execute me. We play wrong message. Thank you."

"You're fucking welcome." I mumbled under my breath while mentally unfurling myself from a self-styled brace and she continued her message with a "Please prepare for landing."