streetfood – A travelling small human

Vietnam 2017

Day 29

In the morning I went to the Cu Chi tunnels, it’s like two hours or so from Ho Chi Minh. I can really recommend to go there, the tour that I had was a ½ Day tour from 8:30 am till around 1pm so it doesn’t really costs you a lot of time and it’s also enough to see everything. The tour consisted of 4 Parts, A Propagandafilm about the Guerrilla soldiers, a tour where all the traps and ideas from the soldiers is shown and a walk through the narrow underground tunnels, a shooting range where you can try out some of the old weapons they used during the time and a eating part where you can try what the soldiers ate everyday, Taro. Its kinda like I imagine a sweet potato would taste like, it’s shaped like a longer but thiner potato and also looks like it. I found it pretty tasty but eating just that everyday would be a little bit boring^^ The soldiers ate it because it grows very fast and almost everywhere in the jungle.

Model of how the tunnels connected to different underground areas

After the tour I got out a little bit away from my hotel to go to the streetfoodmarket near the binh tanh market and visited both. At the streetfoodmarket I got some real good Indian Chicken Vindaloo with Onion Pharata and a Mango lassi, back to the roots I guess^^

After this great meal I went to the binh tanh market and bought some stuff like chilis, lotusseeds (which taste soo different than I thought^^ much more crunchy and not really like a nut what I had expected 🙈) and some other stuff for back home. In the internet stood the market would be packed with people and you would really have to fight to get to the center… Well when I went there (about 3pm) the market was relatively empty and I could easily walk through.
I then went back to my friends from the tattoo studio and chilled with them again, watched some videos, talked with them about tattoos, culture and life in Vietnam and watched how they made their sketches and tattooed people. The guys make some awesome work, I will post some of their works when I get good shots at them.

Vietnam 2017

Day 28

After a breakfast in form of a burger with sausages instead of a patty, which was still very delicious, I went to the central post office to send a postcard.

In the post office were also some souvenirshops who sold some nice stuff which even weren’t that expensive as I thought. After that I looked at the Notre Dame cathedral next to the post office, I just saw it from the outside because it had opened much later and I was to lazy to come back later^^

I went then home and accidentally slept a while. I went to a café and then to a Spa where I had to promise the a girl that handed out flyers of the Spa to tourists. It was crazy in the street I was, almost every 10 m somebody wants to give you a flyer and that you come to their place^^
I got a whole body vietnamese massage which was really great, they cracked some bones in my body I didn’t even know they could crack like my ears and even my scalp!
If you’re in Vietnam you should really get one, they’re super cheap and are really good! I paid like 6$ for 1h of a great massage.
For the guys maybe just say you have a girlfriend, that makes it a little easier to deny some certain extra services…^^
I then went to the tattoo shop from yesterday and went out to eat with one of the guys. I got a rice porridge with duck and some bread pieces which was pretty tasty, I just forgot to take a picture of it 🙈
After the meal I got this drink which tastes a little bit like red bull and is also something like this.
In the evening we went all together to a bar a the street and enjoyed the night. It was very nice and I find it very nice that sitting in a bar here also means to eat a lot of stuff 😅😋
We got some fried gristle pieces, a sun-dried and then fried fish, chicken feet and my highlight: the duck embryo! One of the guys invited me to one so I finally had the chance to try it ( I think alone I probably hadn’t buy me one^^). It tasted really not bad, you get lime and chili with it to dip it in and it’s real nice, it doesn’t tastes that different from a normal egg and sort of looks like it when you peel it. But if you break it open you can see all the details, like the freshly developed head and stuff 😛
Was a great experience to try it^^

Vietnam 2017

Day 26

Today I drove to Ho Chi Minh City which took almost the whole day. It costed me 240k but I’m sure you can find it somewhere a little bit cheaper if you search for it. I slept almost the whole time so I can’t tell you that much about the scenery^^ the parts where I was awake were pretty nice though, much more green and jungle-y than in the earlier rides.
On the ride I met a Japanese man, he told me that he always works in Japan for a while and when he has some money together he travels. Sounds like a pretty nice idea.
After checking in to the hotel I finally went to get something to eat and damn did it feel good to finally eat something 🙈
I then met the Japanese guy again and we went to a bar. It was the first time to see a hooker there^^ Actually I didn’t realize that she was one, because she started to just talk normally to us and asked where we from, but the Japanese guy ment no and then she walked away 😅🙈
Good thing to know that they also go inside the bars^^
After a few hours I went back to the hotel and on the way I grabbed myself a little Banh Mi

