Eating my way through vietnam

Day 5

Starting the day with the traditional hotel breakfast buffet oddities. There's no such thing as a breakfast, lunch, or dinner food here.






One of the things I've confirmed the last few days is that Vietnam is such an amalgamation of things. In the same areas of a city I can find different religions, things of enormous wealth/beauty, as well as things in shambles. There are so few people in the middle class, majority is poor and the very few wealthy. In 90% humidity, 98 deg temps I've seen 70 year old women on the freeway breaking up concrete with hoes, elderly men in a deep squat cleaning miles and miles of railroad tracks with a twig brush, vendors on a bicycle in rolling hills for literally 30 miles each way. In the midst of this, I sometimes catch a smile here and there.

From the locals I talked to, the majority (the poor) desperately hope that their religion will make things right in the end for them. They barely have the means to survive and whatever time and money left over, they give to their beliefs. This isn't a statement for, or against religion. It's simply a statement about what I've been told about the religious system in Vietnam. It's what gives them hope. This belief and investment, have made some amazingly beautiful and inspiring pieces of "hope".

The Catholic church here was made during the french occupation. They brought in dynamite to blow up parts of a mountain to build this on top of. The large Buddha here is 75m, ~250ft tall. Walking into these places, is almost like walking into another world. A refuge from the rest of life.















My guide for this leg of the tour told me she made it her goal to show me what was important to her local family: the strength of their belief and the amazing local food her family eats when they celebrate. In this meal you'll notice the variety of sauces, the fresh and pickled veggies, a new type of rice "com nieu" indicative of this region (cooked in a play pot so you get both crunchy and soft rice), light tasting steamed food, heavy sauced others, etc. Basically it's a family meal that lets the person choose exactly how much of what flavor they want.

Day 6

This was a very interesting day. Went to beach at 5am today. There were probably 200-300 people there at the time. Groups of elderly doing tai-chi, groups of young/middle aged people doing some kind of tai-bo/dance thing to loud music.




After the beach we went to a touristy area that some of the people in my group wanted to check out. Took a lift through miles of beautiful mountains, forests, streams and waterfalls to... Europe?








Only in Vietnam can I go to a faux European village to have durian ice cream and a souvignon blanc. Yes, I had them together.







Then a flight up north to a market in Hanoi. If you ever plan on a trip to Vietnam and end up in Hanoi, know it's very expensive. Vendors raise the price, because of tourism and even with good bargaining, most things can be bought for less money in Saigon, if that's part of your trip.





Had a tofu based dessert called che (pronounce sort of like ch-yeah). It's soft tofu mixed with whatever you want: sweet beans, tapioca pearls and many other things. I went for a ginger infused simple syrup.








Later this night I went to a great local restaurant. Family owned and the people were very nice and gracious. Had to walk through the kitchen to get to the table










Chicken rice - com ga







A snail dish that was very good. Little crunchy on the outside, warm and soft in the middle. Mixed with a variety of herbs and spices.




Sweet coconut and bean dessert, steamed in a banana leaf. Very, very good.







I think I saw this in the 80s

One night a friend and I had missed dinner in return for a beautiful stream and waterfall hike. When we got back it was pretty late and our guides were asleep, so we asked the reception desk for recommendations. They said the stuff open this late at night probably wouldn't go well with out stomachs. What did they recommend? ... pizza hut (no joke). At the caution of the employees, order something safe like "bo" (beef), otherwise it may come with questionable shrimp, or who knows what. One personal pan cheese and one "beef" pizza it was. We put in our order and 30 minutes later, this arrived














Some things I learned:

1. This beef sausage pretty much tasted like the "sausage" in the states
2. Their personal pans seemed slightly smaller than I remember (it's been probably 15+ years since I've had one from pizza hut though), but only $2-$2.50ish
3. In a place like Vietnam I tend to read anything I see in english and forego pictures. In this case I thought "when in Rome" and put what I thought was chili sauce and tomato sauce (like a marinara). It was actually ketchup, hence the picture of the french fries I didn't look at while reading the english description.
4. Looking at the website after my meal, they do have regular things like pepperoni, Hawaiian, etc.

All in all, it tasted like what I'd think a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza would. I lucked out and it was a sweet chili sauce and the ketchup in Vietnam is a more mellow, sweeter kind than in the states. For what it was, not bad.


Still had a smaller, "healthier than the usual breakfast" the next morning. Vietnamese coffee, orange juice, soy milk, fried rice, rice porridge, corn soup, steamed sweet beans and fruit lol.

