Category Archives: Can Tho

Traveling on my stomach: A tour of South Vietnam.

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I love traveling by food. Everywhere there is exotic foods and drinks. It started with the airplane ride over from Chicago to Japan. This will be the first of a couple posts of the food we encounter along our trip through south, central, and north Vietnam. 

We were served dinner and we could either get a western style meal with meat or a Japanese style meal. I chose the japanases style meal because it’s a meal that you wouldn’t be able to get everywhere. Below is a spread of the Japanese meal. There was mushrooms in a fish sauce marinade, different types of fish, sushi rolls, and other sweet vegetables. 


(This was only the appetizer spread) 

The next memorable meal was breakfast at the Sofitel in Ho Chi Minh City. This was a breakfast buffet, but elevated. It had stations serving American foods (bacon and eggs) to Vietnamese breakfast soup (Pho). There was also a bakery with many different types of bread, a area with dumplings and steam buns, a sushi station, made to order egg station, cheese and meat station, and a fruit and dessert station. 


Above is the buffet and directly in from is the fruit station where I had dragon fruit and sweet yellow mangos in the mornings we were there. I would never have tried it if it had not been for this buffet. 

Our next memorable meal was at a sea food grill. Our friend, Anh, recommended it and we went there with her. It was a place locals go, as we could tell when the menus came to us all in Vietnamese. Ahn helped us translate the menu. The restaurant’s menu was expansive. You could get different sea foods (crab, scallops, clams, squid, escargot, conch) cooked many different ways (grilled, boiled, steamed) and seasoned the way you want it (lemon grass, blackened, start and pepper). 

Above: the top picture is a shot of scallops with green onions and clams in a lemongrass broth. The bottom picture is a shot of the conch with a spicy chili sauce and escargot with garlic.

The picture above is a fresh coconut that we were given when we went sailing on the Mekong Delta. It was cut seconds before and was nice and refreshing. I loved it. I would never have done that if it were not for Tan (our tour guide) who gave it to us. 


We had an array of exotic fruits while we were in the delta and thought out the south. We tried fruits such as dragon fruit (similar to kiwis), jack fruit (shown above), and baby bananas. I am still waiting to try fresh durian. People say it smells like rotten eggs, but tastes like heaven. 

Above is a picture of an Elephant Ear Fish. It was prepared as a fried fish, which is why the scales look as they do, and eaten in a rice paper wrapper. It was a little dry, but it had an amazing taste to it.  I would get it again. 
Each new food is an adventure and I love it. The next food blog of “traveling on my stomach”, will come from central Vietnam. 

Final images of south Vietnam

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On our way back to Saigon from Can Tho, we took a boat tour of the Cai Rang floating market in Can Tho.


It’s the largest such market in the Mekong Delta, but it’s days seem numbered. We were told that 7 years ago there were over 500 boats selling  produce at the market. Today there are fewer than 200. A large part of the reason for the decline is the improvement that the  country has made in roads and bridges, and there increased wealth in the  country that has allowed a growth in the number of cars and trucks on the road. Nevertheless, wholesalers still travel the Delta by boat to purchase produce to bring to the market by boat (they also live on their boats).


The fruit and vegetables are stored in the  hold of the  boat so it isn’t really apparent what each boat is selling.  If you look closely you will see a bamboo pole attached to each boat. Hanging from the pole is the item or items that the merchant has for sale. Clever.


We boarded a pineapple boat to watch them work and sample their pineapples.  Delicious.

We also stopped at a rice noodle factory. This was very cool. They mix rice flour and tapioca flour into a batter. They then pour a thin layer onto a  hot griddle and cover it to let it steam.

After a minute or so, the cover is lifted and the rice noodle sheet is taken off the grill with a bamboo roller

The sheet is then transferred to a bamboo mat

And the mats are placed in the sun to dry.

If they were making rice paper wrappers (like you would use for salad rolls or cha gio) the rice sheets would be left to dry completely. However, since these are destined to be noodles, they are taken off the mats while still pliant and then feed into a machine that cuts them into mounds of prefect rice noodles.


And then you can buy some noodles to use in a steaming bowl of Pho.

