Vietnamese Food – Where to, Gumshoe?

Hoi An (Day 107): Delicious Cao lầu and Unbearable Heat

June 15, 2016

Our first and only full day in Hoi An began with FaceTiming with my family for a while. Nate’s almost 2 (in two days) and he has grown quite a bit since we saw him (in person) in Taipei! He’s talking so much now and I love it when his face lights up when I say, “Say hi to Uncle Tim”!

We don’t get breakfast with our room and I didn’t want to pay $5 USD per person for it. I told my family that and they laughed and said we should splurge a little. We realize it isn’t that expensive but we’ve been in Vietnam long enough to know that $5 USD for breakfast is too much – you could buy 5 banh mi for that price!

Tim did a bit of research on where to go for Hoi An’s famous dry noodle dish called, Cao lau. We decided to try a restaurant outside of the Old Town (less touristy) that was suggested by a travel/food blogger we found. The restaurant didn’t have a name but we knew the address so we punched it in Google Maps and were on our way. Cao lau is only served in Hoi An because the water used to make the noodles are supposedly only found from one well in town. Who knows if this is still true today.

We walked for about 15 minutes before getting to the restaurant. The sun was beating straight down on us and it felt like we were walking in a sauna the whole way there. The heat here isn’t a humid heat, it’s dry, which is better I suppose. When we arrived at the restaurant, it looked like they were closed but the lady saw us and we sat down. After we sat down, a few more locals came for lunch and it seemed like everyone ordered Cao lau. We could tell that the place added a lot more to their menu to accommodate all the backpackers in the area as they had a lot of western options.

Cao lau is a dry noodle dish that has slices of pork, fresh herbs, beansprouts, and pork crackling. The star of the dish are the noodles, which are a type of thicker al dente noodle, more similar to spaghetti than to pho. Apparently the rice for the noodles are stone ground and then mixed with ash and water (sounds kind of gross). Any way, the cao lau was really good. It was Better than I expected the dish to be. We both enjoyed the pork crackling on top. It added a tasty texture to the noodles.

After lunch we headed towards the Old Town to walk around. It was early afternoon and it was pretty dead while we walked around, probably because it was incredibly hot. We walked around a bit, drank all our water, and felt exhausted from the sun. We tried to find the least overpriced cafe with fans or air conditioning that we could take refuge in for a bit. The prices in general in Hoi An are more expensive than other cities in Vietnam since the Old Town is so touristy (thanks to being a UNESCO World Heritage site). We ended up at Phuong Cafe, and ordered a fruit smoothie and a beer. They also gave us glasses of iced tea to drink, which was nice and refreshing. We stayed at the Phuong Cafe for an hour and a bit, they had free wifi so we just stayed in to escape the heat. The majority of places in Hoi An’s Old Town do not have air conditioning and the cafes that do are very pricey.

We felt a bit recharged after our break and headed to Peace Tailors for our first fitting. It’s pretty impressive how quickly they can make the clothes – within less than 24 hours. My dress fit well, but I asked them to make some adjustments to the hem. Tim’s suit was nice but he had to make some alterations to his shoulders and made his pants a bit slimmer. We were told to come back around 7pm for another fitting.

Before heading back to the hotel, I wanted to buy Nate a pair of pants. I call them “SE Asian backpacker pants” because that’s what I see a lot of backpackers wearing in SE Asia. I think they’d look really cute on Nate. We went to a couple of stores that quoted us some pretty outrageous prices – 260,000 VND ($15 CAD!). We knew that was a pretty crazy price to quote so when we told her how much we would pay, she acted very insulted. Then we walked away then she said she would go down to 40,000 VND. We still walked away. We found a store that said prices were fixed so we decided to take a look. They had a pretty good assortment of those backpacker type clothes , including the pants for kids. The list price was only 30,000 VND = $1.75 CAD. We were happy we didn’t go back to the lady who even thought about quoting us 260,000 VND.

We walked back to the hotel to rest up and cool down before our next fitting and dinner. Our plan for dinner was to go to a restaurant called, Morning Glory. It was suggested to us by the hotel and I had read about it in Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor. Morning Glory’s owner, Ms. Vy, has a few other restaurants and cafes in Hoi An, a cooking school, and a new restaurant in Melbourne.

