The strangest thing about lunch at A16 was the coincidence that our waiter there had been our waiter the previous night at Orson. Fortunately, he's a really good waiter. He steered us well at Orson, had good suggestions at A16, and recommended some other places to try (including Front Porch, where we ended up Saturday night). A16 is known especially for their pizzas, though we were anticipating the meatballs, since E's dad had actually made their meatball recipe before and it was great. Of course, meat-lovers that we are, we were happy to discover they had a charcuterie selection. On our waiter's recommendation we tried the house-cured ciccioli, which is almost more of a pate than what you'd usually think of as a cured meat (here's a description of the process). This one was soft and sort-of spreadable, though not as much as a pate, more somewhere between sausage and pate. Regardless, it was really good; especially if you don't think about exactly what pig parts might be in there. It also went well with their really really good table bread, which had a nice thick crust and soft inside.

For our main courses, we had:
- Pork meatballs braised in tomato with basil and grana padano. These were amazingly light and fluffy meatballs, with a great pork flavor, and just enough tomato and basil to complement without overwhelming. The texture was great, though personally I prefer meatballs a little more dense.
- Pizza salsiccia - fennel sausage, rapini, red onions, mozzarella, grana padano, garlic, chiles. The crust on this pizza was very good, thin and crispy. I usually don't like the bitter-ish greens so wasn't crazy about the rapini but didn't mind it. The sausage was good and fennel-y.
- Huckleberry sorbetto, fresh yogurt gelato, honey almond gelato. We had originally passed on dessert, since we were planning a trip to Bi-Rite later, but our waiter knew it was E's birthday and brought us these three treats with a candle. All three were good, and were especially good together. The yogurt stood out though just because the flavor was so fresh and clear. I didn't know what it was when I took my first bite and it was a yogurty taste explosion.

We got into SF thursday afternoon and were hungry by the time we got settled in. We're staying near Haight-Ashbury and ended up deciding to try out Citrus Club, which is supposed to be a good noodle house. Unfortunately, it was a little underwhelming. We got a cold lime-ginger soba plate, but instead of being basically soy-based like we both expected, it had more of a creamy salad dressing esque sauce and just wasn't that appealing. We also ordered shanghai noodles, but ended up getting coconut chicken noodles, which was actually pretty good, so that was okay. The menu has some interesting stuff I wouldn't mind trying (e.g. shanghai noodles) if it were, like, my neighborhood noodle joint.

Orson just opened a couple of weeks ago, and is the talk of the town. It's sort of a molecular gastronomy-type place, in that there's a lot of experimentation with the form and essence of things. But it's more that chef Elizabeth Falkner has applied her pastry experience to the rest of the meal in new and interesting ways. We'd read about Orson in Becks & Posh and they recommended leaving all inhibitions at the door and just trying as many interesting-sounding things as you could, so that's what we did. we were there for three hours or so, and it was incredible fun to try different strange sounding things (all of them good, several of them oh-my-god). In several cases, Falkner managed to extract the essence of a food's flavor (e.g. potatoes) and transform it into a radically different texture (e.g. a creamy foam) that makes for a sort of "I can't believe it" experience. But it wasn't gimmicky or pretentious, as I feared it might be (and all the wait staff were informal and appealing). Instead it just conveyed (and invoked) the pleasures of kitchen experimentation.

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At last, I've gone through my photos from our first stay in Hanoi (still to come: Angkor (the big one), Hoi An, and our last few days back in Hanoi). The pictures include: temples, people, street scenes, and even a study of the fascinating walls of Hanoi.

We arrived in Vietnam at night. The 12-hour flight to Seoul, 2-hour layover, 5-hour flight to Hanoi, and customs/immigration had us in kind of a fugue state of exhaustion. Fortunately, our hotel had arranged to have someone meet us (as did most of our hotels on this trip), and if it's not quite as great as an actual familiar face, it's nice to come out the door and see your very own personal name on a placard.

It was already dark as we left the airport. I had no real idea what Vietnam might look like, so I was eagerly looking around for my first clues. We were on a long 4-lane highway with walls on either side. Past the walls.. darkness. Occasionally a palm tree or other foliage would pop up. Then occasional small dilapidated-looking buildings. They looked like they'd been sitting around dilapidating since at least the war, no lie. We started to see scooters on the road -- our first few included one with several people crammed on, and another loaded with huge bags of onions, a good indication of what we'd see the rest of the trip. Other taxis on the road kind of genially changed lanes and honked and flashed at each other; it reminded me of that simpsons scene where Jimbo et al steal the bumper cars and happily zip off into the distance.

