By Jojo Santo Tomas, Pacific Daily News
After visiting Saigon two weeks ago, Vietnam instantly became one of those countries that demanded a return visit.
How much for this?: A customer chooses among the many fresh meats available at a market in Vietnam. Jojo Santo Tomas/For Pacific Daily News.
It’s one of those places where there’s never enough time to see everything you want to see and do what you want to do. And, as my girlfriend Christina and I discovered, we did not have enough stomach to eat everything we wanted, either.
Vietnam shares borders with China, Laos and Cambodia. It has a population of about 90 million people. We visited its largest city, Saigon, which is three times the size of Guam and home to about 8 million people.
Everywhere we looked, there was food.
Walking along the sidewalk, vendors sold sliced durian, tangerines and other fresh fruit, while others had small, controlled fires cooking thin waffle cookies and skewered meats. Some ran sugarcane through huge rollers, extracting the juice and serving it over ice. There were dried, flattened bananas, vegetables, omelets, stir-fries and spring rolls.
Even if you stood still, the food sights never stopped. Vendors pushed two-wheeled carts everywhere, offering sliced mango, quail eggs, cookies, cakes and lots of other nameless delicacies.
Prices for most of these items ranged between 20,000 and 50,000 Vietnamese Dong, or about $1 to $2.50.
In homage to our Guam roots, every day we ate crisp, barely ripe mango dipped in salt and crushed pepper. We even brought some back to Hong Kong.
Coffee heaven
And the coffee? Don’t even get me started on the coffee, because that deserves a column by itself. As one of the largest coffee producers in the world, Vietnam takes its coffee seriously.
Christina and I briefly considered playing a drinking game in which we’d take a vodka shot for every coffee shop we saw, but realized we’d be slurring after walking two blocks.
Read the full article by Jojo Santo Tomas from Pacific Daily News.
