Lady fingers? No, chicken toes!

Last Friday was the last meeting of one of my elementary level classes—four young men and women who work for the Vietnamese national tourism administration. We met in front of the school, where I returned their graded final exams; then we went to a rooftop beer garden overlooking nearby Lenin Park to eat, drink, and say our farewells.

Thinking of you, I took a few pictures for the blog before settling down to drink beer in earnest and concentrate on our Englinamese conversation—always a bit of a struggle. Among the many things we discussed was my $400 rent ($475 if you include utilities, laundry, and housekeeping). The students unanimously agreed this was extravagant and that $200 a month was closer to standard for a Hanoi apartment…except they kept saying 'room' instead of 'apartment'. To make sure there was no communication gap, I drew a picture of my apartment's bedroom, sitting room, kitchen, bathroom, and terrace and even converted its estimated 400 square feet to square meters for them (a little less than 40). They said, 'Let us find you a cheaper room.' 'Cheaper apartment, you mean?' 'Cheaper apartment, okay!'

Ten minutes later I'd forgotten all about this offer because a chicken platter ordered by the students had arrived. I had ordered this same chicken platter at another restaurant with my CELTA colleagues—and deliberately hadn't ordered it again since. Instead of a mouth-watering plate of braised, seasoned, golden-brown chicken breasts, thighs and wings, what arrived was a plate of bright yellow chicken parts including every part of the chicken except those mentioned above: head, check…beak, check…knees, check…feet, check…anus, check.

About a month ago I had the (maybe not so rare in Hanoi) privilege of watching a young man at the neighboring table eat a pair of chicken feet. I expected him to nibble at the skin and then give it up for a bad job, but he surprised me by biting off the tip of each toe, crunching the bits in his mouth for a few seconds and then, hardly pausing to swallow, biting the toes off shorter and shorter as if they were the ears of a chocolate rabbit—except much crunchier. In a few minutes, the feet had completely disappeared inside him. I thought of that man of American legend who is reputed to have eaten a Buick.

Now it was my turn. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the peer pressure of four charming Vietnamese persons half my age who could scarcely speak English. But I found myself crunching chicken toes as if they were petrified shoestring potatoes. Hai Anh was horrified. 'Don't eat the bones!' she cried in alarm.

'With a chicken foot what else is there?' I wanted to know. 'I saw someone do it in another restaurant,' I added.

Phuong and Tu assured us that eating the bones was perfectly okay, but Hai Anh would have none of it. She commandeered what was left of the chicken feet and put it out of my reach. So I can't truthfully say I've eaten a chicken foot…but I can claim to have scarfed down a few chicken toes.