vietnamese cuisine

i hadn't been posting much about the food that i've eaten in vietnam because, well, i've eaten so much that i decided it was best to just do a post dedicated to it!  pert asked me if there was one type of cuisine that i had to eat for the rest of my life, what would it be?  i think i answered vietnamese after about 10 seconds of contemplating!  i just love how fresh the food tastes and how simple it can be.  not to mention there are so many different dishes that your taste buds could never get bored.  there is a lot of fish sauce involved so luckily i'm a big fan.  if you've never had it, it probably sounds disgusting...but it actually tastes nothing like fish!


below is majority of the food i had while i was in vietnam!  since there are so many pics, i'll just tell you what each item us unless it needs more explanation :)

green mango beef salad

crap i already forgot the vietnamese name...but it's essentially rice noodle you eat with fish sauce and it has dried shrimp on it

fish cake

spring rolls

shrimp and lotus root salad

more fish cake wrapped around sugarcane

goi cuon, bahn mi and lemon soda...only cost me $2!

watermelon smoothie decorated with a slice of dragon fruit

broken rice!!

bun bo hue (a special beef noodle dish kind of like pho from the city of hue)

shrimp salad

didn't actually eat this fish but it was for sale on the street

vietnamese family style lunch

these were little egg spongecake things that we ate with fish sauce and scallions...so good!

bun rieux (may have spelled it wrong but it's a seafood noodle soup)

fresh sugarcane juice!

AMAZING mi quang (yet another noodle dish with thicker noodles and a yellow broth)

got some yummy rambutan and mangosteen from this lady

rambutan...kind of similar to lychee

mangosteen! so effing good...it's hard to describe the taste...but i wish the us sold it

little doughnuts and pastries by the beach

dinner of fresh spring rolls that we made with baby calf

we had the equivalent of dim sum one day in hue so these are the dishes starting with fish cake

similar to what i showed above with the rice noodle and sauce

ram it! a doughnut textured ball filled with dried shrimp and rice noodle on top. my fav!

loc (phong's favorte)...gelatinous stuff that covered dried shrimp that you ate with fish sauce...it was ok

lam...is it's name i think...more rice noodles with shrimp that you ate with fish sauce...are you seeing a pattern?

grilled pork wrapped around lemongrass that you made into a spring roll

bun bo hue in hue...it was disappointing

bun on bue at another stand in hue...this was better :)

bun xeo...an egg crepe with bean sprouts and different proteins eaten with veggies and fish sauce (naturally)

nha trang

nha trang is a beautiful beach town on the coast north of ho chi minh (about 10 hours by train).  it was really refreshing going there since it was much quieter and less busy.  we stayed in a hostel just three blocks from the beach.  it was a pretty decent place with a lot of travelers going through.  i met some people from jersey and the uk.  it's interesting because majority of the people that i've met so far have been from the uk.

[my bed on the train]

[hostel]

[sleeping buddha at the long son pagoda]

[this buddha was 90 feet tall!]

i definitely took advantage of the beach in nha trang and burned myself!  i put on spf 30 several times but it's no match for the sun here.  the water is so clear and the temperature is just cold enough for you to jump in and refresh yourself after laying out for a while.  the only thing is you have to watch out for your stuff.  we were all on the beach buying some fake sunglasses from a lady and we turned and saw a guy trying to steal my friend phong's brand new digital slr camera by kicking the camera along the beach with the strap around his ankle!! apparently he thought picking it up would be too obvious so this was his alternative.  luckily phong saw and ran over to him and asked him wtf he was doing and he said nothing then walked off.  yeah...sketch!

[our new faux bans...]

to kill some time one afternoon we also hit up the thap bo hotsprings which was a lot of fun!  there were a lot of different pools that you could soak in.  first we started off in the mineral mud which was a little strange.  i don't like not being able to see what i'm sitting in.  we were there for a bit before rinsing off and heading to a thermal mineral pool which was nice but then got unbearably hot after a while.  finally we ended in some leisure pools before heading home.  for only $9 it was a great deal :) 

the last day we were in nha trang we did a tour through the hostel for a day.  they made it sound like we would see a lot of islands but really they should've called it a booze cruise!  we saw an aquarium with HUGE grouper fish on the first island then went snorkeling at the second island.  i haven't been in so long that it took some getting used to breathing through a tube again.  the water was so clear and i saw a few fish including an awesome neon colored one.  the third 'island' was really us jumping off the roof of our boat and then swimming over to a floating bar they created and drinking this disgusting fruit/vodka juice mixture.  the last island was my favorite!  of course we had to pay an extra 70,000 dong to get in but it was so worth it.  it was this resort with the softest sand ever on a secluded beach.  i don't even know how else to describe it aside from perfection.  i could've stayed there for another week easily!

