AHHHHHHHHH GROSS!

When I woke up this morning, there was a centipede crawling around in my sheets. 

I neglected to write last week about the sunny, beautiful morning when I woke up, stretched, looked happily out the window to the bright day, and was faced with the silhouette of a spider the size of my head.  It had gotten between the screen and my (fortunately shut) window pane.  I may never open that window again.  I took a picture, but it's blurry.  And then I tried to give the picture perspective by holding up my finger, and the disgusting beast jumped at me!  I screamed.... it went and hid in a corner where I'm sure it still lies in wait to terrify me again. 

This picture is neither my hand nor my spider, but it gives some indication of the monster that is the Huntsman species.  [expletive]ing huge.  I'm getting the willies again just thinking about it!

Grasshopper Salad

I've been meaning to change my sheets for a good week now. I guess there's no way of denying when the time is right.

Since Sunday, I've been bedridden with a high temperature, sore throat, general chills and aches and night sweats and flu-ish-ness. Today, for the first time in days, I actually had a desire for solid food. Mind you, I have managed to eat mashed potatoes (from a box) and chicken noodle soup (from a can), but it would be an insult to root vegetables and poultry to call either of those items "food."

For those of you to whom I have not already preached, I here profess I am a unabashed devotee of a gentleman named Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food." In both of these gripping non-fictions, Mr. Pollan details the life of our dinner, from the ground where it originated to the substances with which it is cooked. If you thought "Fast-food Nation" had a profound effect on your eating habits, try the "Omnivore's Dilemma" chapter on corn (never mind the bit about feed lots... anyone can be terrifying while detailing what happens to chickens destined for styrofoam and plastic wrapping). These books are not about denying us humans the pleasure of a hearty meal, but about developing a new awareness of what our food actually is. So much of the Western diet revolves around processed food, chock full of corn and soy by-products with chemical preservatives and flavor additives tossed in. Canned chemical compounds do not a hearty stew make. From all Mr. Pollan's research, a maxim emerges: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables." He goes on to list the basic rules for determining what is food. Primarily, if your great-grandmother would not recognize it as food, you shouldn't eat it. And if you cannot pronounce the ingredients listed on a label, don't put it in your mouth. Stay out of the middle aisles of the grocery store... stick to the periphery where fresh food lives.

All that said, I've been doing a lot of shopping at the farmer's market, and I convinced my sick and ailing self that the best meal to speed me along my path to recovery would be a salad. I rifled through the fridge and came up with half a tomato, an avocado, some feta cheese, a carrot, and a bit of turkey. Looking good. I went for the romaine, pulled off a couple leaves to give them a rinse, and found there, nestled among the greenery, a dead grasshopper. Oh disgusting. But after my initial squeal and horror, I decided I liked the notion of eating lettuce so un-pesticided that a grasshopper could nestle in it. Content with my environmentalism, I pulled off one last leaf. There lay two more grasshoppers. Big ugly things. These were not crickets; they were the size of my thumb. One healthy little bug is icky, three is another thing entirely. I have never washed lettuce so vigorously or with such inclination towards using soap to aid the process.

At last I put my salad together, and convinced myself I still wanted to eat it... in bed, the throne on which I have been riding out these uncomfortable days. I got my bottle of soda water from the fridge, went to my room, set the salad down on the wine law book on the bed, opened the soda water. The soda water exploded. One quarter of a 1.5L bottle of soda water sprayed with abandon, as if the grasshoppers had spent their final hours dancing salsa with the carbonated beverages in the dark of the refrigerator. When I finally got the cap closed and assessed the damage to my bedroom, I was looking at a splattered wall, wet sheets and comforter, a doused cell phone and alarm clock, a bookshelf of hosed books, a puddle on the floor, and one very very soggy sweatshirt. I had precious little humor for the situation, so as I cursed and set off, I gave one good kick of my wet slippers. And my food caught on the laptop power cord. Which dragged hastily over the bed, flipped up the cover of the law book, and tipped my fresh salad over into the sheets. I'll let you imagine for yourself the first words I chose to describe the moment.

