The Banh Mi Incident

There are two kinds of travellers in Vietnam.

Those who see the extra chilli and say no thank you. And those of us who say yes, absolutely, pile it on, I’ve done this before — and spend the next three hours slowly realising we have not, in fact, done this before.

I ate the banh mi on the street somewhere in the old quarter. It was magnificent. Pork, pickled daikon, fresh coriander, a smear of pâté, and enough chilli to make your eyes water while you were still eating it. I knew. Some part of me knew. I ate it anyway.
The reckoning came at midnight.

I won’t go into detail. What I will say is that Vietnamese hotel bathrooms come equipped with a hose next to the toilet, and that night I understood for the first time why that hose exists, why it has always existed, and why every hotel in Southeast Asia should be legally required to have one.

I was mid-operation — focused, purposeful, a man doing what needed to be done — when I became aware of a presence on the other side of the perspex glass.

My wife.

Awake. Standing. Watching.

Through the frosted glass she could see the hose. She could see its general direction of travel. She could piece together the rest.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. She just started laughing — the kind of laugh that has no mercy in it, the kind that builds on itself, the kind you can still hear clearly over running water and personal suffering.

I finished. I emerged. She was back in bed with the covers pulled up, shoulders still shaking.

“You okay?” she said.

“The banh mi was excellent,” I said.

She laughed again for another five minutes.

Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder