Mekong Delta to HCMC

Breakfast at the homestay...

Vietnamese coffee.

French bread, fruit, and a funny little tube of some kind of processed meat spread (the red tube on the small dish right below the bread).

Checking out some local markets:

Many different kinds of rice.

Rice candies/snacks.

Fruit!

Fish!

Vegetables!

Dragonfruit + unknown melon.

Meat! (note: no refrigeration!)

Coconut juice!

Before hopping back in our van, we spotted a bahn mi cart, so we had to grab a couple of sandwiches.

We also briefly visited a monastary.

Monks' lunch settings.

Then we went to a pretty fancy restaurant for lunch.

Lots of broken necks. (You gotta do that if you wanna eat meat!)

Giant fried glutenous rice balls (note the three or four of 'em at the right in the photo). These are similar to the red-bean-filled sesame balls that you can get at dim sum restaurants, but these are hollow and not sesame seed coated.

Fresh squeezed pineapple juice.

Lotus salad and rice chips.

The glutenous rice balls.

Something fried.

Another elephant ear fish.

Vietnamese spring roll. Filled with noodles, shrimp, herbs, and maybe pork. Dip it in fish sauce.

Fresh-squeezed watermelon juice.

I don't remember.

Fried bananas.

We wandered around HCMC a bit that afternoon and stopped at an ice cream place.

Unknown brown drink for me, and lime soda for sue (you just squeeze limes into the glass, dump in some sugar, pour in the soda water, and stir).

Vanilla ice cream with unnecessary decoration.

I think by this point our guide was finally starting to figure out that we were fairly adventurous eaters, and so he took us to an outdoor joint (bunch of tables covered with tents), although this was still in a touristy part of town so it probably wasn't too wild.

Marinated beef for grilling.

Morning glory.

Shrimp and lotus salad.

Unknown drinks. I think the one of the left is some form of ice coffee with condensed milk.

Very herby soup.

Shrimp chips.

Tamarind crab. This was my favorite dish of the evening, as I had never had crab in this type of sauce before. Definitely a new flavor experience.

More soup (with noodles this time, I think).

HCMC to the Mekong Delta

Breakfast was just from the hotel.

Very good French bread (the French did occupy Vietnam for a while before the Americans showed up), unknown cold cuts, and fruit.

In the Mekong Delta, we visited a candy making shop.

Bits of coconut candy. Somewhat like toffee in texture. Tasty!

Puffed rice snacks.

Lunch!

Elephant Ear Fish (left) and prawns (right).

Snake meat! Apparently this dish is an entire snake's worth of meat.

Some kind of spring roll.

Meat stir-fried/sauteed with unknown greens.

Noodle soup.

Stuffed flowers. I think it's flowers of the zucchini plant, but I'm not 100% sure.

Yet another fish (this is in addition to the previous Elephant Ear Fish!!!).

Rambutan, mini-bananas, and pineapple for dessert.

Giant jackfruit.

More rambutan and some unknown green fruit. The unknown fruit is sort of lychee/longan-like in that you peel off the shell and the fruit has a sweet, white-colored flesh with a pit.

Snake liquor!

Me next to the jar of the snakey booze.

We went biking and stopped at a road-side fruit stand to buy some durian. For those of you unfamiliar with the so-called "King of Fruits," it has a *very* strong smell. So strong that the fruit is banned from hotels, the Singapore subway system, and has even caused a security alert on an Australian airplane flight. Many people do not like it. I didn't like it the first time I tried it many years ago, but it's grown on me since. Sue has liked it since she first tried it.

Cutting open the fruit.

Bon appetit!

That night, we stayed with a family that does home stays (basically they cook you dinner and you get to hang out at their place... although their place is pretty big and is equipped to handle a decent number of visiting tourists).

Their kitchen.

And again.

The mother blowing into a pipe to stoke the fire.

Fish grilling in the background. Not sure what's on the fire up front.

The daughters helping out in the kitchen (battering and frying stuffed zucchini flowers I think).

Some kind of grilled meat, french fries, and the stuffed flowers.

The previously seen grilled fish (top), morning glory (a kind of veggie, also known as kong xing cai\ or "empty heart vegetable" in Chinese), noodles (bottom), and the same stuffed flowers from before (bottom left).

Soup (top right), pineapple and rambutan (top left), and some kind of meat (don't remember).