Ho Chi Minh - Foodie Tour

So this blog post will include a subject matter you've never seen before... FOOD! :-p Ha ha! I know it seems like that's ALL we talk about, but it's so good and new and unique - a HUGE part of our Asian experience. And Vietnam is no different. This time, though, we signed up for a four hour foodie tour to get the insider scoop on what Vietnamese cuisine has to offer. And we were not disappointed, that is for sure!!

We used Tiger Tours, a newer tour company that was started about a year ago. The way it worked is that each person is picked up by their own tour guide on a scooter and they escort you throughout the city. It's hilarious - there are 16,000 scooter owners in Ho Chi Minh, so they are EVERYWHERE! The traffic wasn't quite as scary as Phnom Penh, though, because they seemed to have a few more traffic lights and wider roads. Also, there were actually crosswalks that were used and respected too, LOL!

This is the first restaurant we visited. It was a hole in the wall joint but they had delicious food of course!

They provided WAY too much food at each place so we literally STUFFED ourselves! But it was worth it! This restaurant served pork and beef with rice wraps and veggies.

This is pig's ear. Yes. We ate this. It had been boiled so it was cooked and we had a dipping sauce that gave it a little flavor because it really had none of its own.

Oh yeah, there was salmon at this place too. One restaurant down, only three more to go!

Our wonderful tour guides! They did everything for us!

Joel HAD to take a picture of the telephone wires here. Yikes! Glad he didn't have to deal with this in the States with Century Link!

In between the first and second restaurants, the tour guides took us to a flower market. It was right after the Chinese New Year, so they still had a lot leftover. They were gorgeous and so diverse - here were my favorites.

As a pedestrian in the market, you still had to beware of the scooters driving down the roads.

Joel on his scooter - the guides were great! Very safe drivers and they were able to give us history of the city and tell us about all the amazing things we were driving past. We were told they had to practice with a friend of the owner's that weighed almost 300 pounds to ensure they were ready for anyone who requested the tour, LOL.

Restaurant number two - it was actually a Chinese restaurant but we had their Vietnamese fare.

After the first restaurant, we hooked up with a few other folks that had signed up for the food tour that morning as well. We met a man from Belgium, a woman from China, and another guy from California (and of course all of their scooter tour guides). Fun group for sure! 

This is the owner of the tour company, Loan Tran, pouring our deer horn wine. It was a wine made with actual deer horns, but the strength of it and the method of consumption made me feel it was more like a liquor. And a really bad one at that. It tasted horrible, LOL.

This is fried goat udder and okra. Yup, you got that right! Goat UDDER. It was actually quite good. And the tomatoes in Cambodia and Vietnam may not look like much but they were SO tasty!!

Crocodile Curry - scrumptiously spicy!

Crab and puffed coconut salad - To quote a Homestarrunner video, "Soo,ooo,ooo good!" (I know some folks will understand this reference) ;-)

Heh heh, obviously a pose. I was WAY too scared to consider driving solo on these streets!

Restaurant number three was a simple seafood restaurant with only outdoor seating. There really is little to no refrigeration here just like Cambodia, so everything is cooked fresh because they have to before it spoils.

Are these limes of the calamondin type? I think they are...

Our dipping sauces, SO insanely fresh and simple!

Spicy crab claws - get this: Our guides did all the work for us. They cracked each and every one leaving the meat exposed so Joel and I could eat simply and quickly. What?! We felt so lazy, but it was part of the package!

The rest of our crew eating the deliciousness.

Clams with a peanut sauce, wow.

Sugar cane juice. So sweet and fresh!

Muscles in some sort of amazing broth.

This is Brian from CA. He is being really brave right now and I will tell you why...

This is balut. It is a fertilized duck egg that is boiled than eaten in a tasty peanut sauce. It tastes like egg for the most part, but it's a partially formed baby duck soooooooo..... you get bites of that as well.

I can't believe we ate it! I ate a beak and feathers, etc etc. We have a video of us doing it and it's pretty funny. Joel did better than me because he didn't look at it. I kept looking at it!

This is the machine used to squeeze out the juice from the sugar cane.

It's custom to simply throw your trash and shells on the ground. There were chickens and dogs around to eat some scraps and it simplified clean up for the restaurant servers.

Lastly, restaurant four for dessert! It was definitely not dessert like we think of in the States...

It was predominantly coconut milk and random fruit. Stuff we'd never seen or heard of that really wasn't sweet and had weird textures.

That THING is a piece of durian fruit. It's known as the "stinky fruit" and it is just that. I personally think it was worse to eat than the balut! The texture and flavor were AWFUL!

Taken from Wikipedia: "Regarded by many people in southeast Asia as the "king of fruits", the durian is distinctive for its large size, strong odor, and formidable thorn-covered husk. The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour that is strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as pleasantly fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and revolting. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine, raw sewage, and smelly socks. The persistence of its odor has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in southeast Asia."

Brian confirmed that last statement - there was a sign in his hotel room that said, "No Durian in Room". HA! And if some folks watch Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, you'll know that this is the one food he CAN'T eat! 

Needless to say, Joel and I can now say we've eaten some pretty random stuff. Glad we were brave but we now know there are some things we will NEVER eat again, namely DURIAN!