The herb Persicaria minor known locally as daun kesum has an extremely pleasant smell. I thought it would make a good car air freshener and my colleagues just laughed at the idea. Daun kesum or kesum leaf is found all over Southeast Asia, I suppose. They grow well in wet places; near rivers, ditches, and canals. The Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian eat them raw as salads or make stews and soups out of it. Once, I tried planting daun kesum in the garden but it didn't grow well. Then, just when I thought I had seen the last of it; it started to crawl all over the place like nobody's business. Since then, the leaves had been shredded a few times to make the spicy noodle soup, laksa. That's common for people in Singapore and Malaysia.
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