The Noodle Village (Vietnam)

"My uncle was executed here before the American war. He was spying for the French, and they decided he was a double agent, and they killed him." It seemed a story out of the distant past, though it had happened not so long ago. The sun shone brightly outside the open room where we lounged in the shade, the girl, her grandmother and me. I sipped my green tea and set the cup down, forgetting the girl's grandmother would refill it immediately.

Because I had an afternoon to fill before I left Hanoi for the Hill Tribe country the next morning, I found myself on a solo tour to handicraft villages outside of Hanoi on the back of this 20-year-old woman's motorbike. It was the hot season in Vietnam, and I had never experienced any heat like that of Hanoi, not in Bali, not in Thailand, and certainly not in the West. It was good to get to the outskirts of Hanoi and into the villages, despite Hanoi's old French colonial charm.

After visiting villages where silk was made, the girl took me to a village that specialized in making noodles. Her mother was from that place, and many of her relatives still lived there. She was a born story-teller, and she told tales of intrigue, desperation and war as I watched the sweating women cook the noodles in huge vats and cut them on giant screens.

As a dog wandered past, the girl said it was the kind eaten in Vietnam. I could tell she relished pointing this out to me; she knew it always got a rise out of foreigners. "American type dogs are too greasy to eat," she said.