When we arrived at Morning Glory, the restaurant was packed and we had to wait about 10 minutes for a table. We were told to sit inside in the waiting area, which was towards the back of the restaurant. It was super hot and stuffy inside. They had fans all over the restaurant and a huge air conditioner, which didn’t do anything because it was set to 33°C! Luckily we got seated on the patio in the front of the restaurant, which was actually a lot cooler and more comfortable outside. We ordered four dishes – white rose dumplings (Hoi An specialty), com gia (chicken rice), bun cha (pork meatballs with vermicelli and fresh herbs), and morning glory (ong choy). For our four dishes and two iced coffees, our bill was $23 CAD. This was our fanciest meal in Vietnam yet. The food was very good and I would highly recommend the restaurant. We know if we had this same meal in Melbourne, the bill would’ve been closer to $100 AUD.

After dinner we walked back to Peace Tailors for our second fitting. My dress was good to go, but Tim needed a few more alterations for his. We’ll be back again tomorrow morning for hopefully the last fitting.

We walked back to the hotel, washed up for the second time today, and continued to watch the second part of the O.J. Simpson documentary. I’m finding it pretty interesting since a lot of what made O.J. Simpson who he was happened before we were even born. We were only old enough to know about his murder trial, and not so much the societal context.

We’re leaving Hoi An tomorrow and heading back to Da Nang for the night since we have an early flight to Hanoi from the Da Nang Airport. Hoi An is a nice town city to visit but after a few days here, I’m ready to explore another city!

Steps today: 22,000

Can Tho (Day 100): Crazy Phuong Trang Bus & Mekong Food Tour

June 8, 2016

Even after writing that today was going to be Day 100, Tim and I both totally forgot about it. I guess it wasn’t much of a milestone after all. This morning we made a second attempt to find the Com Tam stall for breakfast. We walked to where the lady’s stall should have been at around 8am and she was still not there. We think she is probably on vacation. Since we have a bunch of other days in HCMC, we can always try again then. We walked back to our hotel and ate breakfast at the hotel instead.

Our plan today was to get to Can Tho, a city about 3.5 hours away from HCMC in the Mekong Delta region. The hotel booked seats for us on the Phuong Trang bus. The tickets cost 100,000 VND = $5.65 CAD each. A cab took us to the Phuong Trang bus office where we would catch a shuttle that would take us to the actual bus station.

When we got to the Phuong Trang bus ticketing station, I was not expecting what we drove up to. The bus ticketing station was run down and full of people waiting for shuttle buses. Then when a shuttle bus would drive up, people would rush to the bus and try to get in before people even came out. It was pretty chaotic to say the least. Tim went to the ticket counter and showed them the slip of paper the lady from the hotel gave us and they issued our tickets. She told us to wait 15 minutes and then get on one of the shuttle buses.

We got on to the crammed shuttle bus with our large backpacks on our laps. After about a 10 minute drive we got to the HCMC’s bus station and it was even more chaotic than the ticketing station. There was a large room of people waiting for their buses and there was no departures board or schedule of any kind. We stood outside so we could see the buses that pulled up since we couldn’t understand the Vietnamese announcements and it didn’t seem like there was much order. People would just run up to the bus and the bus would continue to move even when they were trying to load the bus. The buses also drove up really close to where all the people we standing.

We didn’t take any buses when we went to Thailand so I can’t really comment on how it was there, but this was definitely my most “roughing it” travel moment. I told Tim that I felt that way and he semi rolled his eyes at me. I think it also felt more chaotic for us because everything was in Vietnamese and when we looked around there were no other obvious tourists or westernized looking Asian people. In my mind I was expecting way more backpackers at the bus station, but I guess Vietnam is still nothing like Thailand in that sense.

We finally spotted our bus, loaded our bags, and got on the bus as it was moving to down the queue of buses. We were seated at the front of the bus which was good because we had a good view straight out the front. In hind sight, I’m not sure if this was a good thing or a more nerve wracking thing – but it definitely added to our entertainment for the ride. The bus was full and our journey to Can Tho would take around 3-4 hours. When we were all seated, the bus attendant came around and gave us a bottle of water and a wet wipe. There was wifi on the bus too which was a nice surprise.

