Special edition: Sleepless nights in Bangkok (Part One)

Bangkok. Bangkok. Bangkok!
One of the most popular destinations for tourists from around the world! A flight from HCMC to BKK lasts for one hour and 10', but we may stuck at the Thai immigration for more than an hour, then the taxi ride from the airport to downtown (either Silom or Sukhumvit) - another hour or even more due to the traffic jam! But people keep coming to this very easy going city...
I used to go to BKK, very often! Some times for business, sometime for pleasures...but over the past several years, only once a year for my personal medical check-up.
Some of my friends didn't like Bangkok, they have their own judgments: either dirty, messy, commercial...but to me I realized Bangkok is very smelly! It's not a negative comment as this smell is quite unique, and only few cities have the smell...Singapore also has a special smell and surely Saigon has something!

           Famous Patpong with karaoke clubs, massage parlours...a sin in the eyes of God! 

The smell from Bangkok is indescribable, it's like a combination of many different smells, flavors: from the massage oil, to the fried chicken, grilled fish, spicy salad on the street, from the strong perfume of those nicely dressed ladies, standing in Patpong, keep saying some Japanese words...to the stinky dark water canals around the city! Bangkok really has many things that we may not find in another cities in Asia: the land full of smiles and smells!

          Fish cake wrapped in banana leaves, grilled on fire, together with rice - a luncheon for Thais! 

Cambodian dessert soup in Saigon

Some time ago, even before my trip to Siem Reap, I heard about the Cambodian market in Sài Gòn, where you can buy different specialities of our neighboring country, or to taste some special Cambodian dishes. And it's not far from my area - Lê Hồng Phong market! To be honest I have no idea where is this market until I realized it's so close to the popular wholesale flower market Hồ Thị Kỷ!
We went there after the sticky rice at Xôi Gà No 1, we were full so decided to go for only sweets! Actually there is quite small selection in this food market. I don't know how many but the most popular for students could be the stall selling Cambodian dessert soup!

             The owner is so nice, she helped me to set up a nice bowl for my photo shooting! 

            The Cambodian dessert soup has quite interesting ingredients: from steamed pumpkin to ...

Million USD business with sticky rice in Vietnam!

Sticky rice is so popular in Vietnam, I have a post about this famous dish and it has been selected by many websites as one of the best dishes from Vietnam!
Sticky rice can go with Chinese sausage, with braised intestines (phá lấu). with roasted chicken...and today I tried for the first time : my sticky rice is served with chicken's internal organs: from liver, gizzard, to the young eggs!

I actually prefer sticky rice simply with chicken, it should be good enough, but when I heard from the waiter "You want to order chicken's internal?". I was curious and said "Yes". And here we go a small plate of sticky rice and with ...what you see in the photo!

I don't want to say it's not good but it's probably too much for a tiny plate of sticky rice! The young eggs are always good but to me, they are just ok here. The liver, the gizzard could be not a good choice to go with sticky rice due to its texture! And it costs 35,000 VND!

Maybe someone like it, so here you go "Xôi gà No 1" (Sticky rice with chicken No 1) on 21 Nguyễn Trung Trực street! They used to have only one small stall but now it's expanded into the next two houses...so the news about the Sticky rice Yến in Hà Nội (Xôi Yến at 35B Nguyễn Hữu Huân, Hà Nội) should be true: 60 millions VND (equal to 3,000 USD) as their daily sale, and 1,8 billion VND (equal to 85,000 USD!) per month! It means more than one million USD per year!
Talking about these figures, I suddenly remember an old lady, a street vendor, selling her famous corn sticky rice on Lê Thánh Tôn street (Sài Gòn) for 50 years . Good but expensive, 20,000 VND for a corn sticky rice, smaller than my fist! She has 11 children and all of them have not less than one house!

Can you imagine? Selling a simple good street food in Vietnam, that could bring you a big money and blossom into a huge wealth! Let's open the shop and sell sticky rice in Vietnam! 

Moon cake (bánh Trung Thu) is no longer a cake!

The moon cake festival or the mid-autumn festival (Trung Thu) is not far away!
The moon cake isn't a street cake as it's expensive and probably not affordable for many people (but only long before the festival, few days before or right after, buy one get one free!)
Some moon cakes can be covered with gold dust (!) or filled with "the best (ingredients) from the mountain, the best from the sea"as we call "sơn hào hải vị" in Vietnamese!

             Snow skin moon cake (or sticky moon cake) filled with lotus seeds

I'd like to share it here because these days, walking around the city we can see everywhere a plenty of big street stalls, in red or yellow color, selling different kinds of moon cakes in Saigon!

          Two most popular brands of moon cake: Kinh Đô and Đồng Khánh stalls in Nguyễn Trãi street 

          and another ones in Chinatown!  

In the past or even now the moon cake (bánh Trung Thu) is always a sweet dream for many kids in Vietnam! Remember, how much we desired to have a moon cake in a pig's shape together with mid-autumn lantern (lồng đèn) and small, as toys, colorful exotic animals (con giống) made from flour.

Golden apple (cóc vàng)

I wish it's a real gold so one kilo can cost over 50, 000 USD!
Just kidding, it's simply a golden fruit with very attractive color of a real street fruit which is in season these days! So many street carts selling these golden apples, in Vietnamese we call "cóc vàng"!

          Golden apples (ambarella) or cóc vàng in Vietnamese!

            Many street cart selling golden apples. The box on top with ready-to-eat fruit!

Golden because it's ripen, when it's not ripe it's simply green!
And we also can enjoy a green apple as a healthy snack that many teens, adult fall in love, especially when it dips with either salt & chili or shrimp paste!

To be honest I can't remember since when I tried cóc vàng for the first time! I got a feeling that I never saw this fruit before 1975! It seemed we didn't sell cóc vàng on the streets! Or maybe I'm wrong! I was just a little boy at that time! 

            One kilo of golden apples is about 30,000 VND (1,5 USD!) 

Golden apple or ambarella has a nice sour sweet taste, very juicy but crunchy when it's still green or even ripen but not too ripen! While eating either golden or green ambarella, the only thing I hate is the big ugly seed in the center! It could be one of the strangest seeds that exits in the world of fruits!
I quite like the nice flavor of golden apple. It's more sweet than sour (if we are lucky to get the good ones, as some time it could be more sour!), the sweet taste is not that strong or too sweet, something light!

              Juicy golden apples (cóc vàng)  

In some coffee shops we may order freshly fruit juice of golden apple, but mostly green apple (cóc xanh), golden apples are very rich with vitamin C, so it would be a heathy juice!
Many people say "eat cóc, get ride of cold!". So please try it when you feel not good!