Next day was a visit to the first university in Vietnam (with tombs as old as 1400 from what I saw) and a meal I've been waiting to try for a long time called bun cha, along with some other dishes. Once again, what I really like about this style of food is that there are so many separate components, that you can really make a meal that suits your preferences the most: light and fresh/heavy and savory, sour/sweet, crunchy/soft, etc.




These are the "bun" (ponounced: boon) noodles. What makes this different than a normal bun dish, is that instead of the typical nuoc mam fish sauce that is spooned on top of the noodles, this is a different type of nuoc mam that they put the noodles into. The sauce is more mellow and includes pickled carrots and daikon, as well as grilled pork. The amount of noodles, veggies, herbs and other things change all the different tastes/sensations I mentioned earlier. There's also a crab and shrimp based soup is used for the noodles as well.









With this, as always were dishes to be eaten with rice

Rant: The power of 1st world currency.

Even in a 3rd world country, you'll find places and things that locals would never pay for/afford. In my first week I didn't mind as much and paid for things like this: 3 melon ball scoops of ice cream on a very hot and humid day for $3.50USD



Other times, like when boating on Ha Long Bay, my group bought several cans of Soda for $1.50USD each. I'm sure it didn't cost the crew more than $0.10-$0.15USD per can. Or the photographer on the boat that took 8 very bad (cheap polaroid cringe worthy) photos of family members, charging $30USD and playing on the sentimentality of the elderly in my group (some in the group didn't want me to haggle down the price in fear of ruining the mood. I'm sure I could have had that guy down to $8 if we started to walk away and he would still have been ecstatic). No matter where it is in the world, touristy or not, expected or not and whether or not these people make such little money that it really goes a long way...I hate being taken advantage of in such a blatant way. There are people in Vietnam that work jobs that don't pay $1.50USD for an entire day of back breaking labor.

So later that night I go for a walk to cool off and find an indy looking coffee shop that would have been right at home in the middle of downtown San Francisco. It was spotless, decorated with simple hanging lights and had a black chalkboard wall with words written in English.













Thinking I could give my toddler like Vietnamese a break, I thought it may be nice to have a conversation in English at a local place. Turns out, it's run by high school/college kids and none of them speak any English. Trying to figure out what was in all these nice looking drinks (and not knowing the names of any fruit or drinks in Vietnamese), my friend and I settled for the "mau do" (red color), an ice cream/banana/strawberry crepe and what turned out to be a super dessert smoothie (chocolate cheerios and all).

With the exchange rate at the time, this cost about $5.50 total, in the second busiest city in all of Vietnam. The staff was very apologetic and extremely enthusiastic to try and help us choose. We ordered the drinks first and I gave them the change as a tip, all of $0.40USD. When the girl at the register realized I was giving it as a tip, she shook her head in disbelief, I nodded my head and smiled. You would have thought it was a $1000 the way she clutched it tight, shaking in excitement as she went to the back to show the other coworkers. She was literally bouncing up and down.

Then she started preparing my red drink, which included guava, strawberries and other fresh fruits. I saw her in the back going through baskets of fruit, taking her time to find the best ones for me. I couldn't believe it. Not only did she take the time to do this, but the only thing in this drink was filtered water and fresh fruit. No syrup from a bottle, I saw her make syrup by reducing fruit in a pan. While she was doing that, we ordered the crepe from another worker there and gave the same tip, just $0.40USD and he freaked out in excitement just as much as the girl did.













Regardless of how poor and broken this country is, these are the people that I would have gladly spent $4 on ice cream, or $1.50 on a soda can. The people that live here, do their job in an honest way, not trying to take advantage of others (whether the price is affordable to someone like me or not). It has nothing to do with gratitude, or appreciation. It's just about spending my money on hard working, honest and genuine people.

gtr said:

Fantastic pictures and reportage! Thanks for putting this up. As I said earlier, this really is something I hope to do in the next few years and these posts add fuel to that fire.

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I hope you do man. I never realized how beautiful this country is and all the things you can do. History, architecture, hiking, beaches, oceans, resorts, or just hanging out and absorbing city life. I'm more of a nature guy and have some seen some of the most breathtaking views I never imagined I'd see. It's a very affordable vacation too and can be done on a budget like me if you wanted to. Heck, I've spent 30% of my 14 day Vietnam budget just driving to Napa for the weekend.