I'd been waiting to go to Hue ever since I first tasted the mi quang at Ngu Binh in Westminster, CA. This may seem like a silly reason to want to take a trip across the Pacific, but as it turned out, Hue was waiting for me right back with much, much more than mi quang.

It had that too, of course, but it made me work for it. A handwritten sign on an already out-of-the-way street pointed down a narrow alley that skirted a lotus pond. The sign said 'My Quang'. No mi quang in sight after 100 meters or so, only frogs and old motorcycle parts, I was about ready to turn around when I saw the sign again, posted outside someone's house. Only previous experience eating in Asia allowed me to semi-confidently walk into what appeared to be a family's living room while they were shucking cassava and demand that they feed me noodles at 2:00 in the afternoon. And yes, it was worth it.

The best food Hue had waiting for me, though, was something called 'com hen' – rice with tiny clams, pork skins, sour starfruit, banana blossoms, and assorted greens. I had heard tell of such a thing, but had to cross two rivers to find it. Passing deserted rice restaurant after deserted rice restaurant was discouraging, but it happened that it was just because all of Hue was eating lunch at the one we eventually found. The ladies serving it also got a good laugh out of Julian's attempts to explain vegetarianism. The word 'chay' that works everywhere else was lost on them. What do you MEAN you don't eat tiny clams?? Who doesn't eat tiny clams??

Appetizer-size banh khoai, like mini banh xeo, awaited us at every turn. Banh beo showed up on every menu, casually, like, yeah, this is something you just get to eat every day. There were nem lui, these spam lookalike pork sticks whose association with spam disappeared the instant the spices and sour mango accompaniment hit your tongue.

It was extraordinarily hot while we were there, too hot even for me, way too hot to even consider walking in the sun – hot enough for me to drink, in one day, three bottles of water, two sugarcane juices, a passionfruit smoothie, and two lemon sodas without even looking at a bathroom. The next city, Quy Nhon, was just as hot, but was also, mercifully, a beach town, and had the same Indonesian custom of just stumbling into the ocean at the nearest port of entry wearing all one's clothes.

Not being a big tourist center, everyone in the whole city was just shocked to see us. On the beach, we were preparing to go in the water and watching a flock of teenagers splashing each other when a Vietnamese guy approached and in strangely formal English demanded to know, in turn, about California's population, economy, landscapes, healthcare system, water conservation policy, and educational system. This burst the floodgates for the teenagers, who had apparently been wanting to approach us but hadn't the nerve to do it until someone else did it first. They ran over and squatted, giggling, in a circle around us, understanding nothing of the conversation on Californian medical insurance and not caring a bit.

2-9 didn't derail us too much beyond most restaurants being closed for lunch and our being forced to eat crappy rice at a stall. Oh, and having to spend the night train ride to Saigon in a soft-seat Vietnamese train with Alvin and the Chipmunks movies playing at top volume. But by '3-9' everything was normal again, with the Ben Thanh market starting my Saigon adventure off right by feeding me incredibly delicious fried snails in garlic oil, accompanied by the old trusty standby, passionfruit juice.