Vietnam 2017

Day 25

Today we did not really anything except drinking coffee, eating and sitting somewhere and talking, somehow we were all pretty tired^^
I bought some local ground coffee, in my guidebook stood, that Buon Ma Thuot has not just one of the best coffees, but also one of the cheapest. And it’s true, I got 250g for 50k which are a little more than 2$.
And yeah I know, this getting mad right now, the fourth time in row we ate the same dinner xD still good though^^

Vietnam 2017

Day 24

Today we decided that we wanted to do a short tour to the Thác Dray Nur waterfall very near of Buon Ma Thuot. After a breakfast noodlesoup and a coffee we went back to the hotel to grab our stuff and go to the waterfall.

Sadly after a few minutes into the trip, the back wheel of one of the motorbikes felt strange and we had to get repaired. We waited on the side of the road, while two of us took the motorbike and searched for a mechanic. Luckily they found only like half an hour or 45 mins but not longer. Good thing, that the waterfall was so near, so it was no problem timewise.

To get to the waterfall you have to buy a ticket for 30k which is alright, considering there’s also a free coffee combined with the tickets^^The view there was amazing! Such a beautiful scenery and you can go everywhere, exploring all the small paths that are around and chill at the water on some stones and just enjoy the nature. The picturesdefinitely speak for themselves but you should really just go there by yourself and enjoy the view with your own eyes. Can really recommend to go there! Also because it’s really not far away from Buon Ma Thuot and you could actually combine it with another activity on that day.

Im the evening when we were back we went to search something to eat and for real accidentally ate the same dinner a third time in a row xD but again at another place. And damn it really tastes good! 😅😋

Allgemein

Day 23

Today we rented our motorbikes, we took two for us three, because it was cheaper and in the end it was pretty good that I could sometimes just sit on ones back without worrying about my driving skills and also to take some pictures. Although riding a scooter is pretty damn easy, after like 5 mins I could perfectly control the gas and could drive without any problems. It was a really awesome experience, you can get pretty fast with them, at least it felt like was pretty fast^^
And driving over the county roads where is almost nobody and you can really drive as fast as you want is awesome as hell!

The place we actually wanted to visit was impossible to reach with our motorbikes because we had to cross a small river but there were no boats strong enough to get them to the other side, there were tours you could book to see the stuff on the other side but we didn’t wanted to spend so much money for that^^
There would have been a bridge somewhere else but that would have took two additional hours and that would have been problematic with the ride back home because we wanted to reach our hotel before it gets dark. The place we actually wanted to go was called Buon Don.
But well we decided then to go to a lake which was nearer. It was just next to a city called Ea Sup. When we arrived at the lake we ate something and then decided to take a small road from there and drive back to Buon Ma Thuot.

It was a good and very bad decision at the same time^^ it was pretty awesome because we could see many small villages and had a great overview of the forests and plantations around! …But the so called “street” was horrible xD there were even big rocks coming out of the ground, I really wonder how a street can get so bad 🙈 it was pretty difficult to drive through and I’m very happy that I could sit at the back of one the whole time 😅

It started also to rain really hard and at one time we stopped to stand under and to refuel one of the motorbikes. The people who were also there were very friendly! The gave us some water and one even invited us to come to his house to eat with them, it was really nice of them and we would have really liked to do that, but unfortunately we really had to go on so we would have to drive in the dark, which could be very dangerous for foreigners who don’t really know how the street here work like us^^
It was really sad but we were really flattered. One of us gave them a keyring with a small Eifel tower to thank them and they we’re really excited about it 🙂

Cat and dog seeking shelter from the rain :3

The rain fortunately stopped 5 mins later and we went on. Also the street was getting better and better which we really appreciated. It started to rain a second time and this time even more than at first! 🙈
We got all wet even though we had some rain ponchos^^
After some more time we finally made it home. It was the best feeling ever to finally change clothes 😍😅
We met our other guys and went to eat something, accidentally we had the same dinner as yesterday but at a different street restaurant, in this one the soup you get with the rice and everything tasted way better than on the other place, it also had some more vegetables in it, which probably gave the soup more taste 😋

After that we searched for a bar but the nightlife in Buon Ma Thuot is pretty much non-existend 🙈
After a break so I could get a Banh Mi we returned home and chilled a but before going to bed, we were all pretty exhausted from our trip.