Some days are just made for boxed mashed potatoes.

Cu Chi Tunnels and Motorbike Missiles

The last morning in the Saigon area was spent touring the Cu Chi Tunnels, a 200 km network of underground rooms and passageways that housed the Viet Cong headquarters from which the 1968 Tet Offensive was launched. The tunnels, part of a subterranean system under much of the country, was a vital component of the guerrilla tactics that so hampered US forces. The Marines in fact specially trained soldiers as tunnel rats to go down into the mole-holes armed with a flashlight and knife. No wonder that some of the most traumatized veterans were the ones sent into the dark to kill with their bare hands anything that moved. The tunnels were never effectively infiltrated.

Our local guide, Mr. Thong (see right), is a proud native of Cu Chi and a wounded veteran of the fighting that took place. He described in detail the punji stake pits and explosive booby traps that the villagers devised from GI rubbish. "The American--big country, strong country--" he explained, "They bring lots of Budweiser and when they throw away the can, we pick up and put bomb inside. We recycle!" The jungle surrounding the village was rife with spear lined holes that were covered with brittle branches and leaves. Our guide explained that they wanted to maim, not kill soldiers, because "they go home to America and show the family, the friends. Look what the Vietnamese can do." So deeply satisfied was Mr. Thong with his peoples' war effort. Using clever ingenuity, they thwarted the most powerful of military forces.

The experience was a provoking juxtaposition to the War Remnants Museum, and was fairly nauseating in its own rite. I was somewhat appalled that Mr. Thong, knowing Americans were part of his audience, would be so blatant with his opinions. Of course he thinks of himself as a patriot against foreign aggression, so much so that he has rationalized beyond the humanity of his own actions. I was sickened by the pride in his voice as he described watching an American soldier die, even as I felt some sorrow for him when he told us about the death of his mother and siblings. He was happy to show off his battle wound, and tell us the details of his life in the tunnels. When we arrived at the half-blown up US tank, he encouraged us to climb aboard for pictures. He explained in gross detail the way spikes tear a leg when set at different angles in a pit. Ego loosens the lips better than any torture.

War is hell.
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Back in Ho Chi Minh City, we had an hour and a half to catch a bus to Dalat. We downed a noodle-soup lunch at Pho 2000 (which claims fame for having served lunch to President Clinton in 2000). I haggled for some tank tops in the marked (gypped again). We began to cross the last major street between us and our hotel, our bags, and our 6-hour bus ride up into the mountains.

Let's do this in slow motion (envisioning the classic Frogger format): I look to the left. I pick the perfect split second to skip between motorcycles. I dodge a dump truck. Hop across twenty more lanes of motorcycle madness. At the-rare!-concrete median I muse that it's not even rush hour. Traffic is coming from the right now. I do a couple more quick glances to the right, and begin weaving through the next twenty lanes. A truck is coming. I slow down. My moment comes... I step... I hear Andrew yell "SARAH!" I am blindsided by an Aussie tourist driving salmon-like against the traffic in the middle of the street.

They say time slows down in traumatic moments like this, but it wasn't until later when Andrew gave me his version of the play by play that I knew I'd been dragged for nearly five feet on my knee. The guy stopped long enough to yell "Are you okay?" And I screamed "No!" Andrew cursed the guy, and we continued our dash through the now-stopped traffic to the sidewalk. No sense hanging out in the middle of the raging river.

On the sidewalk, I took one look at the jagged gash across my kneecap, burst into tears, and was ushered by the street vendors into a nearby pharmacy. The pharmacist was a genuine saint. She took one look at the blood dripping on her tile floor, collected some first aid equipment and set to cleaning me up. We were on our way in no time, back to the hotel, into a taxi, onto a bus. It wasn't until a rest stop in the middle of absolutely nowhere that I looked at the wound and realized proper medical help was probably a good idea.

How's that for a cliff hanger?