About 5 minutes after leaving the station, the bus pulls over randomly (Tim: or not so randomly) and two guys jump on the bus. I guess they’re friends of the driver? They come on the bus (obviously not paying for a ticket) and both sat on the steps right beside the driver and the bus attendant. I suppose this is normal practice in Vietnam.

Tim and I both fell asleep but were woken up to the bus driver honking like there’s no tomorrow. When we woke up we realized there was also Vietnamese music playing quite loudly and music videos and concerts were being shown on the TV. Even when I tried to close my eyes, I would get very startled by the continuous honking (bus’ horns are really loud, especially when they are leaning on it). From our four days here, it seems like everyone is just horn happy and it’s more of a honk to say “hey, I’m here”, not a “eff you” type of honk. Highway driving isn’t much different from city driving as the bus weaved in and out of traffic narrowly missing scooters. Since we were up front, it was a bit nerve wracking and we had a lot of “wtf” moments. We are definitely not in a first world country any more.

After about two hours we arrived at a rest stop, which is a Phuong Trang bus stop. The building was full of food vendors and snacks. We shared a banh mi (15,000 VND = $0.85 CAD), which wasn’t very good, and a sugar cane juice (12,000 VND = $0.68 CAD). Since the announcement for how long the pit stop was going to be was in Vietnamese and no one on our bus spoke English, we quickly bought our lunch and stood outside making sure our bus was still there.

We learned later that the bus attendant would pretend to count that everyone is in their seats but in reality they had no idea and would just leave you behind. As we were leaving the parking lot, a frantic man came up to the front to tell the driver that we were still missing some people. That’s when we the driver and attendant realized that they were missing 4 people! The bus driver reluctantly pulled over and the 4 ladies came running for the bus. When they came on the bus, the bus attendant and driver said a bunch of stuff in Vietnamese (that didn’t sound like it was something nice) and the lady said something back (in an equally annoyed tone) then took her seat.

We finally arrived in Can Tho 3.5 hours after we left HCMC. Phuong Trang provides free shuttle transfers to your hotel or your final destination within the city once you arrive at the bus station. We waited about 30 minutes for a shuttle bus to our hotel. This shuttle bus was even more cramped than the one in HCMC. Luckily, we were the second ones to be dropped off.

We checked into our room at Hotel Xoai , and signed up for a “free” three hour food tour that started 6:30pm. We basically just got into our room and got changed and went downstairs to meet for the food tour. We booked the cheapest/smallest room here for $14 USD/night. The room was very small but very clean.

We went downstairs to meet the tour guide, Thoai. We read a lot of reviews about our hotel on Trip Advisor and majority of them raved about the food tour at the hotel. Since it’s down season right now, we were lukcy and had a private tour with Thoai, a 28 year old Can Tho local. He was extremely friendly. knowledgeable, and his English was good.

The first stop we took was a “nem nuong” (BBQ pork sausage) restaurant, called “Nem Nuong Anh Map”. Thoai ordered one order of nem nuong for Tim and I to share. It was our first time having a dish like this so we were excited to try it out. The waitress brought a dish of the BBQ pork sausage on a bed of very thin rice noodle patties, greens, and all the assorted fillings. We were supposed to roll everything up and dip it in the peanut sauce. There were so many different flavours and textures in the rice wrapper which was so delicious. I love all the fresh greens and herbs – it’s very refreshing!

On our way to the next stop, we crossed a park that was filled with children and teenagers roller skating around and a zumba class going on. Since it’s so hot during the day, it seems as though everyone comes out at night to enjoy the outdoors. Thoai said zumba is really popular right now in Can Tho and that only woman exercise in Vietnam (Tim: men just sit around and drink).

Our second stop was to eat a special “bean muffin” that’s native to Can Tho. Thoai told us that only two restaurants in the city make these muffins and the one we went to is his favourite and the most popular. Since there were still other stops to go, Tim and I just shared one to try. The restaurant is called “Banh Cong Co Ut” and I think the muffin is called “banh cong co ut”. The muffin is deep fried twice and is made out of green bean, taro, and shrimp. The muffin came cut into fours and Thoai told us to put it in a mustard green leaf, along with lettuce and pickled vegetables, then dip it in fish sauce. This was probably my favourite snack/dish so far.

