Vietnam Part 3: Food For Thought

It pains me to say this but you're reading the third and final post about Vietnam. I could've easily written at least six posts about our adventures here but Big Boss Man Lakha told me not to, and I think he's right (for once.) So with a limitation on my creative flow, I'll have to prioritise the content and you know what that means.. Sorry non-foodies but there's gonna be a whole lotta food in the second half of this one!

Let's start with the point at which we left off in Part 2. After visiting the central regions of Danang and Hoi An we went to the south central highlands of Dalat and finished in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City.) Bearing in mind what I said in Part 1 about the motorbikes in Vietnam you'd be forgiven for thinking we weren't interested in being one of the 40 people a day who die because of those things. Au contraire, my friend, for we went to Dalat for one reason: to jaunt with the Easy Riders.

The Easy Riders are basically motorbike drivers who take you anywhere you want to go. We spent a day just seeing the whole of Dalat with them but you can ride with them for weeks all over Vietnam. Now that IS bonkers. With the wind in our hair and an open road in front of us (kinda), we saw Dalat in the best possible way. Relative to their comrades in the other cities, Dalat drivers are quite chilled out and we only feared for our lives about twelve times as opposed to twenty and just knocked the one pedestrian down. Excellent going!

On our Easy Rider tour we visited artichoke and strawberry farms, coffee bean plantations, silk worm factories, ethnic villages, beautiful pagodas and countless other sights. All nice enough. There was a waterfall park which we got to by way of a mini roller coaster that we controlled ourselves - THAT was fun! Our favourite, however, was a stunning Buddhist Monastery. It was peaceful, spotless, smelt of the many flowers growing all over the grounds and had young monks in orange tunics tending the trees and hedges. It's no secret that clueless tourists grate on me so you can imagine how unimpressive the French couple who decided to start snogging in front of a shrine were. I mean, seriously? But what made me laugh was that the monk who kicked them out did so in such a composed, graceful and gentle manner that they didn't actually realise why they were being chucked out and left looking highly bewildered.

Dalat's known as a popular honeymoon destination and a beautiful part of Vietnam. Truthfully? - I really didn't get why. There are some pretty French-style villas around to drive past and lots of lovely flower farms but the views from the hills weren't special enough for me to understand the honeymoon attraction. Imran, on the other hand, loved it. Strange, as usually I'm the one who finds beauty in our surroundings more easily but we don't mind a role reversal when travelling! There's a great deal of Parisian influence in dirty and impossible to navigate Dalat town. It hence shares a lot of similarities with the European capital: the everyday food is decidedly below average in a country that values its cuisine so highly and both have an overrated tower (ooh, controversial!) But, when all is said and done, it was worth the visit for the amazing monastery.

From the breeze ruffling our locks in Dalat to the smoke clogging up our air in Saigon. If we thought traffic was mad in Hanoi we hadn't seen anything yet! The drivers on the pavements in Hanoi were a surprise but the ones in Siagon were ready to mow us down every ten metres. From the little old ladies shoving plastic bags full of rubbish down the street drains with a big stick to the market stall holders constantly yelling "Come and buy! Lovely things!" Saigon was brash, stifling and buzzing. We didn't enjoy walking around much but we enjoyed just being there, sitting in a bar and feeling the vibe of the place. We were staying very close to the backpackers' district so saw a lot of Western men with local girls young enough to be their granddaughters but this was also where the buzz was. Open-air bars with thumping beats that perfectly echo the vibrant pulse of the city itself; neon lights that match the bright, electrifying life here. It was just so easy to meet people and party until the sun came up in the heady haze.

Yet despite the party exterior, the depth of Siagon comes from the Vietnam War history. We visited the Cu Chi tunnels and the War Remenants museum. In order to understand both you need to know some history. This is definitely not Fun Fact time: one, because the facts are not fun and two, because Vietnamese history is so complicated that it's just impossible to simplify it and do so accurately with my basic knowledge of it. But here's my understanding of it. Correct me if I'm wrong!

Once a French colony, Vietnam was separated into the Communist North and the pro-Democratic South. When the French tried to obtain power a second time they were fought off by the Communist Viet Minh army led by Ho Chi Minh. The North wanted the South to be Communist and an army called the Viet Cong had based itself in the south so the US began sending troops there to help fight the VC. This wasn't a wholly selfless act done for the purpose of freedom and liberty for the South Vietnamese of course, although I'm sure that's how they spun it (as is their usual way.) The States' power on the world stage would be threatened by the rise of Communism in south east Asia, especially as Communist USSR could match the nuclear might of America. The conflict eventually escalated to the Vietnam War as we know it. The Viet Cong ultimately overcame the south and the US with the help of the north, and many local people fled the country - the 'Vietnamese boat people' - due to fear of poverty and punishment for supporting the anti-Communist cause.

