This will be the last blog post about my trip to HCMC so I thought I’d talk about the food we enjoyed during our stay.

I don’t know a lot about Vietnamese food; all I know is that I love eating it here in Sydney, but I have no idea about what is authentic and what isn’t. I was really interested to see how the food over there was different to the food over here.

So my conclusion is, unlike others (like Italian and Chinese), the Vietnamese food in Sydney is a very good representation of what they have over in Vietnam (anyone is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, cos I’m no Vietnamese food expert ).

I’ve taken some pictures of some of the food places we ate at.

First up is PHO 2000 next to the corner of Ben Thanh Markets in District 1…. If its good enough for Bill Clinton, its good enough for me! They proudly hang the picture on the wall of Bill Clinton at PHO 2000. For me, this was the best Pho (beef noodle soup) we had in Vietnam. The broth is what makes or breaks a bowl of Pho, and this really was the best broth I have tasted anywhere. I’ve found that in general, the broth is sweeter in Vietnam than here in Sydney; the Pho 2000 broth was sweet, rich, and complex. It was very very tasty. I also rated the prawn spring rolls there very highly… makes my mouth water typing about it right now! PHO 2000 was so good we had to pay it one last visit before jumping on the plane back to Sydney.

The picture of the dried fish isn’t something I tried, but I saw it at the markets and thought it would make an interesting picture.

We stumbled across a little French Patisserie on the streets near our hotel. It was run by a French couple and they served Fanny ice cream and a variety of cakes. We ate here a few times just to get out of the heat and have some ice cream; my favourite was the coffee and rice. The cake in the picture is an Opera cake… it literally lasted 10 seconds with us all digging into it… a very yummy cake

Next up is a chain restaurant called Pho 24… Apparently 24 versions of Pho on their menu (I forgot to count)… its a chain with stores scattered all over the place… good, but not quite as good as Pho 2000.

Nha Hang Ngon was our favourite restaurant in HCMC… it was so good, we dined here multiple times! The restaurant was clean, the food was tasty, the price was very reasonable. Its hard to find a bad spring roll in Vietnam, and these didn’t dissapoint.. I rate the spring rolls as highly as the ones from Pho 2000; different, but just as good. Others in our group rated these spring rolls better than Pho 2000′s. At one meal, the 7 of us stuffed ourselves silly, and the bill came to $40USD… that’s right… under $6USD per person!

The last restaurant featured in this gallery is a place called Lemongrass. We found this place on a travel website and it rated really highly… the food definately was very very good, but I enjoyed Nha Hang Ngon more…. alright.. I enjoyed Nha Hang Ngon much more!

Lemongrass seemed to me like a tourist restaurant, it was busy all night but none of the diners looked to be local. The food was great, the service too was very good. The price, while still very cheap by Australian standards was expensive by Vietnam standards. We were all very amused that we had just dined on our first meal that cost almost 2 MILLION! I took a picture of the bill to celebrate. All up it cost around $14USD per person.

One thing that I forgot to take a picture of was the Banh Mi Thit (Vietnamese Pork Roll) that I had; it was so tasty I was too busy eating! I’ve always loved the Pork rolls from Cabramatta here in Sydney, but the Pork rolls in Vietnam were again better! They are much smaller than the ones we have here but the bread is unbelievable! So crunchy yet so soft, so tasty, the perfect snack…

Another thing I’ll mention is that I didn’t eat much street food… Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t want to eat something my stomach couldn’t handle and be stuck in the toilet for the duration of the trip. Everyday walking along the street I could smell all these different aromas floating out from the various street stalls, it was very tempting indeed, but I didn’t want to risk it… especially as the food (meat also) was not refrigerated and was left in the sun all day…

So thats about all I have to write about my recent trip to Vietnam; I really miss the place… and I think I’m suffering Vietnamese Spring roll withdrawal symptoms

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For me, even though I enjoyed all the tours, this one was the standout.

The day started off with a bus ride to the Mekong; from there we boarded a boat to one of the islands and paid a visit to the coconut candy factory. Coconut candy is very addictive, I bought a few packs and brought them back with me…. like pringles, you can’t have just one!

After the coconut candy factory, we boarded a scooter and took a ride through the villages.

This leg of the tour was for me the most memorable. We went through 3 different villages and was given the chance to visit someone’s home. Seeing people’s homes from the air conditioned comfort of the bus is one thing, but riding through the village on a scooter and walking into someone’s home gave us a chance to really experience how the locals live. Life is tough, the people are poor and have few luxuries; despite this, they still look happy and are grateful for what they have. We really are very fortunate here in Australia….

We then went to a tourist location, listened to some Vietnamese music and tried some local tropical fruit (Jackfruit was my favourite); followed by a paddle boat ride down a smaller Mekong stream to the lunch location where we had another awesome meal.

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The Cu Chi Tunnels are located about 2 hours North West of HCMC. In short, they are about 200km of tunnels, some three layers deep built over a period of 20 years from 1949. The tunnels formed a base for military operations of the VietCong and at housed up to 150,000 people. The vast network of tunnels were built by hand using small hoes and woven baskets (See! I was listening to the tour guide… I didn’t google this info, I promise!)

The tunnels are extremely narrow and short; the VietCong of those days were a fair bit shorter and skinnier than our modern (fat!) bodies so us going inside required squatting and crawling. It really is amazing that it was built by hand and contained so many people.

When inside, the guide asked if we wanted to do 30, 50, or 100 metres; Pat and I thought we would be macho and said “we’ll do 100!”…. lets just say, at the first junction when the guide said “this is 30 metres”, we jumped out quick smart! we were exhausted!

At the tunnels we also got to try Tapioca root, one of the foods they ate at the time.

The final two stops for the day trip was a multi denominational temple (sorry, I wasn’t paying attention this time so can’t provide any more infomation). We also stopped by at a village where we had a home cooked meal at someone’s home; the food was delicious

The tree in the 8th image is part of a rubber tree plantation. The trees are planted in a line and grooves cut into the trunk. The rubber flows down the grooves and goes into the dish at the bottom.

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