Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table

by Graham Holliday

THERE ARE BLUE plastic stools and there are blue plastic stools. If you’re lucky (or in an actual brick-and-mortar restaurant), you might find yourself on the almost-comfortable variety, at almost-normal chair height. It might possibly even have a back to it. More commonly, you’ll find yourself on a “croucher.” Tolerable for a short time, but comes with an osteopath’s warning for loiterers. Then there are the “ultras.” You really don’t want to find yourself on an ultra. Commonly found surrounding a two-basket mobile vendor, they can be blue, red, yellow, or white. They are small, very small. Uncomfortably small. Annoyingly small. Bone-creakingly awfully small. Ultras, per Chris’s recommendation, are the price you pay if you want or need to go and eat at a double-basket street vendor. And on Hàng Trống Street, that’s what I had to do if I wanted a nibble at Mrs. Nhung’s fried tofu lunch on the pavement midway along the street.