Finally saw Obama's appearance on Bourdain's show last night. I will miss this man.
They were in Hanoi and had bun cha at a restaurant Bourdain really likes. The meal for two was about $6, which Bourdain says he paid since he invited Obama; Obama tipped about 300%.
Obama talked about the market stalls in the street; they reminded him of the market stalls in the village he lived in in Indonesia as a kid and how anything you wanted to buy you had to get from them. And that conversation reminded me of a conversation Obama had with a reporter very early in his presidency. The reporter was Indonesian and was apparently from like 2 villages over from where Obama lived as a kid. They talked about the new road that the government had built to get to the villages. Obama mentioned to the reporter (who was younger) that before that road, when the rains came it would get so muddy that you couldn't get any trucks into the village so you had to eat whatever crops were stored.
It really struck me that there literally isn't another developed-world leader who could have that conversation, or knows what it's like to not be able to get food for part of every year because the rains washed the trail to your village away. And there probably won't be another developed-world leader who can have that conversation and does know for a long time.
I'm going to miss this man.
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