Good Mornin' Vietnaaaaaaaaam!

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Hello all,

Well we finally forced ourselves to leave beach living behind and set off to another country - Vietnam! We were looking forward to exploring a new country and I was très excited to catch up with my frieeeeeeeend from home Kate, who's been living out here for the past six months.

Another long bus journey later and a hairy moment at the border (rewind to Vietnam embassy incident!) we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City and were so happeeeee to see a friendly face from home!! Over the next couple of days we would be staying in Kate’s very swanky apartment and lapping up such delights as nutella, pizza, pasta, irn-bru, chocolate éclairs from the bakers and lots more! We were loving the home comforts of this little expat community, I even got a tad over excited when I spotted bottles of HP sauce and Hellmans mayo - easily pleased??!

Whilst in HCMC we visited Benh Than market which was the biggest local market we had been to yet and what was on offer here was a stark contrast to all the treats we had just been indulging in. The food market sold every piece of meat, fruit and veg imaginable - the pigs ears, snout, trotters and brain looked particularly tasty! Our already dickie tummies could no longer take the look or smell of some of the markets produce so we decided to take a gander around the city instead. The traffic here is mental oriental - hundreds of scooters swarm around the busy streets. Kate had given us some useful tips when crossing roads - walk slowly, eyeball the driver and don't make any sudden moves!

As Kate was our very own HCMC guide she recommended we go for some traditional Vietnamese cuisine whilst in the city - we were slightly dubious as to what this might be after what we had seen at the market. However we were taken to a great open air restaurant which was bustling with locals, where each table had a sizzling bbq in the middle so that we could cook our own food. There was the option to frazzle some live prawns on the bbq but we decided to give that a miss (we didn't have the heart) in favour of some deer, beef and already brown breed prawns - deeeeeeelicious! Kate then introduced us to Fanny's ice cream parlour - which had every type of ice cream you could imagine, still not a patch on Luca's though.

This has been a very food orientated blog!! We had a fab few days staying in the Nam, catching up with Miss Healy and eating ourselves into oblivion! Next stop - Hoi An.

Lots of Love x x x

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Photos

Yum!
Jamesy reeeeally enjoying the bbq!