Rainy season sort of in Cambodia

This year the dry season ended a month or more early and the rainy season has sort of started. We have been having short blasts of rain every few days. When the rainy season decides to really settle in, this will be a daily occurrence.

If you have ever lived in a tropical area, you know what real rain can be. In about 15 minutes the street has filled with water. Part of that is due to a large volume of rain and the other is people plug the drains to prevent the smell from coming out during the dry season.

My kitchen is on the west side of the building, and my small window has a tendency to let in rain when there is a wind from the west. Next to the window, decorative ventilation holes in the wall let cool air in and hot air out. But they also let in water when there is a west wind. I had the opportunity to mop the kitchen floor this afternoon because with the rain there was a west wind.

Pho Vietnamese noodle soup

Pho is a national dish in Vietnam and is Vietnamese noodle soup, usually served with beef or chicken. The soup includes noodles made from rice and is often served with Vietnamese basil, lime, bean sprouts that are added to the soup by the diner. One of our goals was to try this meal. Guide books and the doorman at out hotel pointed us to one of the many PHO 24 restaurants in Saigon, "this one has the best pho in the city".

Traditional Pho is normally served with beef or chicken but at PHO 24 there are many options; Anita had a deer-in-the-headlights look when presented with all of the options. It was very helpful to have pictures of everything.

Pho comes with vegetables that can be added to the soup

It was great!

Wandering around Saigon’s ChinaTown

After visiting several pagodas, Anita and I happened on one of the numerous street market, which was very much like a street market in Cambodia, vendors hiding from the intense sun under huge umbrellas.

There was the standard sleeping vendor

Fish and fruit vendors

People making snacks, we stopped to watch a young lady make small white balls coated with a green sticky covering. Of course none of us spoke the others language so we do not know what it was called or contained. We watched as the young lady carefully cooked the green sticky covering on a banana leaf grill, yes the grill was a banana leaf stretched over a dish of hot water with a heat source below it.

To me the snack did not have any flavor but it was fun to watch her make them.

Saigon Chinatown pagoda

Pagodas in Saigon appear to be just for worship, as compared to in Cambodia where they house monks and schools. There were several pagodas listed in the guide book and we visited three. The temples are actively used for worship, we saw numerous people making offerings and praying.

Each pagoda had a large number of places people could light incense and in some there were large sticks and huge coils burning. Smoke from the incense was a great photographic topic but very hard to capture well.

Decorations in the pagodas were very detailed and done in the most part with bright colors. In Quan Am Pagoda there are two sections and between them there is an outside fountain.

Traffic in Vietnam

Before my trip to Vietnam, Cambodians told me that traffic in Vietnam was much worse than in Cambodia, so when I stepped out of the bus in Saigon, I was wary of crossing the street. What a surprise, for me the traffic in Vietnam was much easier to deal with than in Cambodia, in Vietnam for the most part motos and cars go the same direction on their side of the street and stop for stop lights, stop signs are another matter. 

There were the standard large loads

Bicycles seemed to be more prevalent in Vietnam than Cambodia, in Cambodia motos still rule.

Streets are still clogged from time to time, at the end of the school day streets will be packed with parents waiting to pick up their children. Women in business clothing chatting on their mobile phones with two children hopping on the moto, fathers looking boarded, the moto is the Vietnamese SUV.

The motos are used to transport just about everything.

Vietnamese Pancake

Some time ago, colleagues at DDD asked me if I wanted to go with them to have Vietnamese pancakes for lunch. OK, I did not know what it was but I might as well try it.

What a Vietnamese pancake looks like is a large omelet with pork and bean sprouts. I really enjoyed mine.

In Vietnam I attended a cooking class with Anita and learned that a Vietnamese pancake is not an omelet at all, it doesn't contain any eggs. The outside is made of rice flower and the color comes from turmeric. The trick to making a really good Vietnamese pancake is to have a well seasoned wok, have it hot when you coat it with batter and make sure that your batter covers the wok evenly. Then you let it cook until it is just about crispy then add the filling. Flip it in half and let it cook a little to warm the filling.

Anita and I went to a restaurant where Vietnamese pancake were their specialty, there were about as many fillings as you could imagine.

Pancakes are eaten with leafy greens, my colleagues showed me how to use a lettuce leaf like I used hubsa (Moroccan bread) to grab and hold part of the pancake. You can also add other types of green leaves (don't ask me what they all were) for additional flavoring.

Saigon night market

When the Ben Thanh the large market in central Saigon packs up for the evening; a night markets spring up on the streets outside. In the early evening, vendors start to do their evening setup.

In an hour or two there are hundreds of stalls ready for the evening crowd. One of the specialties at the restaurant we tried was shrimp steamed in coconut milk. This must be very popular, they had several sitting ready to go.

Out front this restaurant has grills and a man making a round bread, he fries it in a wok of hot oil and it grows and grows until it is a little smaller than a soccer ball. We did not try it but I will next time. 

Along the street all of the shops move their wares out onto the street, it's a very lively and a bit chaotic, but definitely fun.