My Memories of Ambulant Vendors

The manuglibod of Bacolod and Silay brought back memories of the joys of growing up with the strange and wondrous food of the ambulant vendors of Manila. From my room on the second floor of our house in Malate, I heard the regular call of the slim, wiry men intoning “ba-luuut” [fertilized duck eggs] and “taho” [soybean custard in caramel sauce]. Balancing a long, elastic bamboo pole on one shoulder, bobbing with the weight of the covered metal containers hung on each end, these vendors tirelessly served neighborhoods like mine to share goods we otherwise would never have tasted. The taho man would open the lid of the container and we would get a whiff of freshly made, hot, steaming soybean custard. He had a ritual. With a flattened scoop, he would skim the custard and discard extra water that had risen to the top before deftly spooning thin horizontal slices of the taho into a bowl and pouring the arnibal (caramel) on it.