One of the harsh realities of travel is that places change and quite often it's not for the best, at least not for us.
We were in Saigon two and a half years ago and whilst we were only staying 100 meters from one of the city's main attractions - Ben Thanh Market - we were still able to find a cheap beer in a dingy dive bar and an even cheaper soup close by. However unfortunately for us (but fortunately for the polo/loafer types) that dive bar now has a sign, a menu in English, staff wearing uniforms and it's now normal for foreigners to stop and eat there whereas before we got looks of check out those guys, they're out there!
Those tiny centers of sanitation that previously existed have now expanded and connected and the centre is now clean enough for the people that thought it was too grimy before and not dirty enough for the people who once loved it for what is was.
Our first 24 hours was spent revisiting some old favourites from last time around:
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| Banh Xeo |
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| The Lunch Lady |
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| Duck Congee |
It was at that point that we realised that maybe we'd changed a bit too and would have to push outside of what we knew and loved from last time.
In amongst the following little beauties we also accumulated a couple of good food related anecdotes.
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| Goi Du Du |
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| Banh Beo |
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| Banh Da Xuc Hen |
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| Bun Bo Hue |
Our Christmas lunch of half a suckling pig and some pumpkin flowers cooked in a veggie patch full of garlic also included a plate of conical shelled snails served in a coconut and lemongrass sauce.
We spent the first half of the plate trying to work out which end to suck the snails from and then when we'd finally worked that out, spent the next half trying to get over the trail of stringy snail slime that pulled out of the shell like melted cheese on pizza. Mmmm, yum yum....
We searched far and wide for deep fried Elephant Ear Fish with rice paper rolls in Chau Doc only to receive strange looks and laughs. We'd even downloaded a photo to our phone and were marching in between restaurants pointing to it maybe just a bit too exuberantly. We finally found it in Saigon and would've been pleased enough with the dish but this was dinner and a show.
Our waitress took it upon herself to individually create and wrap each roll for us until it got to a point where it was just plain uncomfortable but then took great pleasure in ripping the head off the fish and placing it in the empty Saigon Export vase. Home decorators take note. Not only does it look great but it keeps the house smelling fresh and fishy.
And having spoken about it for far too long, after a couple of beers I determined it was time to have Hot Vin Lon - the semi developed duck foetus that is so highly prized in this part of the world. We sat down and I ordered through Nicola trying to say, "You just get one and I'll have a little bit". Wrong. Nice try but we're in this together.
It wasn't really that weird to be honest. You break a small hole in the top and suck out the eggy broth, break away some more of the shell and eat the yolk (which consumes most of the space within the shell) and then nibble on your tiny duck foetus - the minuscule rubbery breast and crunchy skull remind you of what you're eating. We've worked out that next time we need to have older Hot Vit Lon as there wasn't enough foetus about our duck foetus. Job half done.
Other highlights were the banging Christmas Eve party that that our hotel put on.
Heading back to our first beer stop in Saigon from last time - the opulent Rex Hotel - and aside from realising that it had also changed for the worse we had to pay about $22 for two beers. That's half our daily budget and approximately 1000% on what you pay in a restaurant down at pleb level. But it was all worth it for the photo.
My Christmas miracle - watching a pair of Hornbills fly past our window. I've spent almost a week in the jungle since we hit SE Asia and seen four Hornbills total flying in the distance. I shouldn't have bothered. I should've just looked out my window in f*cking Saigon and watch them fly right through the dead centre of the city.
And stopping for beers as the rain bucketed down.
The lowlight of Saigon was the War Remnants Museum. Aside from dealing with the masses making comments such as this, "Don't bother reading anything hunny, just look at the pictures." - because sh*t, you wouldn't want to learn anything would you - the museum is a lesson in the lengths people will go to to get what they want. The stories that were fabricated to brainwash the world and the methods that were used to force the desired outcome left us both, literally, speechless.
The Vietnamese sometimes get a bad rap with some people saying that they're too hard and all they want to do is juice you for every cent you're worth. Spend a few minutes surveying the photos of the innocent victims whose lives have been ruined by Agent Orange and Napalm and you'll soon reach the conclusion that the Vietnamese people could be the biggest arseh*oles on the planet and they'd have just reason to be so.
And that was Saigon. A mixture of disappointment, new finds, great noms, too many techno Christmas tunes and sadness.
