He was doing an endless procession of shots. I doubt that they ever ate a meal with a white guy before and they really wanted to drink with him too. My partner was a big hit with my relatives, especially the ladies. With this unknown concoction my relatives kept coming up to me or my partner to do toasts. I couldn’t quite understand my uncle’s explanation. What I do know is that sticky rice is the main staple and is served every meal. I don’t know how much my relatives’ foods have been influenced by Vietnamese cuisine either. My food history is not straight forward so I cannot tell you what’s Tai Dam and what’s Lao or Thai. The food consisted of whatever they had on hand in their gardens, yards and fish ponds. When we were there, there were always a lot of people around so the dishes were set directly on the floor. Meals are eaten off a short table with people sitting on the floor. This is the first of many shots and toasts. The basket may get passed around but usually someone hands out the sticky rice. The person closest to the basket takes a portion of sticky rice and hands it out to everyone. Since there’s only one or two baskets of sticky rice. There’s always a dipping sauce too for vegetables or meat. Everyone eats from the same dish, even soups. People don’t dish up food onto individual plates. The dishes are strategically placed on the table where everyone can reach them. There’s always sticky rice which is kept warm in a rice basket. Tai Dam meals are a communal affair in every sense of the word. It felt like all we did was get carted from house to house to eat and drink. Thankfully, the next day, midmorning, he returned our passports. It wasn’t a threat necessarily but a polite encouragement. In the end I conceded only after my uncle assured me that we would have them back the next day and the threat that if we didn’t give them our passports we had to leave. It’s been drilled into me to never give up my passport especially to officials from an authoritarian government. So when they did come to meet us, they asked for our passports and I got into an argument with my uncle. He failed to mention that they wanted to take our passports. On the second night we were there, my uncle said the authorities wanted to meet us. My uncle being the only man on my side of the family dictated that I follow whatever he wanted. My uncle would’ve taken offense if I had asked to stay at my aunt’s house. She still had an outhouse but at least we wouldn’t have woken anyone up going to the bathroom. Her house was a Vietnamese style house, all concrete and with separate rooms. I wished we could’ve stayed at my other aunt’s house. By the time I crawled back into bed I wasn’t the only one wide awake. As I crept out of bed in pitch black onto the creaky floor, I tried to lightly walk across the room to reach the extremely steep stairs, carefully climb down to the ground, navigate my way to the outhouse, walk up the stairs to squat over a big dark hole in the middle of the night. It was not possible to get to the outhouse without making an incredible amount of noise. It was a bit uncomfortable to sleep in the same room as my aunt and uncle because we would wake them up whenever we went to the bathroom. Fields are being prepped by burning which produces this constant haze in the air. Most days were cloudy but no precipitation. During the day it was a light jacket wearing temperature, 60 – 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I specifically picked this time of year as it wasn’t monsoon season and it wasn’t scorchingly hot. We were visiting during the dry month of January. We hadn’t taken any malarial pills and, fortunately, didn’t need it. There was mosquito netting that covered the whole bed. It was a bit odd for us to be sleeping next to my aunt and uncle even though this is pretty typical worldwide, everyone sleeping in one room. Their two daughters were grown, married and living in their own houses so we slept in the extra bed. One bed was theirs and the other bed had been their daughters’. My aunt and uncle had two queen size beds next to each other. The kitchen is typically off to one side or in a different place altogether. This one room serves as the living room, dining room and bedroom. A Tai Dam house is up on stilts and consists of one room. During our visit we stayed at my aunt and uncle’s traditional Tai Dam house.

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