Our third stop was a street corner restaurant called, “74”. They specialize in claypot dishes and a Can Tho “special meat”. Thoai asked us if we wanted to try the “special meat”, we said sure but told him not to tell us what it was until after we ate it. In addition to the special meat, we tried the beef and egg claypot. The other choices were an eggplant or tofu. The beef and egg hot pot came boiling on a portable stove. Thoai stir the raw eggs around and covered it with a lid until the eggs were sort of a scramble. There was a sour and spicy dipping sauce to dip the beef in. The beef, onion, and egg were very flavourful and the beef was tender. Restaurant 74’s patrons were mainly middle aged men drinking beer and having a claypot.

At this point we were pretty full. Thoai asked if we wanted to try an “egg coffee”. We declined since we had to be up at 4:30am the next morning for our Mekong Delta tour. Thoai showed us where the egg coffee was for us to try tomorrow.

For dessert, he took us to a well known sticky rice lady who only sets up at night. She makes both a turmeric and black sticky rice and scoops both into a waffle (like a burrito), adds dried coconut, sugar, and a bit of salt. I really like mango sticky rice for dessert so this was something very different than what I was expecting. It was really good and Tim even liked the dried coconut in it (he usually isn’t a fan of dried coconut flakes).

Our last stop on the tour was to grab a drink at a cafe. Thoai and Tim got beers and I tried a fruit smoothie. Thoai listed all the fruits and I tried one that I’ve never heard of before – sapodilla. They blended the fruit and added some condensed milk, it was delicious and refreshing. Thoai said a lot of people get the sapodilla smoothie with espresso. We sat on the street on plastic chairs and chatted for a while.

It was nice to be able to speak to a local (around our age) and ask what life is like living in Vietnam – more specifically (Tim: or more broadly?) a Communist country. He talked about the differences between the people in the north and south (people in the south don’t call it HCMC, they still call it Saigon. But people in the north call it HCMC..makes sense), how hard it is for educated millennials to find decent jobs in Vietnam (without bribery), corrupt police, and their horrible hospitals (basically lack of trust in anything government related). He described their hospitals and how the only doctors who get jobs in hospitals are ones who have connections to someone in the government or who could pay the exorbitant bribes to get a job (nothing to do with skill). We told him that makes sense because Lonely Planet and our insurance says if we get injured/sick in Vietnam we should fly to Bangkok for treatment. He laughed and said people here don’t even want to go to their own hospitals. Any how, we learned a lot from Thoai and it reinforced how lucky we are to be Canadians.

We walked back to our hotel and Thoai marked down more of his favourite places on a map for us. I’m happy we decided to take the food tour with Thoai. We got to try all this different food we wouldn’t have found ourselves, learn more about Vietnam from a young adult’s perspective, and learn how to pronounce some Vietnamese words.

It’ll be an early morning tomorrow but we’re looking forward to seeing the Mekong Delta.

Steps today: 11,000

Ho Chi Minh City (Day 99): War Remnants Museum, Banh Mi, and Pho

June 7, 2016

Wow! It’s already been 99 days since we’ve gone. Feels like we should do something special to celebrate our 100th day tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll be heading to the Mekong Delta area and staying in Can Tho for a couple of nights before coming back to HCMC.

This morning we got ready, grabbed coffee and juice from downstairs and something quick to eat, and went to find the breakfast stall that Chloe had recommended that served “com tam” (broken rice with grilled pork chop). She told us the stall closes around 10am so we should try to go early just in case. We didn’t make it out early enough because by the time we got there around 9:30am, we didn’t see a stall. We’ll try again tomorrow morning and go earlier. After our failed attempt at getting com tam, we walked to the War Remnants Museum.

The admission fee for the War Remnants Museum was 15,000 VND = $0.85 CAD/person. We spent about 2 hours at the museum going through each of the exhibit rooms and looking at all the photographs captured from the war. I enjoyed looking through the photographs and reading more about the photographers who went to Vietnam to document the Vietnam War. It’s very sad that the majority of them died while capturing photographs that we get to see today (Tim: Lots of photo descriptions include the note “last roll of film” as they came from the photographers’ cameras after they recovered their bodies). About half of the photographs were directly attributed to specific photographers and included their original comments that went with the photos when they were first published. These comments were fairly neutral for the most part. The remainder of the photographs had commentary written by the musem that was very anti-American. My least favourite room was the Agent Orange room which had dead baby fetuses in jars on display. The pictures of all who had been and are affected by Agent Orange was devastating, but I think having the jars of dead baby fetuses was a bit too much. I saw them from the corner of my eye and walked the other way.