Allgemein

Day 22

For breakfast we ate spring rolls which we had to roll by ourselves. It was pretty fun and tasted really good.

After that we went to the coffee village here in Buon Ma Thuot, it was like 20 min. away from our hotel. I can really recommend to go there, it’s not like you see a whole lot of awesome stuff, but there are some nice cafés were you can drink a iced coffee like we did and walk around just looking at the old houses that are just made of wood which looks very cool.

We talked with a villager who could speak pretty good French. She told us that sadly this old tradition of building houses of wood is getting forgotten because all the rich and young people come to this area and build new houses or of bricks instead. It’s kinda reasonable I think, because the wood houses have to get renewed every 50 years and the stone houses if they’re build good never. But it’s still sad that a old tradition like this dies.
We didn’t made very much after spending some hours around the coffee village. There isn’t really much to do in Buon Ma Thuot itself. We ate at a streetrestaurant some real nice beef with rice and salad, it tasted really great. After that we went pretty early to bed to get up early tomorrow.

Allgemein

Day 21

Today we ate at the hotel our free breakfast which was included in the price. It was okay but it really was a package of instant noodles with an egg and some pieces of broccoli inside^^

After that we went to clean out room and pack everything for the tour. But as it turned out there were some issues with renting the motorbikes. Because of our big tour through other provinces, the renting fee would have gone way up, from 2$ a day to about 15$ 🙈. That would be too much so we decided that we would drive the long part with a bus and rent the motorbikes then at our next destination because it would be cheaper again. Two of us decided to buy a motorbike, which is pretty common to do in Vietnam, you buy a motorbike at the beginning of your journey and going to sell it at the end of it. Me and two others went then with the bus to Buon Ma Thuot which took about 6h. The bus ride was pretty good, it was a normal sitting bus, the view a really awesome because you could really see that you were driving into the jungle, but sadly I couldn’t make so good pictures 🙈 When we arrived here we went to the hotel to leave our bags there and then straight out again because we were starving like hell. We ate two different Banh Mi and I ate additionally a Bun Bo (I think it’s called), which is a big piece of steamed dough filled with ground meat and quail eggs. The dough tastes a little bit sweet but all together it tastes really good, just watch out for a piece of paper which sticks on the bottom of it^^ it’s also pretty filling, you should definitely try it out if you’re in Vietnam because it’s also a local food.

Allgemein

Day 17

First I ate a chickennoodlesoup at a restaurant near my Hotel, somehow the pictures I took from it are not there anymore… It was very nice and I actually made it for the first time to eat everything up with ease 😅
After that, Bon picked me up and drove me to the Tailor. The shirts fitted perfectly, just the Suit had a little short arms, but that was no problem, a few hours later I could come back and they changed it.
I later ate a Duck rice soup at a small stand at the street. In the soup were all the parts of a Duck, like the lungs, the Airways and other stuff. And I really have to say that ducklungs are really tasty 😅 They are those dark spongy parts you can see in the picture^^

After that I went again to the ancient part of the town and to a café because it rained, I drank there a ginger tea which was strong as hell, it literally burned my throat Everytime I took a sip^^

It turned evening and that meant it was food festival time! 😋
I got some food of Russia, Sri Lanka and Greece. Everything was very tasty although the Russian dish was a little bit basic with just some battered and fried fish (red snapper) and a bechamel sauce with it.

Today was also the day of the “Earth Hour”, an international festival where all the lights are shut down for one hour to raise attention for the climate change that needs to be stopped. It was very nice to see that all the young people also took part in it and build some nice things like a big 60+ (which is the symbol of the Earth Hour) out of candles or other nice things.