[aquarium on first island]

[snorkeling on second island]

[fourth island pics]

the food in nha trang has been amazing and cheap!  one thing i will miss a lot about nha trang is the smoothie lady!  she had a little cart on a corner several blocks away and made the best mango smoothie ever.  all it was, was mango, a little sugar, a little condensed milk, and ice.  everything a smoothie should be.  i only had two while i was there because we didn't discover it until later.  boo.  i'm going to need to attempt this when i get back home!

lastly, we made a new friend in nha trang who has been traveling with us to hoi an and hue.  her name is delphine and she's from france.  we met on our boat tour.  she's been traveling around se asia as well and has been tagging along with us these past few days.  i really enjoy her company and like speaking a little french with her here and there.  it really makes me miss living in europe and knowing another language well.  my french has turned to crap since i graduated college.  perhaps it's a sign?

ho chi minh

we arrived in vietnam on 5/9 to be picked up my pert's uncle tom.  apparently pert's dad only has baller status friends.  he drove us to the sheraton hotel where we are staying while in ho chi minh because he is offered many free nights every year and can't use them up.  like he had to twist our arms!  i can definitely say with the utmost certainty that this is the nicest place that we will be staying in during our time abroad.  

[powerlines should never look like this!]

vietnam surprised me when i arrived.  i expected it to be a lot less modern than it really was.  now don't get me wrong, i was expecting the stone ages, but something about all the modern buildings they had and all of the commericialized stores that take over the city blocks took me by surprise.


our hotel was in district 1 which is right in the middle of everything.  what hasn't been great is the humidity!  i kid you not pert and i were only walking around for about 15 minutes before i felt sweat dripping down my back.  i literally don't know how you can adjust to that here.  i saw a girl on a scooter wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood on.  i felt so uncomfortable just looking at her.


crossing the street has also been no joke.  we stood at a steet corner for a solid few minutes before we figured out how this game worked.  literally there are cars and TONS of scooters going in every which direction without the aid of lights.  it's utter chaos.  finally we realized that it's a game of chicken.  we just had to walk out there and pretty much avoid the cars and hope that the scooters would avoid us.  it's worked out so far.


in ho chi minh we've seen the independence palace and a market.  the independence palace is where the fall of saigon took place before it became ho chi minh city.  it was neat to see.  they kept all the rooms the same so everything was in true 50's fashion.  it was just strange to me because from traveling, i'm used to seeing rooms that are preserved from hundreds of years ago in castles, not 50.  whatever's clever.

we've also hit up some massages  since we've been here.  for 70 mins and only $7 you can't go wrong with a foot massage!  however, i couldn't tell if what the girl was doing to me was good pain or bad pain.  they told us that tip wasn't included in the fee which was fine, but when i handed my girl the tip, she asked for more!  no shame.  i gave her a 16% tip but i suppose it wasn't good enough.  she tried to tell me that it was only $1USD i was giving her, and i told her it was more than 10%.  in the end, i didn't give her more...but props to her for trying.


another interesting thing we visited were the cu chi tunnels about an hour outside of the city.  these tunnels were what vietnamese guerilla used in the 60's-70's to hide from the american troops.  there are about 250km of them underground in which they LIVED in.  we crawled in through some of them and it was crazy how cramped it was.  not good for the claustrophobic.  they were also very clever with disguising the entrances to the tunnels and setting up false ones to throw off the soldiers and dogs.  

 [yep..that's an entrance]

[so incredibly sweaty...]

other than that, we spent our fair share of time just relaxing and eating good local food!  i know i haven't posted too much about vietnamese food yet but i will write a post dedicated to it.  currently, i'm at my hostel in nha trang.  it is gorgeous here.  we just got in this morning from a sleeper train last night and the first thing we did was go to the beach.  well, we didn't have much of a choice since we couldn't check into our hostel yet.  it was surprisingly filled with people at 6:30 in the morning...