Hong Kong to HCMC

Early morning trip to the airport to catch a flight to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, a.k.a. Saigon).

Veggie ramen from Ajisen Ramen in the airport.

Airplane food: Uninspired noodles, bun, and "dim sum"-ish items.

Lunch in HCMC:

shrimp and meat lotus salad.

spring rolls.

crispy fried squid.

steamed shrimp in coconut.

fried rice in clay pot.

Dieu Hong (missing a whole bunch of accent marks on the Vietnamese...): fish head hot pot. That's obviously the fish head above.

The soup for the fish head hot pot. Very herb heavy.

The fully assembled Dieu Hong.

Tea.

Fruit for dessert. The funny white things with the polka dots are pieces of dragon fruit.

On to dinner...

Soup: thick and starchy, with egg and seafood.

Seafood salad: greens, octopus, and shrimp chips on the side (light yellow things in the background).

Clams in herbs (kinda bitter).

Ribs of some miscellaneous animal. Lamb or pork?

Fried rice in pineapple.

Way too many shrimp skewers.

Fruit, but with some wacky salt sprinkles stuff on the side.

Hong Kong

In the morning, we went to go check out the flower and bird markets. Near there, we grabbed some breakfast at a street-side bakery.

The goods.

Egg tart. You can see that this is not browned like the Portuguese version.

Some other buns... don't remember what kind. Breakfast was complemented with soy milk.

Durians!

Another snack break. Mango dumpling (mochi), aloe jelly with honeydew for Gabe (left) and aloe jelly with watermelon for Sue (right).

We found another market, which, despite being called a "Street Market" on their sign, was actually indoors. I liked the simple pictogram-based directory.

Fish. Sea cucumbers in the foreground.

Tub of eels.

More fish.

Butchers. The floor in this section was pretty slippery as the tiles were coated with a thin layer of animal fat.

Fresh chickens.

Various meatballs for your soup's delight.

Yet another HK snack: bird's nest (imitation of course, real bird's nest is horribly expensive) with mango and coconut ice creams. We also had mango pudding with mango, and sweet chrysanthemum tea, but no pictures of that for some reason.

Would you believe it? More HK snacks! red bean and sago (left) and dessert tofu (do\ fu~ hua) with mung bean. This was actually a pre-dinner dessert. We went to a really good sushi restaurant for dinner (which meant it was really popular, and therefore really crowded... we waited about 45 minutes and we got there at 5:30pm! hence the dessert to kill time while we waited for them to call our number).

Squid nigiri (left), scallop nigiri (right).

Tempura shrimp roll.

Roasted salmon nigiri.

Yellowtail nigiri (I think).

The craziest unagi nigiri I've ever seen! It's basically an entire unagi (eel), and the funny thing is that despite the size, they still have a chunk of sushi rice in the middle that's sized as it you were going to stick a normal portion of fish on top of it. Silly! (but darned tasty.)

Yellowtail gunkan-zushi ("battleship" sushi).

Assorted hand rolls. Clockwise from the left: soft-shell crab, uni (sea urchin roe), yellowtail, toro (fatty tuna).

Jumbo scallop nigiri.

"Roasted fish dorsal" nigiri. Not sure what species this is. Very tender.

Assorted nigiri. Left to right: amaebi (sweet/raw shrimp), saba (mackerel), japanese flounder, jack mackerel and salty saury (the last two might be backwards... I don't remember anymore).

And then for "dessert", authentic HK-style rice porridge (congee). The one of the left is "fisherman's congee" (assorted seafoods) and the one on the right is pork meat with preserved eggs (so-called "thousand year old eggs"). Uncle Paul explained that true, authentic HK-style congee is cooked for a *very* long time so that the rice breaks down a lot, and the congee really soaks up the flavors. It was quite tasty.

HK/Macau/HK

This morning we got up early to head to the ferry terminal to head to Macau.

On our way, we stopped by a bakery and got a Char Siu Bun (BBQ pork bun, on left for Gabe) and a "Milk Bun" (on right for Sue).

When we got to Macau, I got a popsicle. This was probably one of the worst popsicles I had the whole trip, and that includes the corn popsicles!

Chinese pork jerky! Yum! I got a couple of pieces of "piglet jerky." I guess Winnie-the-Pooh would be sad...

Portuguese egg tart. Very delicious. The top was browned, which is a little different (but nice) from the egg tarts I normally have.

Passion fruit slushie for Sue (left) and Green Mango slushie for Gabe (right).

For lunch, we just stopped in a random restaurant where my poor Mandarin was tested again. I got this oxtail stew in black pepper sauce which was quite good.

Sue got this "pork cutlet in Portuguese style" sandwich.

We saw some more snack shops while wandering around after lunch.

Lots of sweets and pastries.

Sue got this fried pastry, which was actually filled with curried vegetables.

I got this strange snack made of coconut and some jello-like material. It was actually pretty good.

Another drink break. Mandarin lemon tea for Sue (left) and "Mango Bungie Jump" for me (right), which just turned out to be mango juice with kiwi fruit.

For dinner, we went to a Portuguese restaurant that Uncle Paul recommended. No one knew where it was, so we wandered around for a little bit. We finally just hopped in a cab, which didn't drive too far to get us there. We could have walked had we known where we were going.

Potato soup for Sue.

Pitcher of Sangria for both of us.

Garoup (a kind of fish) "stewed in Portuguese style" (apparently not the same "Portuguese style" as Sue's pork cutlet from lunch). This was perhaps the tastiest dish of dinner.

Mussels with garlic. Yes, all of that light-colored stuff on top is indeed garlic.

Baked Portuguese duck rice. Good flavor, but a little dry.

Biscuit pudding for Sue (left) and egg pudding for Gabe (right) which was quite similar to flan.

After that, we hopped back on the ferry to HK. When we got there, we went out for dessert again!

Mango juice for Sue and kiwi with grass jelly, also for Sue.

Strawberry with sago for Gabe.

Mixed fruit with durian ice cream for Sue.

Ice cream dumpling (mochi) in black sesame shaved ice for Gabe.

Hot almond soup with lotus seeds for Gabe. The people in the dessert shop must have thought we were crazy for ordering so many things. Well, we are!