Chicken rice (cơm gà)

Chicken rice - I just wonder is it purely Vietnamese or Chinese dish, probably from our big neighbor as most of good chicken rice places in Saigon, either run by Vietnamese with Chinese origin or Singaporean-Chinese! Anyway Vietnamese or Chinese - no matter if it's good! I love chicken rice esp. the flavorful steamed rice cooked with chicken broth...until now I still remember a small shop in Vo Van Tan - Shanghai chicken rice, but since they have a new big 2-3 story building, it seems that their chicken rice is no longer good as before and they start selling different dishes...and I never come back there!

Some people like the chicken rice in Chinatown, or Nguyen Tri Phuong street or even in Hai Ba Trung ... so I really have no idea which is the best now in town! I also tried a famous chicken rice in Singapore at a luxury hotel (recommended by my old colleagues in Singapore) or even at some food court with local friend - the popular Hainanese boneless tender chicken rice! So to me - the best and the most important from this dish are always good rice with good chicken (what's else?!)... and probably with the excellent dip sauce!

Today our dish is not from Singapore, no either from far-away Shanghai, it comes from our Central part! It would be another version of chicken rice - has been localized to the local taste! Chicken rice with fried fish-sauce chicken (cơm gà chiên nước mắm)! Very tasty!

For certain reason, most of chicken for this dish should be either "garden"chicken, definitely not chicken from those "industrial" farms, because the chicken meat should be specially tender . Either it's cooked or fried - the meat should be flavorful, tender and not powdery soft! The rice is soft not too dry and tasty thanks to the chicken broth. Here, you have a choice : either cooked chicken or roasted with fish sauce. I vote for the latter! More tasty!

       The thick sweet fish sauce with garlic and chili and a bit of ginger! 

Besides you still can order a chicken salad, it's good to have some veggies, quite tasty as it soaked in sour sweet spicy sauce! Good to try here, because if we go to the traditional chicken rice place - they don't serve this salad!
Ok, where to try this chicken rice with fried fish-sauce chicken ? At the same place where I had a noodles with jellyfish! 61 Le Thi Hong Gam, district 1!

Ice cream -from the street to the branded shops!

Many many Vietnamese love ice cream, probably because we are living in a tropical country, so to enjoy the cold, sweet, flavorful ice cream is almost everyone's favorite thing!

When I was a kid, I remember I bought not one but at least 2-3 ice cream bars, put all of them in a glass, crushed them...until they have melted and enjoyed the sweet, thick, cold melted ice cream liquid! Another very cheap ice cream - made from only ice and sirup. I bought and just few minutes later only ice left as I already sucked all the sweet sirup mixed together with the ice-melted water. This cheap ice cream used to have only orange flavor. These days this kind of simple cold snack seemed gone!

                The ice cream vendor near to the school

But one more favorite thing from the childhood: how much I loved to get it after the afternoon nap, the ice cream in a sweet soft bread! The vendor puts two or three scoops of ice cream, up to the order, into the bread as sandwich, top it with roasted peanut and condensed milk!

                                   The bell is almost a symbolic sign for ice cream cart in Saigon! 

The taste of the cold sweet and flavorful ice cream together with sweet soft bread, roasted peanut, condensed milk...always makes me happy!

Special edition: Sleepless nights in Bangkok (Part Two)

These days travelers mostly rely on the online booking, esp. those popular sites for hotels as Agoda or Air Asia for flights and we believe their offer is always the best! It's not always true!
Especially for  hotels in Thailand, there is so many choices! It's good to check with Agoda and at the same time directly with the hotel! Compare the price! Most of the time, the offer is almost the same! Exactly the same thing with Air Asia, if we don't book long in advance, no much difference compared with Thai Airways, plus the inflight meal!

           Late at night on the street in Bangkok

About the hotel, every time going back to Bangkok, I tried a new one. Location. Facilities. Price. To me - location is No 1. This time I stayed at Bally's serviced apartment in Sukhumvit, soi 20, it's a real long walk to Asok - a sky train station. It was my mistake as I booked in hurry but on the other hand, it would be good for me, an extra 15' to exercise!

                      and at the night market in Patpong - not crowded on weekdays!  

Rice noodles with jellyfish at Lạ (bún sứa)

Jellyfish or we call sứa in Vietnamese, to me it could be one of the most beautiful sea creatures that I have seen. Maybe not those red jellyfish in Vũng Tàu that hurt me in my childhood summer vacation but at least those that I saw in a special tank in a famous spa in Tokyo. There, in the relaxing top floor they keep extremely white, extremely beautiful jellyfish in a nice glass water tank with the ocean dark blue background, the special lighting. Just imagine sitting in a cold, dark room, hearing the sound of ocean waves and watching those white fluorescent jelly fish swimming as they perform an exotic belly dance in the water, all heavy feelings in my mind suddenly have gone! Only me, alone, bathing in the ocean with these miraculous creatures! That was in Japan.

Back to the reality, in Vietnam, we eat jellyfish, we do jellyfish salad and jellyfish rice noodles! Ok just think Japanese kill bigger fish for their sushi, and here we have jellyfish - much smaller for our noodles...in order not to feel uncomfortable!

I did try jellyfish salad, quite popular dish at certain seafood restaurant but my jellyfish noodles at Quán Lạ last night was my first time! It was good, very good!

          Jellyfish noodles but some tuna, fish cake are added and topped with roasted peanuts! 

          Here we go: chewy jellyfish in a dipping sauce - fermented fish sauce (mắm nêm) 

         I love the taste of the soup: a bit sweet, a bit of pineapple flavor, a bit sour, a bit spicy...

So if you want to try, here you go the address:

Quán Lạ - 61 Lê Thị Hồng Gấm! 35,000 VND/ bowl! Worth to try! 

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!