On the first day of Tet in 1994 Eric and I were driving our bicycles around Saigon, enjoying the unusually quiet streets. Out in the direction of Cholon we ran across a great sign for an "endangered species" restaurant (that's what I call them... it seems to be their specialty: boar, bat, bear, etc.), showing a comely lass about to bobbit a cobra. A few months later, by a happy accident of fate, I ended up living right around the corner from it. I commemorated the coincidence with a drawing, which I then decided to put out as a postcard. (That wasn't easy... a couple of printers turned me down... it seemed a license from the Ministry of Information was required. I finally found a printer that would do it, but it had to be silk-screen rather than offset -- apparently silk-screens fell between the cracks of the regulations.) Just as the postcard was coming off the press, the building, restaurant and all, was torn down. The sign lay in pieces, scattered in the rubble... a sad moment.
As for the name of the drawing, it comes from the first such restaurant I encountered, which was called Tri Ky, translated into English on their sign as "Bosom Friends." They had their menagerie right out by the dining area so you could choose your own live pangolin, assuming you would know what to look for in a pangolin. By another coincidence, I ended up living right around the corner from this one, too. |
