I thought that before I wrote this article, I would count how many invitations I have received from locals in Vietnam to have dinner together. Or just have tea, for example.
I realized that I could only count this with bloody sweat.
Oh, and also that the number is completely irrelevant.
I have come to terms with the fact that I have been hosted by Vietnamese people many times.
It is time to write about what hospitality looks like for a foreigner in this country.
Tea and the farmer’s pipe
Tea here, as I saw it, is consumed in a completely different way than in Europe.
It is usually drunk from small glasses, always more of them, about 6-8 pieces, I saw them prepared on the table, or simply on the ground in front of the entrance. They are always stored on a tray. In the middle of the tray there is a small teapot. The tea is placed in the top with a filter. The last accessory is a thermos.
The process of making tea is very simple. The remaining tea is poured out and the used tea is thrown out. Fresh tea is put into the cooking pot. This is poured with hot water. Then that first steeping is usually poured out immediately. Then comes the next portion of water, which is left to work for 20-30 seconds. Then we start drinking the tea.
The preparation process is complete. It is not by chance that I do not write about sugar, lemon juice, milk or honey. Water and tea. That is all the recipe.
In Vietnam, tea is like a jug of water on the table. It’s there. They drink two sips of it while talking, while making a deal, while waiting, before or after a meal. If someone arrives, they automatically offer them a glass. It’s not a special event, but a natural part of hospitality.
In Ninh Binh, we visited a seamstress three times. Each time, the house was different when we arrived. Mother-in-law, husband, father-in-law. They didn’t ask why we were there (they obviously knew), they made us tea right away.
In Hanoi, I went to a barber. He was working, but he politely signaled me to sit down and help myself to tea. Then, when he finished with the customer in front of me, we had a drink together.
On my motorbike tour, I stopped at a small shop to buy coffee. They immediately sat me down and poured me some tea.
This morning in Da Nang, I sat down at a café to drink coffee. Before I could even speak, I was given a glass of tea.
One more thing. I never saw the glasses washed before being refilled. It didn’t bother me at all, but there are definitely people who do. It’s time for them to prepare the excuse of “I don’t like tea”.
Once we sit down, the điếu cày (pronounced roughly: zjeu káj) is often immediately brought out, which is one of the most famous traditional smoking tools in Vietnam.
It’s everywhere. I’m not kidding. In every small restaurant, shop. Often used as decoration, but as a practical item, you could build a forest of them in every settlement.
Some interesting facts about it. It’s made of thick bamboo, as I saw, about 5 cm in diameter. There’s little water in the bottom, so it might look like a hookah, but it’s not. Most often, they smoke extremely strong Vietnamese tobacco called thuốc lào from it. It can be much more nicotine-rich than traditional cigarette tobacco. A single sip is enough to make an inexperienced person dizzy or even sick.
Water is poured into the bottom of the pipe after the contents are blown out of the pipe. A ball of tobacco the size of a fingernail is placed in a metal holder designed for this purpose. Then it is handed to the guest, who holds it with both hands. The tobacco is started to burn from above with a lighter. The smoker places the bamboo pipe around his mouth and begins a choreography of inhaling, coughing, rolling his eyes, crying and shouting “whoa”.
Those who can handle the tobacco better let out a cloud of smoke. Here the cloud must be understood almost literally, because when you blow out, such an amount of smoke comes out of your mouth that an aging dragon with teary eyes would envy.
Of course, the locals can handle the whole process themselves, because they hold the pipe with one hand and the self-collector with the other.
After two or three sniffs and an exhalation, it’s over.
It’s really strong. I coughed once too, but the other times I managed to act like I was a tough kid. I cried when I turned the corner.
Part of this experience is that it’s shared. The big pipe is smoked by happy and unhappy people. If you have a problem with this intimacy, it’s better to deny that you smoke.
I like accepting these invitations. There are always inquisitive questions, a kind smile. And the good feeling that selfless hospitality creates.
Meals
If they invited me to eat, I was invited.
In that case, they pay for everything. If I wanted to return the favor, the next time I paid for our meal together. When I was with family, the question of reciprocity didn’t even arise. You’re invited, you can only return the favor by eating heartily.
The simplest invitations, for example, are for a soup. I don’t say this in a disparaging way. Here, the soup is served in a small sandbox-sized plate, in which a young duck would happily play all morning.
And the dominant filling material in the bowl is not the soup, but the many pastas, vegetables and meats, or tofu. This is almost always accompanied by a small basket of lettuce and all sorts of other plant leaves. I’m not kidding here either. Sometimes they put so many vegetables in front of me that a small family of hedgehogs would have been fed every day for a week.
So soup is the main course here. I tried twice to ask for, say, another serving of fried rice with the soup. The result of my stupidity was at least half a serving of food going to the trash each time. The soup always came out on top, by the way.
That’s all for this dish, the simplicity is that in this case we share the salad at most, but the soup remains the private sphere.