While in Soc Trang we were hosted for a lunch at a local Buddhist temple.  One of the monks who works at the temple helped Mrs. Dao find Mrs, Ha three years ago.  The head of the temple was our host:


He showed us the biggest rice cooker that I’ve ever seen.

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It can cook 10 kilos of rice at once. They use it to feed the poor, and they make and serve 40 kilos of rice a day.  They meet an incredible need in such a poor area.

Markets are where  people buy most of their food. Many rural families do not have refrigerators so they need to buy fresh food every day the market folks their need. This one is in southern Can Tho province:

The squeamish may want to skip the next picture. The seafood is so fresh, the frogs are killed just before being sold.

And markets make for great people watching

 

Final stop was at a better lacquer factory, and one that we went to 18 years ago with Sam while we waited in Vietnam for his papers to be processed.  It is the Tay Son lacquer factory, and we toured and shopped.

Duck egg shells are flattened, cut and glued to the board.  It’s incredibly precise work.

The gentleman below is painting his vase to match the one on his right.

We fell in love with this combination of paint and eggshells.

We had an incredible time in souts Vietnam, and look forward to our next adventures in the central part of the country.

The Mekong Delta

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We left Saigon early in the morning to head to the Mekong Delta on our way to Soc Trang to meet Sam’s birth mother.  Along the way, we stopped for an amazing tour of the Mekong River and the Delta.  We drove to the town of My Tho where we boarded a small wooden power boat.

(The big boat in the picture is NOT the boat we boadrded.  Ours is the little one that is hidden behind the big one)



The boat took us across the Mekong River:



While the river was fascinating, equally fascinating was our captain.  If you look closely, you will see that she controls the boat with her feet.  Left foot on the tiller (or is that a rudder?  I’m not a boat person) right foot controls the engine speed.  All of the women boat captains that we saw (and  they were all women) controlled the boat in exactly the same way; never using their hands.


Once across the river, we turned into a small tributary.  This was the type of setting that we pictured in our minds when we heard people talk about the Mekong Delta:





The last picture above was a family who lives on their boat.  We then docked at a small, family run coconut candy factory and tourist business.   They start with mature coconuts and first peel them using what  looks like a spear standing up from the ground.  Sam took a shot at peeling one.  While the workers can peel one in 20 seconds, let’s just say Sam went past that mark and didn’t completely get the shell off (it’s harder than it looks):

Our guide, Tan, is showing Sam how it’s done.


After we watched them make some of the most amazing tasting coconut candy we have ever had.  


In addition to coconut candy they also maintain their own beehive to produce honey that they also sell.  They brought over one of the trays from the hive with live bees for us to hold:

After tasting (and buying) some of the amazing candy, we boarded our next vehicle to take us to the next part of our tour:

The horse drawn carriage was a tradiotnal means of transportation in the Delta (before the proliferation of motorbikes)


The carriage took us to a small dock along an even small tributary, and we then boarded our third vehicle of the tour: a gondola-like boat.

The hats that they gave us to wear were much welcome as they not only shade your eyes, but also the back of your next.  And it was hot and humid as we were paddled down the river.


Sam even helped row for a part of the trip.


We took the boat to a restaurant for lunch, which was unremarkable except for the local fish that they served us, called Elephant Ear fish


The fish is seasoned and deep fried.  The waiter then uses his gloved hands to scrape off the scales and take the meat off the fish to roll up in rice paper with noodles and herbs.


We then headed back to the first boat for our trip back across the Mekong River.   I should also mention that one of the items we have been served often is the juice from a young coconut (people mistakenly call this juice coconut milk.  Coconut milk is extracted from shredding the coconut meat itself and then putiting it in cloth under a press, and the pressure of the press then squeezes out the “milk.” What we had is better called coconut water).  It is fresh, warm and delicious.


We were then taken to our hotel in Can Tho, where we had an early dinner at the hotel and then went to be early so as to be ready for our visit to Soc Trang the next morning.

(This post is a day or so late, as we have had really long days and then been exhausted at night. I will still try to keep the days in order, if if they are a little late).