How to Make Coffee in Vietnam Without Looking Like a Goddamned Foreigner

"I haven't taken a shit in three days," I said, watching my girlfriend's face on the computer screen for any signs of compassion.

"That's disgusting," she said.

I leaned back, ceded control of the conversation and took another sip from my Nescafé 3-in-1 instant coffee. I purchased a package of 100 of them and drank them with the casual inveteracy of a compulsory masturbator or someone who constantly chews sunflower seeds. Filthy habit, those sunflower seeds.

"I must devise a way to shit," I thought, as she hesitantly segued the conversation into Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue's Olympic Figure Skating performance - keeping an issue like this to myself didn't cross my mind. After a good deal of self-reflection I realized the one variable between my body storing faeces like a gold-hoarding dragon and taking dumps like a normal human was, undoubtedly, the Nescafé.
Disclaimer: Do not ingest orally. Side effects include difficulty shitting

Also, my landlord had been over and looked at my big Western mug of instant coffee with the same face she'd use if she knew my rent money was on my desk but she'd to step over my dead, decomposing body to get to it.

"Do you drink Vietnam coffee?" I asked.

"Oh yes," said her eyes. If her ass could speak - like Jim Carrey at the '97 Oscars - I'm sure it would have added, "That gives you constipation. Big time."

It would be characteristic melodrama of me to pretend I made a change to save my relationship or prevent my land-lord from seeing her first death-by-anal blockage victim because Nescafé 3-in-1 instant tastes like watered down shit-tea. I would equate it to a tea bag filled with shit, then watered down with ditch water so you couldn't even brag about drinking actual shit-tea.

The trip was a-MAY-zing! We witnessed soooo many local rituals. The Mexican shaman at the ayuhuasca resort made us té de guano. It was amazing to see him create something from nothing - hand-crafted tea. Yep, he used his hands to individually fill each tea bag. His eyes were so passionate. It was almost sexual to meet his gaze while he poohed on the king size bed in our eco-trailer. It tasted very much like kambucha but of course, you've probably never tried té de guano, have you Mercedes?

It's not like I was cutting off a toe by quitting. I am also blessed with a girlfriend who would still love me regardless of how little she enjoyed hearing about the comings, goings, or stayings within the confines of my anus. (I hope.)

Vietnamese cà phê is served in tiny glasses (SEGUÉ!) like a toilet paper roll cut in half. It would look out-of-place in the giant coffee cups I am accustomed to in Vancouver, like a 7 foot tall man with a micro-penis.

This coffee may be be small, but, unlike the micro-penised giant, the strength of the brew more than makes up for its diminutive stature. Cà Phê is more like espresso than than the coffee I know. You get around five sips and, since they are served in glasses, the server can't misspell your name on it with a sharpie.

After moving into my neighbourhood, I struggled mightily to adjust to the style of heavy drinking my Vietnamese neighbours would engage in. (In Vietnam, sometimes heavy drinking is simply referred to as "lunch"). After 45 minutes of chugging Larue beers I would pretend I had to go to bed (at 1PM) then flee to my house with forced nonchalance, close the door, and sprint to the bathroom so I could vomit thick streams of beef and 4.2% beer on my toilet. Now, I just drink when they "cheers" - it's a fools mission to sip in between.

I applied this lesson to drinking Vietnamese coffee, a tough task when you're accustomed to having a seemingly bottomless Cafè Latte - here you have to chill the fuck out. I'll take a sip, think of rap hooks for around five minutes, then repeat this until the glass is empty. At least that's what I do when my doors are closed as Vietnamese flies seem to enjoy nothing more than landing on the rim of your glass just to sit there and rub their faces with their skinny arms.

"Look Mac" they say. "I have been to the fields of water buffalo and walked over the great brown mountains." The coffees might be so small because the Vietnamese want to drink it before the flies do.

You are kind, fly. But start a blog. Drinking coffee fast here is a matter of limiting the amount of communicable disease you ingest.

Making the Coffee

Below you will find Part 1 of my video making Vietnamese coffee. If you like watching things drip, then this is a highly sexual and provocative video. The ingredients and instructions on how to make the coffee are below that and, if you can finish watching Part 1 without making a run for your bedroom and sweating up your bedsheets, Part 2 is at the bottom.

Part 1

Ingredients:
-ground coffee
-condensed milk
-small glass (maybe a rocks glass if you like whiskey)
-kettle
-a Phin filter (Vietnamese coffee filter, makes one cup of coffee at a time)
-stir stick / chopstick

I purchased a cheap press-down Phin for 20,000 VND ($0.87 USD) and a bag of coffee for 80,000 VND ($3.5 USD). You can purchase more expensive, screw down Phins or you can buy the cheap one and just jam the press in there, like me.

The Steps

1. Add condensed milk to the glass. 1/3 of an inch is the standard recommendation but adjust based on your tolerance. Keep in milk that condensed milk is VERY sweet.

2. Place the tray on the mouth of the glass, and put the chamber on top.

3. Fill the chamber with a big spoonful of coffee grind, then jam it in there with the press. I like to press it down very hard initially before the next step.

4. Put a very small amount of boiling water into the chamber - just enough to wet the coffee. This probably does something scientific to the grind but, I'm a village idiot and I can't tell you exactly what. It makes the coffee taste better, ok? Just do it and count to twenty.

5. Lower the press - this is an art; too loose and the water will drain through it, too tight and you will Rip van Winkle.

6. Fill the chamber completely with boiling water.

7. Now I lift up the press just a tiny bit. Enough so that the water can flow through the coffee but not so much that it sits in the chamber all day. In the video, I forgot to do this and you can see the drip pace is much too fast. The drip should be a drop at a time and give you enough time to yell out"HOLYFUCKINGSHITTHISISTAKINGAWHILE" before the next one.

8. Sit there and watch the drops.

9. Stir the condensed milk into the coffee and light up a cigarette. You can also pour the coffee into a tall glass filled with ice. Many restaurants do this automatically.

10. Brush your teeth - the condensed milk is VERY sweet.

Part 2

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