If you are an avid reader of this blog one year ago I have posted about exotic foods in Hanoi, you can see it here. We don’t have a courage last year to eat these foods but on our second visit we didn’t lose our chance to eat these yucky foods to other. We had a video but my Pookie Bear, merged them all and it is such a large file to upload so just feast your eyes looking at these yummy foods. Hope you enjoy!
If I only know that the big lizard (tuko) can be eaten for sure my cat and I had a rumble catching tuko in our house.
We have been traveling in Vietnam for nearly three weeks already, we went from Hungary to Vietnam and now we are in Da Nang, Vietnam. We stayed five days in Da Nang and took an 8-hour bus ride to Hoi An, there’s nothing much to see in Hoi An aside from the old town, churches and museums. So, after visiting two museums today and walking again in the old town (as we already wandered yesterday) we called it a day and headed back to our hotel to rest, we are heading to Nha Trang tomorrow.
I should be blogging about Sapa where this blog stuck (6 countries left un-blogged) blame it to procrastinated me. Anyway, while looking around my website –
getvietnamvisa.com, I have stumbled to a link shared by a friend about a blog of two travel buddies who are disappointed/sick with Vietnamese food – I Would Rather Go Hungry Than Eat Vietnamese Street Food Again! Not new to me, my husband is not pleased with Vietnamese food either but I will wait until he tries an authentic Vietnamese restaurant.
Well, I admired their courage to eat street food because I will not eat street food unless I knew the vendor or person cooking the food or it has a good review of being clean from people I knew, it is better to be safe than sorry. It is like you travel to India and commit stomach suicide (Delhi belly) by eating street food, I am not sure if they do proper research before heading to the Vietnam or even try to use a lonely planet guide on their trip, because it is quite unbelievable that they are not able to try longganisa if they went to Iocos (as I have read in few comments) you can get these famous longganisa in the street of Vigan and they even have their famous empanada with longganisa. Even if they didn’t go to Vigan they can find longganisa in every wet market of the Vietnamese, they are all hanging like a wall decor in every meat stall. So quite interesting they are not able to get one unless they really went to convenience store to look for longganisa, you know it is like buying a loaf of bread in a pharmacy and buying a medicine in a bakery.
If they stay in a hotel/hostel (or someone’s house) on the list of
best hotels in Ho Chi Minh City, they should ask the information desk/landlord where to get traditional food if their travel guide (book) doesn’t say so or a simple question to Mr. Google is already a big help. Asking people in the street is like asking for a direction, some people knew and some people don’t. If they want to try Vietnamese street food like balut they can get them in the local market, just look for egg stalls and ask for balut but of course they have to boil them themselves unless they found a street vendor walking in the street selling “balut” you can find balut vendor from 5pm till midnight, and balut is not a street food that is hard to find, ask a drunkard he will surely lead you to one.
Most Vietnamese eat heavy breakfast, consist of fried rice, fried eggs, longganisa and tuyo (fried dried fish) or tapa. If they want to eat Vietnamese breakfast they should went to Pho or Banh My, Greenwich and McDonalds to order tapsilog, longgilog and more because I have heard these fast food chain I have mentioned served these type of food It doesn’t make sense too, why buy a fruit that looks old when you can go to another fruit store to find fresh one, unless they went to a sari-sari store where most store owner only shop goods once a week. Bananas in the Vietnamese are export quality, Vietnamese grew bananas and seeing a dark banana in the street is quite unusual unless you find them hanging in a small-scale store.
Furthermore, I have read they want to eat like locals, but sad to say they failed. Vietnamese foods like adobo, sinigang, kare-kare, nilaga, bulalo, sisig are mostly cooked at home or can be found in a medium scale restaurants and large restaurants. Usually, Vietnamese will not eat in a restaurant a food that they can easily cooked at home, most turo-turo served viand like menudo, bopis, taghilaw and few more other things or those food that you can mostly eat during birthdays, wedding and feast season but of course these food are not prepared to impress but only to fill the empty stomach of people in a very tight budget like students, although there are some turo-turo with a good cook. If you really want to eat a well-prepared food and be impressed, spending few shackles is not a always a bad decision, $25 a day is already one week budget for a local. Shopping malls in the Vietnamese always have a food court where you can eat less than $2 a meal, some stalls served local foods and sea foods too!
Sweets are really part of everyday lives, finding sweet food in the street of Philippines is like finding bakeshop err Cukiernia in the street of Europe. Eat wisely, eating in the street of South East Asia is not like eating in the street of Europe! Saving money while traveling doesn’t mean eating bluntly and sacrificing your health just for a sake of eating like a local, a local without a hint of being one.
