I guess I'll just call them Vietnamese cowboy hats, because I don't think anyone from the Western world has got any idea of what their proper name is.

But I also doubt that there is anyone from the Western world who doesn't think that Vietnamese cowboy hats are the shizzle.

While we're talking about everyone in the Western world, I'll take it a step further: No one in that club would be exempted from the kind of overtime duty I put forth on the toilet the night after eating THIS on the streets of Saigon:

"You'll find that as you get older, your tolerance for living below the standard you've become accustomed to becomes less and less," Uncle Dan said our second night in Vietnam, after he shot down the dinner proposal I put forth as we strolled past the kind of joint where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. It was hot outside, and hot at that restaurant, too, since there was no inside to speak of. But we were in Vietnam, and I was trying to rub elbows with the people, ya know?

If Danny thought that place was bad, though ... he didn't need to see where I had gone for lunch.

"That, that."

The old woman with the Vietnamese cowboy hat pointed to the pot. There were lots of "that's" in that pot.

"Yes," I said, pointlessly speaking slower in a language that she couldn't understand, at all. What had I said "yes" to? We will never know for sure, I suppose. But judging by the looks of what she fished out of there -- and by the texture of what I subsequently felt in my mouth, as I tried and failed to chew with small bites from my perch atop a foot-high plastic step stool known as a "seat" in Saigon -- I'd say it was a long, fleshy piece of intestine.

Mystery animal intestine, on a bun, in Ho Chi Minh City, for about the cost of two pay phone calls in the States. That is why I love to travel.

My own intestines feel otherwise. And they sent a Vietnamese, biological version of this dude to correct my attitude towards my choice of food.

I call him Kung Poo.

"So you think you can drop some street food, some MYSTERY FOOD, inside of me and expect me to do all the work digesting it for you?" Kung Poo demanded to know, looking fiercer than the bad guy from "Karate Kid 2." "Well let me tell you something: IT'S HARD TO DIGEST THAT STUFF! So this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make you pay for you carelessness, and next time, I want you to act more like your Uncle Danny. Or else you're gonna get an ass whipping, got it?"

I'm not scared of him, though. I made a Chinese friend tonight in Hong Kong named Mabel. The first thing she told me was that she'll be in Houston at the end of April for a business trip, and asked about any good Chinese food places to go.

It took me about .0005 seconds to come up not with just an answer, but the answer:

"Lai Lai Dumpling House."

The same Lai Lai that was -- allegedly -- on Marvin Zindler a few years back. Allegedly. Well, even though I saw a mouse just climbing up the window curtain inside there one day -- at an extremely leisurely pace, as if he did it all the time without being bothered -- I haven't ever gotten sick from my go-to place when back home in Houston, just as Kung Poo couldn't touch me that bad.

I am going to ride the street food until it bucks me.