In that hour all of them were partying and there was music and karaoke and dancing everywhere, it was really cool to stand there and see all the cheerful atmosphere. I even got to see some real nice streetdance performance, but sadly the police came and said that they had to leave because they formed too many people around them and because of the food festival they did not want any big crowds.
I got to talk to the dancers and they wrote me their name and Facebook page and even a YouTube video I can watch, if I have time I really have to watch it! The crew name is “Nosher Crew”

A trailer video of the crew I found on YouTube!

When the Earth Hour was over I intentionally wanted to go home, but a French girl spoke to me and told me about a bar where she works, that I could meet there some nice peoples and that I could get unlimited drinks for the whole night (until 11:30pm) with just 100k VND which are like 4-5$. So I gave it a shot because I really had nothing to do and meeting some people is always nice^^
I met there four French guys who are in about my age. They told me that Hue, the town I intentionally wanted to go next, isn’t that big of a deal and that I really don’t miss something if I don’t go there. They also told me that they were heading to Da Lat and that they wanted to do a motorcycle tour from there to Ho Chi Minh City. They offered me to come with them and so I cancelled my bus ride to Hue and going to Da Lat tomorrow ^-^

Vietnam 2017

Day 16

Today I met with a motorcycle-driver who drove me also last night, we wrote on Facebook and he was kinda my “personal” driver for today^^
When I walked out of the hotel a woman asked me if I want to go and visit her store, where I could get some good clothes. So I went there and it was a store for suits and stuff, after some negotiation about the price we agreed on ~ 100$ for two tailored Shirts and one full tailored suit. I can pick them up tomorrow afternoon. That’s not just incredibly fast but also pretty cheap! I hope the quality is also good, but I think it will be good, there was a guestbook with many reviews in different languages who all wrote that this Tailor makes a good job, so let’s see.

Scenes from the motorbike rides today

After that I bought some souvenirs for my friends and family back home and went then to a restaurant called “Blue Dragon” at the small river at the Market. I ordered a fried duck with lemongrass and ginger and a mango lassi, which is not really Vietnamese but holy shit was it good, I had really a LOT of Mango lassi in my life and this one was really one of the best I ever drank, it was freshly made and tasted so intense of fresh Mango 😍

After this good meal, Bon, my driver, took me to the Terracotta park. I didn’t went inside because he meant he can show me everything without a ticket. I think I missed some things but for that he went with me directly to the potterers and I could see how all the things were made and I could speak a little with them, so it was fine.

Bon then had something to do and I went to a café and waited for him. After about 15 mins he took me to the beach and I stay there some time and enjoyed the last glances of the sun before it went down. The beach was fuller than the one in Da Nang but it was still very nice. I didn’t jumped in the ocean, although I would have really liked to do that, but sadly I had nothing to change with me. I think, by seeing the others in the water, the ground was much deeper than in Da Nang, there you could stand in the whole area and the water would just go to your hips.

On the way to the beach we stopped at a place called the vegetable village, which is a big area where many vegetables and greens are grown, Bon showed me the different greens and I could also try them fresh from the ground, awesome! There were greens like Thai Basil, rosemary(?), Salad, chives and many more. It was really nice to see and try them 🙂

Before Bon dropped me at my hotel we went to his house and he introduced me to his family, he has four children, they and his wife were all very friendly and it was nice to really see a Vietnamese family 🙂
In the evening I went to the food festival again and ate some high-class cotlett from Russia and an really authentic and awesome Lamb Curry from India 😋😍
If you love food and you’re accidentally in Vietnam between the 20.-27. March in Vietnam you should definitely go to Hoi An and check it out! There’s also a live show with music and lights and everything.

After watching this show a little bit I went for a beer and a place to sit in a bar and loaded my smartphone so I had enough battery to find my way home with Google maps. If you’re traveling you should really take a power bank with you so you can load your phone even if there are no plugs around. It can sometimes really save you from running out of battery which happens pretty easily when you’re taking many pictures and using Google maps very much^^
Also when you’re in Vietnam you should definitely get a Sim card at the airport or somewhere else, it’s so cheap! Freaking 9$ for a whole month unlimited high-speed Internet *-*
If that would exist in my home county…
Oh yeah, the bread that you see is a fried baguette, the woman said there was meat in it but I didn’t find any^^ pretty tasty though!