The Viet Cong were no innocent angels. The War Remnants museum, therefore, is definitely biased against the Americans and propagandist. However, the shocking things you learn of US tactics and atrocious acts in the War are there because they DID take place and cannot be denied. The Viet Cong were based in the south and so the US could not distinguish the guerillas from the friendly civilians. That led to an 'if it's in Vietnam, it's Communist' mentality, resulting in sickening massacres of innocents such as that at My Lai. Millions upon millions of bombs were dropped in Laos where the Viet Cong were apparently making their way into Vietnam. Chemical warfare was perhaps their biggest weapon. Millions of gallons of dioxins were indiscriminately sprayed all over Vietnam in order to strip the rainforests bare and see the enemy from above. However, the poisons - Agent Orange being the most well known - killed people, animals, land and contaminated food and water supplies. The result? Cancers, diseases, disabilities and a whole host of other effects. To this day, people continue to be born with birth defects due to their blood line being contaminated with Agent Orange. Sadly and shockingly, the American government still refuses to acknowledge any moral or legal responsibility for the consequences of the herbicides it used. American soldiers exposed to the chemicals have been apologised to and compensated but acknowledging the Vietnamese victims would mean bringing money-generating chemical companies to trial and accepting the huge violation of the Human Rights of the Vietnamese people with this real weapon of mass destruction.

The Cu Chi tunnels are an underground network where soldiers lived, planned and fought. They were tiny and diseases inside were rife. I crawled through one and found it claustrophobic and this is after they'd been made bigger for 'tourist sizes.' The letters, accounts and pictures in the museum of the Agent Orange victims is highly depressing. War is despicable. The things the governments all around the world do to innocent people in order to serve their own interests is sickening. Will there ever be peace in our world? Perhaps when we all wipe each other out.

Saigon was two opposite ends of the scale for us: this emotionally wrought past combined with the frivolity of the travellers' streets. We needed to take a break from the madness so went to the place I was super excited about - the Mekong Delta and the famous floating market at Can Tho. At dawn on the Mekong River, hundreds of boats congregate to sell fruit and veg fresh from the farms. Each boat advertises the specific produce for sale on a wooden pole as it's too noisy for people to ask questions. Buyers yell out, holding up certain numbers of fingers and kilos of produce are thrown one by one onto their boat. Cabbages, pineapples, onions - you name it, they have it. Smaller boats float around selling fresh coffee and snacks. Some are full of bowls piled high with ingredients and a big pan of steaming liquid so that the traders can make a fresh bowl of noodle soup for your breakfast. I've seen this place on food shows on the TV a million times and was jumping for joy at the thought of going; this translated into jumping from our boat onto another to buy pineapples and ended up sitting in a sea of about 500 of them! And then, by 9am, it was all over and the buzz was gone, and we took a leisurely, scenic canoe ride down smaller parts of the river under arches of palm trees instead.

Vietnam is fascinating and fun. Despite its brutal history, it's positive and the people - especially the women - exude a really obvious resilience. We didn't have a preference for either the people in the north or the south because we were lucky enough to have positive experiences with both. If the worst we could say was that the taxi drivers in Hanoi were bolshy enough to take the fare (and tip) right out of our hands then I think we're well placed to say the people were great. In the north-south debate though, I'd say we loved Hanoi more by day and Saigon more by night. Every other sign says Karaoke, Food or Massage and to be honest, if you stick with these, you won't go wrong in this great country. Which brings me neatly on to the matter of food...


Food glorious food! Glorious Vietnamese food. If I had to choose between only eating Indian or Vietnamese cuisine for a year I'd pick the latter without hesitation. Sorry, Mum. 'How is this possible?' you may wonder, when the Vietnamese are so fond of swine that it's surprising babies' first words aren't 'pork' or 'pig.' You'd be right to wonder. As an Egyptian guy we met said: "You just have to accept that you've probably eaten pork a lot in Vietnam without realising it because they put it in everything.. even the vegetarian dishes." And he's right as the stocks for soups most likely all contain Peppa Pig's long-lost uncle and the veggies/spring rolls are often fried in pork fat. But we managed because we don't mind blissful ignorance if the only alternative is chomping outright on Babe's ear.


