Papaya's and dead kings

 Tuesday November 14th

Inside the old citadel is a French, Vietnamese restaurant that got good reviews, especially their green papaya salad. I could use some upscale dining . So I pull out my phone and open the Grab App, Vietnam’s answer to Uber. I plug in my destination and within a minute of two a car is heading my way.

I’m not sure the driver knows where he is going, but his app has a map and he follows it like a rat in a maze.

At the restaurant I get a table at the second floor veranda. It is raining a little but there is no heart in it. The restaurant is full of tour groups. Long tables with ten or twelve people at them loudly enjoying their fellow travelers company. I am glad I am on the veranda because it is just ‘deuces’ and the ruckus is left in a different part of the restaurant.It’s a little warm, if I was walking I’d probably be perspiring. The couple next to me is sharing the Green Papaya salad and it really smells and looks great. I order it and some Sea Bass. Great presentation and even a short tutorial on how to eat it. Take a shrimp cracker and place a small portion of the salad on it and munch away. It is really good! Sweet with some garlic mixed in, maybe a hint of fish sauce. It was as good as the reviews. This is the first Papaya I’ve ever had and a great introduction to this magical fruit.

It starts to rain harder and blowing in on the patrons closest to the outside, so the management lowers the roll up bamboo curtains to keep us dry and contented. This raises the temperature and I begin to perspire. I take a sip of water and it goes down the wrong hole and I start coughing. I try to wash it away with another sip and it just gets worse. I am really starting to sweat now.  It’s like the world’s most intense hot flash, except it doesn’t subside. Something is wrong, maybe ‘s Montezuma, does Covid come on this quickly? Sweat is pouring off me. I’m coughing and don’t want my neighbors to think I’m a virus distribution center. I get up and move toward the stairs I make it about 10 feet before I either have to sit down or fall down. Something is wrong in Hue.

The hostess comes over and turns a fan on high and aims it at me. I sit there for 10 or fifteen minutes and finally quit coughing and being a nuclear heat generator. Then the Sea Bass comes out of the kitchen. I tell the hostess that I’ll be departing and to please give me the check. She says she won’t charge me for the Sea Bass, and I tell her, I ordered it it’s up to me to pay for it. She isn’t having any of this so I am forced to accept her largesse.

I hop in the first taxi that rolls by and back at the hotel shuffle up to my room and crash on the bed. I’m not 100% but certainly better than I was at the restaurant.  I start Google’ing the symptoms and find out I am going through menopause. Ya, Google, decades ago. I dig deeper and it finally hits me I was having a allergic reaction , and the coughing was not the wrong hole it was Anaphylaxis. Unless I’m suddenly allergic to shrimp, I think it was the papaya the caused that reaction.

I was wiped out and lights out at 8:30pm.

A fitful night’s sleep and I still didn’t feel rested. I forced myself to get some breakfast and then back to the room to lay on the bed, but Hue was one of those must see cities for me this trip. Did a search and found a company that fit what I needed. A driver and some local knowledge.

At 10am, Hai arrives and off we go. First to the Citadel and then to a pagoda and finally two dead king’s final resting place.  Everywhere we went has slippery tiles to walk on, so I tiptoed the entire day. It was a weather mess of a day. Never anytime that rain wasn’t falling. Some of the time it was a simple mist and some of the time it was a full on downpour. I stumbled through the day not my usual traveling Tigger. It wasn’t until after 2pm that I started to get some pep in my step.

I am tired of being wet, but don’t want to dine of Pringles from the minibar or eat in the hotel’s restaurant. Hai recommended a restaurant that TripAdvisor also liked that is a 10 minute walk. Think I’ll do a very un-Western Washington thing and take an umbrella, and refrain from Papaya.