Lumpy's Vietnamese food and women pictures thread.

[Lumpy]

I have three joints I've been carrying around for 2 weeks, I don't even want to smoke them, it's a real chore. The weed really sucks, you get buzzed but it's not very pleasurable. Lots of people mix it with tobacco, but I don't smoke tobacco.

Getting better with chopsticks but still eat a little sloppy, and some places have no napkins, or use toilet paper or really tiny napkins, and even had some places using little squares of regular paper. A lot of runny noses from the chilis, it can be a problem. Plenty of situations where a fork or spoon is used, too.

The people in central Vietnam have been the most friendly so far. I may be getting hitched to a sweet little grandmother in Hoi An. Only half joking...

In some places the street vendors won't leave you alone, in other places they don't give a shit. The smaller towns are usually much more relaxed in comparison to Saigon and Hanoi (gotta make that big city rent I guess). In central Vietnam you can tell them you don't wanna buy anything, and then have a conversation. Especially with the older guys. Most people don't speak any English except possibly hello, a few are conversational in English. It's only occasionally a problem but you can make it work with a few key phrases, Google Translate (I got a SIM card) and miming.

Trying to take food pics for you jerks, but I had to skip some opportunities to avoid looking like a total douche in front of the locals (he takes pictures of his food??) I eat at the occasional touristy place but mostly at the cheap and dirty stalls that tend to have the real deal, actually put condiments on your table, etc. I had a killer Bun Rieu (noodle soup with a big lump of ground crab meat and a chunk of pork) I did take a pic of the lady who makes it though, from outside the stall.

Home in about 5 more days!

[RAGER]

You're still there??  Way cool.  That's the way to do it.

[Lumpy]

Stomach is burbly a lot. Could be the water (everyone drinks bottled water) but I'm sure many places use it to make soup or tea, wash leafy greens, and I use it to brush my teeth. Could be the dubious hygeine of some of the food stalls, stands and restaurants. Or maybe too much chilies.

I told some Vietnamese friends that I love the Vietnamese style drip coffee, and they got all pissed off and started saying that "Vietnamese coffee is bullshit! It's full of artificial flavor!" So, additives... Regarding the "weasel coffee" it's expensive as fuck. I saw a small weasel coffee setup today, maybe a dozen in individual cages with nothing in there except a wooden box to curl up in. They may be force fed, it wouldnt surprise me.  

The beer situation from best to worst:
1. Bierre LaRue - decent
2. Bia Hoi - fresh beer, weak, easy to drink
3. Saigon - it's sorta drinkable
4. Tiger - bleh
5. 333 - malty, crap
6. Hanoi (bottle) - horrible

[RacerX]

So basically, the food is okay and the weed & beer pretty much suck, but the coffee is good?

[deleted account]

is weasel-shitted coffee vegan as long as they're not force-fed?

[black]

Only if the weasel is a vegan.
Otherwise you're dealing with all the meat-based stuff that never leaves it's weasel colon.

[mortlock]

Stomach is burbly a lot. Could be the water (everyone drinks bottled water) but I'm sure many places use it to make soup or tea, wash leafy greens, and I use it to brush my teeth. Could be the dubious hygeine of some of the food stalls, stands and restaurants. Or maybe too much chilies.

I told some Vietnamese friends that I love the Vietnamese style drip coffee, and they got all pissed off and started saying that "Vietnamese coffee is bullshit! It's full of artificial flavor!" So, additives... Regarding the "weasel coffee" it's expensive as fuck. I saw a small weasel coffee setup today, maybe a dozen in individual cages with nothing in there except a wooden box to curl up in. They may be force fed, it wouldnt surprise me.  

The beer situation from best to worst:
1. Bierre LaRue - decent
2. Bia Hoi - fresh beer, weak, easy to drink
3. Saigon - it's sorta drinkable
4. Tiger - bleh
5. 333 - malty, crap
6. Hanoi (bottle) - horrible

I thought you could get budwiesers over there.. 

[Lumpy]

No Busweisser, but Heineken is everywhere (which I hate, so I didn't bother ranking it). There's not tons of Western brands here... I see Wrigley's gum, Mentos, Chupa Chups, Pepsi and Coke, stuff like that. No American cigarettes. They have their own snacks and candy, etc. Clothes are pretty cheap here, because a lot of it is manufactured here for the global market. Lots of knockoff brands too (Pogo Club, Chanes, etc). Tshirts with English logos and phrases. They're communists, they don't have unrestricted trading with the west.

[mortlock]

weird..i thought buds were worldwide regardless of the countries governing style..

[Lumpy]

I'm in the airport in Saigon, and they have Bud here. So I dunno. But the appeal of cheap beer like Bud... the local beers are 50 or 75 cents. Who needs Bud, the cheep beer category is swamped. I didn't come across Bud anywhere else, but I didn't really hang out at expat bars, maybe they have there.

[Lumpy]

DIAL-UP WARNING -

I'm about to post a bunch of photos... 112 or so. Hold on to your buttocks.

[Lumpy]

These seem to be high school girls wearing the traditional Ao Dai ("ow-zeye") which really enhances a lady's figure... pulls tight across the bust, but flowing around the hips. Slit up the sides, pants are worn underneath.




This concludes the "hot ladies" section of the thread (i didn't want to appear too pervy, taking photos of strangers.)

As you can see, jumbo size eyeglasses are a thing there....