The next level of invitation also means eating together.
At this point, they start bringing out the dishes. Not all at once, as we are used to in Europe, but gradually. They bring out, say, two types of dishes. By the time we have tasted them, or maybe even eaten them, the next one will be there.
This is a huge surprise as a guest, by the way. Ordering is not my business. So each round is a bit of a mystery, as are the quantities. Every time it happened that after tasting everything, with the feeling of complete satiety, I thought it was over, and they brought out another big bowl of something.
We eat such dishes from small bowls, the size that we eat pickles from in Hungary.
As a guest, it always turned out that they helped me to put some on my plate. But I can help myself too. That kindness happens to others too, but in most cases everyone helps themselves.
This service is not controlled. Everyone helps themselves to all the dishes, but I experienced that everyone also makes sure that everyone gets everything. In this sentence, I had to do such a significant amount of word stacking that my stomach was upset. Maybe I could have written it so that everyone paid attention to the other person.
At the end of dinners, there is always food left on the table. This is a waste.
It is interesting that in Vietnam we sit at small tables that we only put in front of the children at home. The table is about knee height. So the chairs are small. Most places have a bit of a dollhouse feel.
It’s also very interesting that we throw almost everything under the table while eating. So after a large group leaves, sometimes we have to use a snowplow tractor to clear the debris. Napkins, beer cans, packaging, cigarette butts and anything else that is often trash under the table. Then they just sweep it up. The other solution is a trash can placed next to each table.
I think eating with small plates is very practical. On the one hand, it helps you control the amount of calories you eat. On the other hand, there is much more space for the dishes you eat together. If you need to wash the bowl while eating, you sprinkle it with water and wipe the water near the table.
I always found these meals very cozy.
People often come to the table. Sometimes it’s just for me, for the stranger, so that they can shake hands, maybe toast. But often friends come to the hosts.
I learned that this table visit is supposed to be returned. That is, if a person comes to us from another table to shake hands with me, then after a while I go over to them and we toast.
In these cases, the conversation usually didn’t have to be forced, because we don’t know anything about each other’s language. Also, we can’t talk about our common English in general. But everyone understands the bow and the hand on the heart.
Beer and others
I have mentioned beer a lot in recent weeks.
I would like to reassure all readers that this is not the introductory stage of alcoholism for me.
I swim with the flow and with beer at the same time.
If three of us sit down for dinner, they bring out a carton of beer, which I think contains 24 3-deciliter cans. If the three people have 2-3 hours, then the second carton will also come out. When ten of us sat down, the second carton was already there after 45 minutes.
We use a lot of ice for the beer here. And not just for cooling. The beer melts quickly in the glass, so they constantly throw huge ice cubes into the beer.
The preparation often goes like this: they unload the cans into a bucket, then they put so much ice on it that the Titanic would sink a second time if they met.
If we’ve been around the table for a long time, they’ll replace the ice in the bucket.
We use a smaller bucket for the ice in the glass. Fresh ice is put in this bucket several times. At the beginning of the dinner, we usually throw the ice into the glass with a hot dog tong. Then, as the beer runs out, the tongs are needed less and less. At the end, everyone is throwing ice to everyone else with their bare hands. If someone sees that there’s no ice in the other person’s glass, they fill it in.
I’m – surprisingly – not bothered by the bare-handed ice tossing. If someone does, they should pretend that they like their beer hot.
Short drinks are a different category.
I may have already written that one of the hosts told us what the rule is.
If we start drinking short drinks, we won’t stop until we’re very drunk.
It’s better to know that after the first glass, the evening will lose to sobriety. That is, only accept the first glass if you are prepared for the fire of hell.
There are two interesting things that happen regularly in drinking, as I have seen.
One is the “let’s drink a full glass of beer (or, in the worst case, a whole can) in one go” competition. I couldn’t figure out the reason for this and what kind of coincidence it comes up with. But every now and then someone steps up to you and that’s when it’s time to show who’s the coolest. They usually get really close to me, because I can drink up to a liter and a half of water in one go.
The exhaustion tactic works on its own. If I have to endure this competition for three rounds in a row, the opponent still has a chance.
The other is toasting. When we’ve gotten into the drinking game enough, the “let’s toast after every second sentence” element appears. I think it’s a fun thing and very effective among delirium tremens researchers.
If you are not a fan of beer, or alcohol in general, it is better to say so in advance.
I have been invited to their table by complete strangers several times. I think there are two reasons for this. First, my strangeness, and second, my loneliness. Maybe they think I am unhappy alone and invite me out of love and care. I don’t know.
I can hardly smile while eating, so maybe I don’t radiate joy in life.
All in all, I don’t look for reasons for invitations.
I have accepted the invitation every time, and I have never regretted it.
I feel that I can say without any exaggeration that based on my experience, the Vietnamese people are a very hospitable people.
If I had a beer with me right now, I would throw an ice cube in it and toast the health of many memories.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
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