As we got (presumably) closer to the city, more houses began to loom out of the darkness. We reached a quiet residential neighborhood, and it looked like nothing back home. The houses were all french colonial (or neo faux french colonial concrete), mostly 3-4 stories tall and skinny, like one room wide. Every now and then you'd see a much taller one, 5-6 stories, popping up. They pretty much all looked slightly worn down; I started to wonder if everything you build in Vietnam looks old and colonial after just a season or two of jungle climate. We wondered whether we were out in the suburbs or if this was the city itself; like I said, we had no idea what to expect really.

The crazy tall and skinny houses, the interspersed palm and other trees, the general decay -- it all made me ridiculously happy. Part of the joy of traveling is seeing something different, and this was seriously different -- mysterious and beautiful. I turned to E (with, she later said, my face shining with happiness) and said "this trip was a really good idea".

Obviously, if you've just been to Vietnam, pho is going to be much on your mind. I'm actually relatively new to vietnamese food -- I think I had my first pho maybe 6-8 years ago, and only in the last year or two have I grown to like it so much that I wanted to visit the country.

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Hoi An is in the central area of Vietnam, near Da Nang and Hue. It's best to not go during the flooding season, I'm just sayin. The things to do if you are going to Hoi An are: (1) stay at one of the euro beach resorts on the beach and walk on the beach and sit by the pool; (2) have the famed tailors of Hoi An make you custom-fit clothing at low low prices; (3) enjoy Hoi An's french-colonial-slash-tropical charm.
Some activites I would further recommend: shop for art, ride a scooter, take a cooking class. I thought Hoi An was the perfect contrast to busy Hanoi and hot-and-tourism-intense Angkor, so if you're in the neighborhood, you should go there.
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We're back, safe and sound, though thoroughly exhausted. Today has been about the napping -- we woke up sunday morning in Hanoi, checked out, spent the day wandering around, went to the airport, took off at midnight, landed at 6am monday in Seoul, had a 12-hour layover (napped a bit, wandered around), took off monday evening, and then landed here in Seattle this morning.

(I'm just going to start posting stories and stuff in whatever order I get around to writing them down).

Angkor Wat was amazing, and Cambodia is strange and beautiful, but the climate did not really agree with me -- I don't do too well in hot and humid, especially if I'm spending 6-7 hours at a stretch climbing around ancient ruins. I was also getting a little stomach sick and wasn't eating much. By the third day of temple viewing, I was fairly wiped out and pretty dehydrated. I was sweating buckets and the bright sun was overwhelming my vision.

On the previous two days, we'd started in the early morning, and gone until midafternoon, but our plan on the 11th was to start at around 2:00 and catch sunset at Pre Rup, which is very tall and has great views. By the time we hit East Mebon, which is also tall with good views, I was running out of energy, and getting to the top really took it out of me. Pre Rup though, we basically headed straight for the top. When I got there, I was done for. I sat down with my vision going white and then basically passed out (and had weird dreams). I'm not sure how long I was out (E was exploring out of sight) but when I came to, I was still sitting there. We rested a while, I took some pictures, and we climbed down slowly.

The drive back in the air-conditioned car was restful, but back at the hotel I was definitely not okay. Standing up from going to the bathroom, I blacked out and hit the floor. E stayed up with me all night making me drink water (while I bitched at her because I didn't want to make the effort, and sitting up to drink hurt my now-bruised ribs). The nice people where we were staying made me some roasted bark tea, and I managed a little food in the morning. By the time we needed to head to the airport, I was feeling tired and weak (and bruised), but okay. I've been hydrating maximally ever since, under E's watchful eye. (my ribs still hurt like hell, especially not that I've acquired a cough).

The amazing thing to me is that I somehow managed to get up that thing and take pictures, in the state I was in. and that I didn't fall off it when I passed out. E and I are not what you would call adventure travelers, and this would be plenty of excitement for us (at least, until I get to the story about us showing up in Da Nang in the middle of a typhoon).

Here is a picture of our hotel. Okay, really, we are staying here and drove through that flooding last night trying to get here.

here's a brief email I just sent my parents with some highlights of the trip so far...

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E and I bought our tickets for Vietnam and Cambodia today. Hanoi, Angkor Wat, Da Nang, and a little bit of Ho Chi Minh City, here we come! Now it's really official.

update: needless to say, any advice on food, culture, shopping, or whatever to do in/around any of those places would be great. especially Hanoi, since we'll be spending most of our time there (and will have time for a day trip or two around the area).