While we were still looking around an announcement came on saying the museum would be closing at 12pm and would reopen at 1:30pm. We didn’t realize the museum closed midday, but it did sound like something that would happen since I read that Vietnamese people take lunch very seriously.

Since it was lunch time for everyone else, we decided to have lunch too. We walked to a banh mi stall, Banh Mi Sau Minh, that was recommended by one of Tim’s friends who said it was the best sandwich he’s ever had (Tim: and I take his recommendations seriously). With testimonials like that, it would be an insult not to give it a try ourselves. There were two banh mi sandwiches listed on their menu so we ordered one of each. The owner was really nice and gave us two bottles of a lychee gatorade type of drink and he said it was “no money”. Maybe it was because we looked super sweaty and dehydrated to him.

We took our sandwiches to go and ate in the park we passed by earlier in the day. It was nice and shaded and there were benches all over to sit. In one of the banh mi, he spread “laughing cow” cheese on the bread. It was different but complimented all the Vietnamese deli meat well. As we were just sitting on the bench enjoying the shade, huge gusts of wind swept through the park and all of a sudden it started to pour really hard. We opened up our umbrellas and headed back to the hotel. Even with umbrellas we were both pretty soaked.

We dried off and did a bit of planning for our upcoming few days. With the help from the lady downstairs, we booked our bus ticket to Can Tho (3.5 hour bus ride). The rain continued to come down really hard and we could hear lightning from our room. We headed out for an early dinner to try out another banh mi for our appetizer and finally had pho!

We read online that Banh Mi Hyunh Hoa is one of the more famous/popular banh mi shops in HCMC. It’s pretty close to our hotel and only a street over from the place we went to last night for dinner. We tried to walk by after the park earlier in the day but they didn’t open until 2:30pm (close at midnight). This time, we passed by and they were open. The shop had tons of scooters out front ordering sandwiches for dinner. We ordered one to share and stood across the street under cover while we ate. This banh mi was definitely more hefty than the other ones we had. It had a lot of different meats in it and we could feel the heat from the pickled chili peppers. I think this one was my favourite so far. It was most similar to the ones we have at home. So far, the banh mi that we’ve had so far didn’t have as many pickled vegetables and cilantro as I would like. 2 days in and we’ve had 4 fairly different banh mis already – so delicious!

We walked another 10 minutes in the rain in search of Pho Thanh Chanh. It was recommended by Chloe and also on one of the pho lists that Tim’s cousin, Nick, sent to us. It was also the closest one on that pho list to us so we went there.

Pho Thanh Chanh is a family run restaurant, which I’m guessing the majority of the restaurants in Vietnam are. The Mom is out front preparing bowls of pho and her daughter (probably 15 years old) takes orders and cuts up the limes and chilis, and her two younger sons (probably around 12 years old) deliver the pho to tables. Since we were eating quite early, the boys looked like they just got off school as they went to the back room, got changed and put on an apron. Tim ordered two bowls of the house special (dac biet) pho, one of the few terms Tim knows in Vietnamese. The soup and meat were all very delicious. There was a really good ratio of noodles, meat and broth.

We headed back to the hotel for the night and are continuing to plan out parts the upcoming month. I’m looking forward to seeing the Mekong Delta, experiencing more of the Vietnamese countryside, and getting out of the big city for a couple of days. I really like walking around cities but walking around HCMC gives me slight anxiety. Why don’t scooters and cars obey the cross walks?

Steps today: 14,000

Adelaide (Day 77): An Autumn Downtown Day

May 16, 2016

We woke up this morning to the smell of pancakes and pouring rain. Jess and Robin were both up early because Jess worked this morning and Robin was being a good husband and making breakfast. It’s also their first wedding anniversary today! When Tim and I went downstairs Robin told us the pancakes didn’t turn out well because the batter from yesterday had separated and it was inedible. Instead, Robin prepared a granola and fruit bowl for our breakfast. We had bought passion fruit yogurt yesterday so I added it in to make a fruit and granola parfait.

