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! 

Glass noodles with duck (miến vịt)

Glass noodles with duck is another quite popular street food compared to the other glass noodles dishes.
I already shared with your guys about famous glass noodles with chicken in Ky Dong street, I did promise to post some other dishes with glass noodles ...but it took me almost half year to do that! Very sorry!

              Just wonder how many ducks are the victims per day! 

This glass noodles (or we call miến in Vietnamese) stall is in Nguyen Thien Thuat street, I passed by several times and keep talking to myself "let's go there some day"...but only now I have a chance to taste it!

              Glass noodles with duck (miến vịt), bamboo shot, blood cube...

 I ordered a bowl of glass noodles with a plate of duck's salad but here they still serve rice noodles with duck (bún măng vịt) or duck porridge (cháo vịt)!

          Salad (gỏi) with duck's internal organs liver, gizzard (mề), heart and intestine...

           Glass noodles or cellophane noodles are typically popular in North! 

Glass noodles or cellophane noodles is a typical dish from North, we can find more dishes with this kind of noodles in Hà Nội than in South!

         The duck's legs and duck's internal organs! 

Here, they serve quite good miến vịt, but the duck meat ifself to me is just ok, not special! The fish sauce with ginger is slightly too sweet, but the price is quite affordable!
Two big bowls of glass noodles, a quite large plate of salad with duck's liver, gizzard...costs only 90,000 VND, less than 5 USD!

If you want to try, here is the address!

21/8 Nguyễn Thiện Thuật, district 3, HCMC!  

Bánh đúc never has bones...

I never forget this savory cake, its simple taste, its soft and smooth texture.
Yes, it could be one of my favorite snacks in my childhood but more than that, this traditional cake is probably one of not many dishes that has been compared in our folklore as a cruel observation and painful experience in life:
                       
                         "Mấy đời bánh đúc có xương, 
                           Mấy đời dì ghẻ lại thưong con chồng" 
literally means
                          Bánh đúc never has bones 
                          (as) Stepmother never cares husband's children

          Bánh đúc (steamed rice cake) in a southern style, topped with shrimp floss, stirred green onion 

             served with sweet spicy fish sauce. Bánh đúc's texture is so soft, smooth as velvet! 

I can't tell how much true in this proverb but it sounds quite a firm confirmation when it has been compared in that way...because a good bánh đúc is nicely soft and smooth!

Made from rice flour mixed with coconut milk, steamed, bánh đúc is just a little bit salted, very tasty with coconut flavor, and some tapioca starch has been added to make the cake's texture more glutinous!

               Bánh đúc can be topped with fried shallots or some other stuff but not veggies! 

Bánh đúc in South is topped with stirred fried ground shrimp, ground jicama or carrot, green onion...then cut into small slices upon the order and served with sweet, spicy fish sauce, pickled carrot and white radish! Bánh đúc is never served with any fresh veggies!

              Bánh đúc texture is always so soft, so smooth that's why people say...never have bones!

Bánh đúc in North is topped with some other ingredients such as ground pork, ear wood mushroom, sesame, roast peanut, fried shallot...

I like bánh đúc texture, it's soft, bit glutinous, especially the coconut milk makes bánh đúc very tasty, I never tried bánh đúc in Hà Nội with soy sauce! Being a southern-born,  I prefer sweet, spicy fish sauce. I also didn't have a chance to taste bánh đúc made from other flours...it seems that in each province we have different recipe for this traditional countryside savory steamed cake.

The way of eating is also different. In Hà Nội we have bánh đúc with peanut (bánh đúc lạc) with just soy sauce, no any toppings or with braised fish (cá kho) or braised pork meat (thịt kho), bánh đúc in Hà Nội is probably a bit harder not soft and smooth as in South, the shape is similar to a small bowl.

We also have a sweet bánh đúc, flavory of pandan leave, in green marble color, topped with golden sirup, coconut milk, sesame...to be honest this sweet bánh đúc could be one of the best sweets in Vietnam, if we know how to make it superfine! The taste, the color, the flavor and probably the tradition - everything combined in this fabulous sweet!

These days it's not easy to find bánh đúc on the street, compared with some other traditional dishes like bánh cuốn (roll rice cake) or bánh ướt (wet cake). I don't know why...such a good and tasty snack for the afternoon light meal!