Back from Cambodia

We flew back to Saigon from Siem Reap this morning.  The highlight of the Cambodia trip was the Angkor temples.  I decided that Cambodia food was not that exciting.  Even when I went off the tour for my own meals I found that the interesting menu items were all Thai or Vietnamese.  And, that's when it hit me that I couldn't think of even one Cambodian restaurant in NYC but there is a Thai place on every block.  I looked everywhere and did not see one sandwich even approximating what I get a Num Pang, my favorite place in NYC.

I have the pressure of needing to get my materials together and photocopied for tomorrow (my first class), but I couldn't resist a few distractions this afternoon.  Another professor who taught in the first session is Vietnamese-American and she offered to take me to a nearby market with a good banh mi stand.  As we set out for our sandwiches, it began to rain intensely as it often does in the afternoon.  We ducked for cover and ended up in a Vietnamese funeral.  She explained all of the traditions to me and a band even came to play.

The banh mi was excellent: the bread was hot and crusty, with thin slices of ham and radish, cilantro and hot chills.  The prof told me how to identify a good stand with high turnover and said a good banh mi will always come with hot bread.  We bought 2 kilos of lychees for less than $1 and it started to rain again, so we ducked under an awning of a restaurant and ate the lychees and talked for a while until it let up again.  It is really a luxury to hang out with someone who speaks Vietnamese - she knew when the restaurant owner was cursing us and saying that we shouldn't be standing in front of the restaurant.

The prof then took me to a tailor across town where she had some clothes made.  I brought my favorite suit with me and she communicated that I wanted the same exact thing in another fabric, which we picked out.  For $100, they are copying my Hugo Boss suit and adding a skirt.  I would never have accomplished this transaction without the good prof translating in Vietnamese, and I never would have known where to go.  She leaves tomorrow, so I had to take advantage of the opportunity even though I have a pile of work to do.  We got fresh squeezed sugar cane juices and headed back to the hotel.