Fantastic Banh Mi in Nha Trang, Vietnam / My 100th Blog Post!

Welcome to my 100th blog post!!!For my 100th blog post, I'm going to hold a contest. Details at the bottom of the page.

Note: You can click on each image to see a larger version full size
Marya is a serious beach fanatic, so when we were in Saigon, we decided to take a train up the coast to the beach town of Nha Trang.

The slow trains there made for a long trip, and I was getting quite peckish. A woman pushing a food trolley came down the aisle, and I figured there'd be no chance of being able to eat anything on it. As well, knowing only a few words of Vietnamese, none of which would be helpful in this situation, I was quite intimidated to even ask for the food and how much it would cost. I ended up summoning the courage, and with some pointing and other hand gestures, plus a lot of patience on the part of the food trolley lady, I managed to procure a tasty snack, shown below:
Sauteed morning glory, tofu, and rice with a squirt of soy sauce.

Once in Nha Trang, we ended up at the "Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" staff pick for best hotel in the area: Pho Bien. We were not disappointed.
As you can see from this picture, the hotel lobby is also an internet cafe and scooter parking lot.

I'll say we really lucked out at this place. We got the best room in the hotel: on the top floor with a lovely patio and amazing view, for something in the area of $12/night. Plus, if you have them do your laundry, they'll conveniently dry it right there on your railing, 6 stories up.

The next morning, when we were headed out, we spoke briefly with the manager of the place, and noticed she was eating a banh mi sandwich. She must have sensed we were eyeing her food, and suggested we patronize the little food cart where she got hers. "We couldn't", we said. "We don't eat meat." She informed us that the cart was all vegetarian.
"I don't know", I thought, "that sandwich seemed awfully meat heavy."
The manager pointed in the direction of the cart, and we set out to find it.

Here' a map of where the hotel is and where we found the cart.

I'll say, we were skeptical up until the point we got to the cart and saw the words "Chay" and "Vegetarian" stenciled on the thing. I almost cried.

Banh mi refers to the bread itself, but has come to be known as a Vietnamese sandwich served on baguette, typically with a few different slices of meat, tomato, basil, cilantro, cucumber, pickled vegetables, hot pepper sauce, and vinegar.
These sandwiches had all that, but were vegan.

For the few days we spent in Nha Trang, it became our daily ritual. For lunch we would get a few banh mis, get some beer, and head to our roof to enjoy the view with the meal.Over those few days we came to know the cart owner Thuy well, despite not being able to speak a common language. So thrilled were we with this discovery, we always tipped 100%. This was no big deal for us, of course. Each sandwich was 10,000 Vietnamese Dong, or $0.50US.

I was quite the happy boy. This was among the best food experiences of the trip. Though it's not all that uncommon in this part of the world, seeing someone taking a chance and selling vegetarian street food like that somehow gave me hope for the world.

This was the light fixture above the bed in our hotel. Anyone know what this is supposed to be?Most accurate, or at least the most creative answer will win a recipe book! Post your comments below!
The most obvious answer: "It's a light fixture, duh." will not be accepted.Contest ends April 5th!!!

Saigon: This time fake meat goes too far

A Visit to Restaurants Ngoc Tho and Thien Duyen Ben Thahn
Here's a map showing where both restaurants are.

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Ever since my girlfriend Marya and I became vegan, we've been serious food tourists. In every new city we go to, we want to experience all the lovely food available. Site seeing has become something to be done to kill time between meals. And when we're not site seeing, we're probably at a pub, drinking gallons of local beer while filling out post cards.
This was easy to do in Saigon, where vegan options were cheap and seemingly endless. Beer too was cheap and came in wondrously large bottles.

A few hours after eating at An Lac Chay, we were ready for some more local cuisine. We ended up at Ngoc Tho, just down the street from An Lac.
I didn't snap a picture of the front of the place, but here's one from a user at Happy Cow: Click! Note that they rent motorbikes (I don't recommend this).

Of course, the entire time we were in Saigon I'd gravitate towards pho. Though everyone generally makes the traditional beef broth for pho the same way, it's the Wild West when it comes to vegetarian pho broth, so it can differ quite a bit from place to place. I liked the pho here at Ngoc Tho, but the pho at An Lac Chay was my first love.

As an appetizer, we got these awesome satay chicken wings.