Jessica and Robin got us a 3GB SIM card for data from Telstra (one of Australia’s major cell phone providers). We got the SIM card activated at around 5pm the day before, but Tim and I had used all the data by 10am (whoops). I guess when we have 5 devices on WiFi, it’s easy to blow through that data. We added more money on to the SIM but we added it on to the wrong SIM card by mistake and had to call Telstra to get it sorted out. We waited the whole day for the credit to be added but no luck. So when Jess got home, she called Telstra again to help get things fixed. So many calls to Telstra!

Since it was raining this morning we decided to hold on off on going to Cleland Wildlife Park and just hang out downtown. Robin wasn’t working until 4pm today so we spent the afternoon with him. We went downtown for lunch at a vegetarian Taiwanese restaurant that Jess and Robin go to once in a while. The restaurant was called THEA and it was quite busy with what looked like office workers from nearby buildings. We ordered some dishes to share and a bubble tea – our first bubble tea since leaving Taipei. This bubble tea was not $1.40 CAD… it ended up being $5.70 AUD. The food was okay. Tim’s cold noodles were the best dish by far. The pearl milk tea was also surprisingly good – good textured pearls and solid tea. I wasn’t a huge fan of my dish or the special snack dishes for the day.

After lunch, Robin took us through other parts of the Botanic Gardens and to the Torrens River for a nice walk. The weather had totally changed from the gloomy rainy morning to beautiful blue skies and sun. Australian weather changes really quickly apparently. It was really nice to go for a long walk around some pretty peaceful areas of the city. Our end point of our walk before we turned around back to the city was to go to a suspension bridge that crossed the Torrens River. The bridge is scheduled to be updated, which made me a bit nervous while crossing since it is really old and it looked that way too.

We headed back into the city and Robin headed off to the hospital for his shift. Tim and I walked along North Terrace Road and went to the Adelaide Museum of Art for a quick look. All the museums are free in Adelaide, which is great. I like some museums, but I’m not a big fan of art museums so it’s good this was free or else I probably wouldn’t pay to go in. We did a quick walk through the museum and they had quite the mix of old English looking art to modern art that I don’t understand. They had a huge taxidermy horse hanging from the ceiling, which was really strange and a bit disturbing. We didn’t spend much time in the museum, just a quick walkthrough to get the gist of what it was like.

After walking down North Terrace Road, we headed back to Rundle Mall for the free and fast WiFi. We basically sat on the many benches and surfed the net, downloaded shows, and posted yesterday’s blog post for about 1.5 hours. Adelaide is great for having accessible free and fast WiFi throughout the downtown core. It’s too bad it doesn’t extend out to where Jess and Robin are in Woodville Park (5km outside downtown).

We finished with the WiFi and headed back to the townhouse to meet Jess for dinner after she was done her shift. We planned on going to a Vietnamese restaurant close to their place called, NNQ (Nghi Ngan Quan). The restaurant was in an old and charming building and looked like a very modern and somewhat trendy Vietnamese restaurant. Woodville and Australia in general has a very large Vietnamese community so you see a lot of Vietnamese restaurants around. The restaurant was full inside when we got there, so we got seated outside (with heat lamps that were really hot). The food was really good! I can’t wait to go to Vietnam where our meals will be a fraction of the price they are here. I enjoyed our dinner a lot more than our vegetarian Taiwanese lunch.

We came back home just in time for the last half of Masterchef Australia (the show started here). It’s on every day at 7:30pm except for Fridays and Saturdays (no wonder it’s such a popular show here), we’ve only watched a couple of episodes and we know some participants pretty well. Our favourite is Con, a guy from Melbourne who looks like a sad Joey Fatone from NSYNC.

Jess boiled some hot water and made some tea and we played a card game called SushiGo. She got the card game from a friend in Vancouver and we had actually gotten the same game from Hon before we left. But since the packaging is a bit more cumbersome we left it at home. The three of us played a couple of games – Jess won two out of the three games. Tim gets sad when he’s playing badly, it’s quite funny.

Steps today: 20,000