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Published: February 12th 2015
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As with the preparation of any egg it is all about timing. The Vietnamese know. Once the fertilised duck egg is laid it is ready for eating in 15 days. If you leave it 30 the duckling will hatch.
The eggs are served hot and hard boiled. Our hosts on the Saigon food tour explained how to eat it. You crack off the top at the pointy end like you do with a chicken egg. You drink the fluid inside which really did not taste of much. A weak soup? You spoon out the yoke to dip in fish sauce. It is smoother than a chicken yolk and better tasting in my opinion (you should know that I have never really liked hard boiled chicken eggs). Next comes the embryo, a bit grey but tasty enough and I suspect very nutritious. At the bottom is a small white lump. The old egg white? Whatever, it is like eating a lump of plastic. Our guides laughed. The Vietnamese do not traditionally eat that bit!
Our culinary adventures had actually started the day before. We had arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by Southerners,
and had no trouble finding Liem's house, an AirBnB place away from the tourist ghetto around Pham Ngu Lao. It was in a middle class neighbourhood and with apartments cheek by jowl it gave us some impression of how locals lived.
The next day we picked up Catherine and Rene, who are travel with us over the next two weeks, from the airport. We went straight into exploring and site-seeing. The Green Dragon Pagoda gave us our first incense laden impression of a Taoist temple and it many deities and attendants. The Imperial Palace, a museum since the South lost to North, was a surprisingly atmospheric piece of 1960's architecture steeped in history.
In the War Remnants Museum I was not disappointed by the Requiem Exhibition put together by the photojournalist veteran Tim Page amongst others. It feature photos and background information from all the known photographers who had died in action on both sides of the American Vietnam conflict. In some cases it included the last photo the photographer took before they lost their life. It seemed to make each image more real.
Catherine was totally exhausted so it was
left to Jane, Rene and I to find a restaurant that evening. After various plans we ended up in one just down the road in our neighbourhood called the 'Ech Xanh'. It was full of locals, which is always a good sign and did not look too posh. It soon became apparent that 'Ech' in Vietnamese means frog and that the only meat on the menu was Ech. (We learnt later through Google Translate that 'Xanh' means green.) There was the odd seafood dish but the waitress told us they 'would take too long to cook'! So Jane ducked and stuck to vegetables and rice. Rene and I tucked into 'frog in bamboo' and 'frog hotpot with rice porridge'. The porridge was very bland on its own and became like a thick soup when you added the frog hotpot and its sweetish soy flavoured sauce. It was all very good and we cleared our plates. I have to admit we did decline the challenge of 'fried frog skin' and 'fried frog stomach'. After that we were ready for anything.
The next day we had a long drive to the Cu Chi war tunnels. These were tourist infested
and a bit contrived. The most interesting part was when I asked the guide, as tactly as I could, "how old he was in 1975", when the American war had ended.
He replied, "25" and proceeded to show us holes in his neck he received from a helicopter ambush when "working for the Americans".
That evening we were booked on the 'back of the bike' food tour (http://backofthebiketours.com/saigon-street-food-tours-vietnam/) of which the duck embryo was a highlight. It wasn't cheap, especially by Vietnamese standards and it was excellent fun and quite distinct from other food tours we have done which have all been on foot. We were met by our drivers by our apartment. They were three college girls and Thi, a thirty five year old who was needed to manage a big guy like me on the back of the bike. We whizzed around Saigon from place to place. We could talk to the drivers as the traffic dashed in all directions in front of us. One thing we learnt was that there are 9 million people in Saigon and 7 million motorbikes. New cars are taxed 150% and there is no second hand market.
At one street stall we took it in turns to make filled pancakes and then learnt how to eat them wrapped in rice paper with herbs and dipped in fish sauce. There was a can of beer at each stop to help create the party atmosphere. If it was not quiet finished you took it with you and, in the case of Rene and I, passed it around as you were driven down the street.
At each stop our guides sat opposite us which gave us a chance to talk. Thi had been married for eight years and had a daughter of five. He had grown up in the Mekong delta and was the only one of his family to settle in the big city. Bizarrely he pointed out a 'love hotel' and ladies looking for business. He was very helpful in sorting out what we had to do to catch a bus the next day to Vinh Long on the Mekong delta. The young students mentioned other things: one said they had sayings in Saigon "no motorbike, no girlfriend' and 'no money, no honey'! They seem all good students with one hoping to do
a Masters in the Netherlands.
In the Mekong delta unsurprisingly you are surrounded by water. Most roads, tracks and house plots have a canal of some sort on one of their edges. We had a nice homestay cum guesthouse where we could borrow bikes and arrange boats to see the area. Dinners were fish and chicken. The latter were everywhere and many cocks looked like they were bred for fighting. The star food was a grilled 'Elephant Ear fish'. They are farmed along the edges of the major tributaries. They are traditionally served upright, like toast in a rack. You then push the cooked flesh off with chopsticks and a fork. The fish are large and there is plenty to eat. As is often the case the fish is wrapped in rice paper with greens and cucumber before dipping it in fish sauce.
Our last stop in Vietnam was Ha Tien on the South coast only 7km from the Cambodian border. It turned out to be a pleasant town although many streets were being dug up as they were putting the electric cables underground. We found a pleasant hotel, Hai Phoung, the Lonely Planet
recommendation. Its views have clearly been diminished by new builds.
Next to the covered market was an open space with many cafe stalls selling seafood. They basically had the fresh seafood on display and you picked what you wanted. This was cooked on small grills by each stall. There were small crayfish, crab legs, squid and, it looked like, every mollusc under the sun. Rene and I made the simple choice: we ordered two of everything. The clams and mussels came grilled with a topping of peanuts and spring onion and were particularly delicious. As a starter Rene and I shared one of the flat dried squids we had seen on market stall. You could rip it apart cross ways and it tasted like squid 'jerky' and far better than I ever expected.
We found a cake stand for dessert and the best thing they sold was a meat dumpling with a slight sweet flavour and what looked like quail eggs inside. It was a great way to finish our culinary tour of South Vietnam.
The next day we cross into Cambodia without issue. We will have to see if they
Grilled elephant ear fish in the rack
The steamed version is in the foreground can match the high standards of Vietnamese cuisine. I hear you can get barbecued rat in Siem Reap!
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