Hanoi is street food supreme. Believe it or not, the little stools dotted around on every pavement where people sit and eat Pho are actually illegal but the police forewarn their arrival on a megaphone before driving down a road, allowing time for the diners to stand up with their bowls and act like it came into their hands by magic. Law enforcement at its best. Pho is effectively the national dish and at its most simple a noodle soup. But oh, it's so much more than just a noodle soup. Stocks made with beef bones and herbs are cooked for hours and this is poured over rice noodles in a bowl with a piece of beef or chicken placed on top. The flattened beef is often raw and cooks in the heat of the liquid so melts in your mouth. You throw herbs, spring onions, beansprouts and chilli slices in and slurp to your heart's content. They say master stocks exist that have been around for hundreds of years with new flavours added to the boiling concoction each day. I was given a veggie one with a black mushroom stock and tofu. I despise mushrooms but I know they flavour food well and this was delicious.

One day we walked past a tiny, dark alleyway and my nostrils started twitching like a sniffer dog's so I dragged Imran along to see what was cooking (literally.) There was a haze of smoke, a myriad of flavoursome smells and plenty of chatter that died down to a hush as we walked (they must never have seen an afro like that on a brown man's head before.) Locals were crowded around tiny tables slurping soups and women were squatting on the floor deep frying anything and everything in woks precariously placed on coals. There were boxes on the side full of raw meat of various cuts and every few minutes someone would pull out a snout or a trotter or a chicken's foot and throw it on the makeshift barbecues. It was an awesome place; the kind of place Anthony Bourdain goes to and therefore the kind of place I love to go to. But here was our problem with street food in Vietnam: if we couldn't identify it, we weren't going to eat it. Imran, anyway. For me, being veggie, it was a given it was all meat! In South America we could speak some Spanish or at the very least make ourselves understood when trying to find out what the food was. Here, not a chance. But hey, when all the food we were eating elsewhere was so good, we didn't feel like we missed out by not eating the real street food. Especially as one of the best restaurants in Hanoi had a street food theme, with lots of mini kitchen stalls lining the walls where food was made to order in front of you. It's generally a lot easier to make yourself understood when you can see someone pick up a slab of meat and you yell "Nooo!" and wave your arms frantically whilst acting out a horrific death.


Vietnamese salads are the best. They're similar to Thai salads with green mango or green papaya but with less heat. Banana flower and lotus stem salads were a revelation. Dressings are always a perfect blend of salty fish sauce, sugar, lime and a hint of garlic and chilli. Cha Ca was another one of our favourite dishes but one predominantly found in the north. Marinated fish is brought to you along with a table-top cooker and pan. You cook the fish yourself in oil with dill and spring onions, then throw it all in a bowl over some rice noodles, fish sauce, herbs and peanuts. Gorgeous stuff.. but only if you go to the right places. In the very cheap places, they apparently use recycled oil or oils not for human consumption, such as motor oil - makes sticking to raw foods sound that much more appealing, doesn't it?

We ate summer rolls by the dozen practically every day and we watched Banh Mi sellers fill crusty baguettes with grilled meat. I became addicted to Morning Glory (no jokes, please!) which is a green leaf sautéed with garlic. In the central regions there are sweet potato & ginger cakes being charred on the pavements and in Saigon, where the food is flavoured with far more aniseed herbs, there are snails at every night market stall. We had one of our best meals at this market where red snappers covered in chilli paste were thrown whole onto sizzling barbecue flames and cooked to flaky perfection.

Hoi An is well known for its cooking schools and we spent a day at one making salads, pickles, pho, cha ca and incredible prawns cooked in banana leaves. All day we could smell zingy chilli and pungent garlic and the mellow citrus perfume of lemongrass. We even made our own rice noodles from scratch! I can't believe Imran enjoyed himself that day as he hates cooking but I think the feast he got to eat afterwards made up for it. He was, of course, bored out of his brains at the local food market and herb plantation. He seemed to cheer up when he learned someone had stolen my shoes after we'd been made to take them off before entering the farmer's home. The thief was found luckily although the only regret she seemed to have was that she hadn't run away faster. I didn't realise cheap Gap flip-flops were in such high demand in Vietnam.

The food was gorgeous in this wonderful country but unlike in Mexico, we didn't leave feeling like we weighed double. To get a feast for 100,000 dong (a few dollars) was easy here and we never tired of eating the same dishes over and over because everyone put their own spin on it. The waitresses in several restaurants took a real shine to Imran's hair, often complimenting it and wanting to touch it. I don't think they were referring to the food when they said "yum yum." They must've thought he looked a million dong.


Vietnam: thanks for the good grub. Our bellies will always be grateful.