In your soggy shorts and shirt, skin soaked with the fevered mixture of sweat and humid tropical air, it can be tempting to reach for a glass of anything liquid that a smiling local hands you. When it’s presented with a giant roll of cinnamon bark and a fragrant, fresh plumeria blossom it’s simply irresistible. If that smiling local is a pretty Vietnamese girl who looks like she has her own personal air conditioned cloud cooling her every move, you not only take the drink but you genuinely now expect it to change your life. You are drenched in sweat and the air is thick with steam and the sounds of insects and this tiny glass promises a pause, some grace.
As if all that isn’t enough, she then softly, in her lullaby accent, tells you, almost singing the words, “It mountain spirit. Son mean mountain, Tinh mean spirit. Mountain spirit! Make with herbs and fruits from mountains.”
She even leads you gently over to the antique, pre-war bar where the bottles are kept. It must be leftover from Vietnam’s long stretch as a French colony. It’s a massive dark wood masterpiece from a time when a bar was akin to a cathedral. A destination bar to which supplicants could kneel and offer themselves in divine contemplation.
When you bring the glass to your nose to sniff the stuff it’s astonishing how much it reeks of the aftershave your grandfather wore, perhaps tainted slightly with turpentine or rubbing alcohol. The “mountain herbs” she mentioned are apparently the same ones used to make Old Spice. But she is looking into your eyes, judging, waiting to see pleasure there. For a moment you focus your will into your eyes, then outward to your whole face, willing it to say, “Oh my, that smells delicious!” And it seems to work, since she smiles and all is right with the world.
You take the glass to your table and sit, wetting the seat cushion with your sweat-damp shorts. Knowing you’ll likely be drinking aftershave, you stare into the glass, pondering the burnt caramel colored stuff. Knowing she’ll ask what you think soon you put it to your lips and give in.
The taste is as you’d expect. Old Spice with a touch of smoke and something vaguely medicinal, almost like some kind of cough suppressant. It’s not the worst thing you’ve ever tried, but it doesn’t require any further testing. If you were a guerrilla fighter hiding out in the jungle, swarmed by mosquitoes and in fear for your life, this stuff would provide some comfort. It would likely help you get some sleep. Also, it could be used to soothe your face after shaving with a hunting knife, and possibly as an antiseptic on any wounds you might get while stalking the enemy through the bush. But this is not what you tell her when she comes to your table and gives you a questioning smile, asking, “So?”
“Oh, it’s delicious,” you lie to her face, “I’d have another but I have to get going.”
Feeling slightly closer now to the foreign soldiers who struggled here, and the local ones as well, you walk out into the warm evening air and feel the fiery comfort spreading out from your stomach and into your limbs. This must be what the mountain’s spirit feels like.