Never ask a local

266 Doi Can, Hanoi

Across the street from work there is a really popular street cafe. The floor is dirty and the washing up facilities seem dodgy but it is always packed and super fresh and fast and tasty and $1. The customer service ethos here is consistently cold-friendly ... typical Hanoi.

The waiters love taking the piss out of my attempts to read the menu board (I hear 2 or 3 laughing echos at every attempt). The last occasion when I ate in an off-peak time, the cook came out to squeeze my bicep, call me handsome then present me to the head waitress and ask me if she was pretty. She's about 25 so I figure they're worried about her dying an old maid. For some strange reason (not botox) I felt like her child bride. All I needed was a pretty pink parasol.

Yesterday a few of us went to eat with one of our local colleagues (Analyst B). I hate eating with locals - they're so fucking up themselves. You never see the chef come out to grab one of their biceps, much less call them pretty. As I attempted to frogmarch our group into my local, B decided there was a much better place to eat just around the corner. He took us somewhere off the beaten track and I pretended to be impressed and delighted even though I've been there before ... it's shithouse. This eatery's signature dish is a metal pot filled with oil, with 2 fried eggs, 3 chips, 2 beans, 4 pieces of steak and a round blob of something meaty swimming in them. You need to leave the lid on for the first 5 minutes or it spits oil out at you.

Given that today is the first day of the diet, I told him I was on a diet so would just get some pho'. I'm pretty good at saying "pho bo" or "pho ga" but B insisted on taking over by using words I didn't recognise. Show off.

This is what turned up.

When I pointed at the flotsam in my bowl and asked what it was, all I got was "that is a cube of congealed pig's blood" [top left] or "I think that's from the foot" [bottom middle] and "I don't know - probably something near the stomach" [the rest]. I started with sipping the soup, then tried gnawing on an artery to show I could fit in. Then I tried to eat the blood cubes ... I had a nibble then finally lost my nerve after dropping one back into the bowl, splashing soup over my shirt.

50 calories later and an "I'm too full", I started to think how good the local food will be for my diet.