Marya got as her entree this seafood hotpot. We were a bit shocked at the size of the thing.
It came with all sorts of veggies, vegan shrimp, and...
Seriously...
Vegan squid. I can't begin to describe how hard it was to eat this thing. It took over 10 minutes to psych myself up for it.
Look at this thing. It was like eating a mini gummy Cthulhu. It was creepy. It even had a little red dot inside its head, as if to say "here's the brain in this otherwise translucent creature." Ick.

We were stuffed by the end of the meal, and were embarrassed to not be able to finish everything.

The tally:
Chicken Wings Satay:   35,000D
Seafood Hotpot:     75,000D
Pho:             25,000D
____________________________
      =  135,000D (US$6.75)
(doesn't include beer, and anyhow I lost count of how many we had)


Funny thing with the exchange rate: we were, for a few brief days, millionaires.It was odd pulling two million or more Dong from a cash machine.

The next day we went to Thien Duyen Ben Thahn for lunch.It's a few blocks up Pham Ngu Lao from Ngoc Tho, located at 159 Calmette Street (see map)

Once again: Pho!They made gratuitous use of the TVP slices both to simulate sliced eye round in my pho and for Marya's sauteed beef with mushroom dish.

We shared this roaster chicken with dumplings.If you're from the deep south in the US, this isn't your grandmother's "chicken -n- dumplins".

Here's a closer look at the roaster chicken, slathered in some sort of barbeque sauce.Sometimes they make it a little too realistic. Our Lonely Planet guidebook did say we'd find mock meat of the "I can't believe it's not meat" variety here in Saigon.

The damage:
Roaster Chicken with Dumplings:  40,000D
Sauteed Beef with Mushroom:   40,000D
Beef Pho:       25,000
____________________________
      =  105,000D (US$5.25)
(doesn't include beer, which is priceless)

Among the things we did to kill time was visit the Reunification Palace.
Built in 1966 as South Vietnam's Presidential Palace, taken over by the North Vietnamese on April 30th, 1975 when the tanks burst through the gates, signaling the end of the Vietnam War. The place inside was left just as it was in 1975, with cryptography, map, and typing pool rooms. Even the kitchen has the original equipment in it.
And here are the original tanks that pushed their way into the compound.

Unphogettable: Pho in Saigon

Note: You can click on each image to see it full size


Pho is like crack, only tastier, and everyone who's ever heard of it either has a personal story to tell of their own addiction, or witnessed a loved one going through it. At the height of my addiction, I was eating two to three bowls a week. Then, two things happened: I moved away from easy access to pho, and became vegetarian (eventually to turn vegan). Though options for omnivorous pho are now popping up around me all the time, the vegetarian pho always seems like an afterthought in local pho houses as they're so lacking (there are some exceptions, which I'll write about soon).

So when planning our trip to Southeast Asia, among things I was most excited about was getting some pho at a purely vegetarian restaurant in Vietnam. So naturally, I was a kid in a candy store from the moment we stepped off the bus in Saigon. We weren't hurting for vegan options there. We didn't visit the place in the picture above, but I loved the message.

The first place we went was An Lac Chay in the Pham Ngu Lao area, District 1. We ended up making a second trip here. It's located near a huge cluster of inexpensive guest houses, and up the street from the bus stop where we were left off from our trip from Phnom Penh.

Here's a map showing roughly where it is. The address is 175/1 Pham Ngu Lao St (not actually on the main road), located just above Margherita, an Italian/Mexican place. Once you've found it, walk into Margherita and walk up the steps on the left.

We started with the pork skin rice paper rolls at 12,000 Dong ($0.60):
It came with way too many dip options.
And then, the moment I'd been waiting for, the pho:
It was amazing. Unlike most pho places I've been to in the US, this dish came with several kinds of fake meat. The broth was just what I'd hoped it'd be. A dream come true for 25,000 Dong ($1.25), plus the price of a plane ticket to the far side of the planet and 9 bus rides.
At 30,000 Dong, Marya splurged and got the stewed Chinese mushrooms:
A lovely mixture of mushrooms served in a clay pot with a side of rice.

On our second trip, of course, I got more pho (not pictured). We also got this pork rib dish as an appetizer, though it's intended to be an entree:
It was good, but just a tiny bit gummy.
Marya got this Lotus Salad (with fake ham):


The area where we stayed in Saigon had many cavernous and winding alleys that seemed straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. We had fun exploring them. Adding to the adventure is that motos are always speeding through them. Here is one of my favorite alley pics I took when we were trying to navigate back to our guest house:

These trash cans were everywhere, in our guest house, our travel agent, and in many of the restaurants and bars: On each can was a different picture of a physical activity. I'm just in awe of the wonderment. Happiness to Everyone!!!