[Lumpy]

Okay, so the money... 20,000 VND (vietnamese dong) is about a dollar. To calculate, remove 4 zeros or digits, then divide by half.

So 30,000 dong is $1.50
40,000 dong is $2.00
100,000 is $5.00
10,000 dong is fifty cents
5,000 dong is a quarter
The food there is VERY cheap unless you splash out on a fancy Western style buffet or something. Almost everything I ate was a buck or 1.50 -- 20,000 or 30,000 dong (soups and main dishes). Banh Mi (sandwiches) were 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 dong (.50, .75, or a dollar)

This is two orders of Banh Cuon already in progress... cuon means "roll up". It's delicate rice flour crepe with chopped up mushrooms and grilled pork inside. Fried onions on top, and a bowl of cilantro and other herbs is nearby. Dip into a bowl of fish sauce (probably diluted with water - not full strength) and hot chilis added to taste. I think each plate was 15k, so .75 cents each. Oh yeah, I think those are kumquats on the side to add a little tartness to your fish sauce broth. Condiments are important, and herbs are too. Included in your banh cuon dipping bowl is a couple slices of pork roll (sorta like a meat loaf I guess).



Different place, a lady is making the rice flour crepes for Banh Cuon. Hers are $1.25:

[Lumpy]

Nuoc Mia (fresh sugar cane juice) being pressed near the commuter and tourist docks in Hoi An. She charged me 20k (a dollar). Tourist prices. It's all going into a big pitcher underneath.







This lady in Dalat operates a nuoc mia stand in front of her hair salon. Diversification. She only charged me 5k (a quarter!). She also ran a kumquat through, which added a little citrus zing.



This is Bia Hoi, fresh beer made daily. 75 cents for this (15k) on Cat Ba island (Halong Bay). Ripoff! There are bia hoi places in Hanoi where the beer is 30 cents (6k). Weak piss that goes down easy.

[Lumpy]

Soup is eaten any time of day. I ate a fair amount of Pho, not many Pho pics though. In the south, for Pho they give you all kinds of add-ins... a pile of sprouts, herbs, oyster sauce, chili sauce, lime. In the north, you just get a lime and chilis, maybe garlic. It's a more basic version of pho in the north. "Pho" refers to the type of noodle, btw... not all soup is pho! Not all pho is soup!

Here's a Pho Ga (chicken pho) in Hanoi.


Pho Bo (beef pho) in Hanoi.


Bun Bo Hue (bun is vermicelli type noodles, so beef noodle soup in the style of Hue ("hway") a town in central Vietnam. Tomato and annatto in the broth, and without the aromatic herbs that pho uses.



Bun Ca - a noodle soup with fried fish. Loads of fresh dill.



The bun ca shop. Many places are open air (the inexpensive places). Some vendors don't have a shop, they set up on the street or in an alley between buildings, etc. Ambience costs money.

[Lumpy]

Bun Cha Ca - noodle soup with fish loaf and shrimp loaf (uh, croquette) slices. Dope!



Close up of the Bun Cha Ca condiments. The purple sludge is baby shrimp paste. You only use a little dab of that, it's very intense. The first time I ate Bun Cha Ca, I used too much shrimp paste, and my soup tasted like I was drinking a river. (I still ate it though).



Another place's version of Bun Cha Ca, this one with sweet potato. I chomped the potato a little bit, then I thought it would be good to break it up. So the soup was sweet, hot from chilies, and fishy. Yum. Most all of my pics are shown "pre-condiments"... you know I mixed a big bunch of lettuce and herbs in there. And now a word about napkins... they are hard to find. Some places use toilet paper, some give you tiny flimsy napkins. This place in Danang had squares of paper for napkins. I have a beard, I'm eating soup, I'm not that great with chopsticks, I'm kind of messy anyway, and spicy food makes my nose run. It could get challenging.

[Lumpy]

Who's still with me?  

Here's what passes for marijuana, which you can obtain from taxi drivers apparently.    It sucks pretty bad.



There are bakeries around (excellent french bread is everywhere) and they like the occasional pastry.





They have their own snacks:



Bolt's favorites:



and



Red Bull there is uncarbonated. I never drink it here at home, but I tried it there to see if it was different. I did catch a buzz, it might have been my imagination though.

[Lumpy]

Who wants some delicious Rua Xe? (wash your motorbike). If I was in the sign making business, I could make a fortune there. There are signs everywhere.



Okay, now some dog-eating content. (Thit Cho = Meat of Dog) It seems to be a thing mainly in the north, and there aren't dog restaurants everywhere - I'd guess maybe 1% of restaurants around Hanoi serve dog - but they definitely exist. Supposedly it's bad luck to eat it except at the end of the month (?) when it's good luck (something like that). Which might explain why all the dog restaurants seemed to be closed, except one which was empty (I wasn't there on the lucky dates). I did see plenty of dogs who lived at restaurants (rat chasers I guess) who looked fat and happy. And owning dogs is trendy in Hanoi, with some people getting large and exotic breeds (I saw a husky, and a bunch of large pit bull types). And you see idiots exercise their dogs by running them while they ride their motorbikes (which sometimes looked a little sketchy). Anyhoo...

Lau is "hot pot":



Looks like it's only a garage now:



Empty, phew:





In a couple of outdoor markets, I did see a couple of cooked dogs being sold (and butchered, obviously, they are sold per kilo), they appeared to be smoked. 

[Lumpy]

Backyard and front yard chickens. Attn: Shaft. Chickens are easy to find. Did you know they make a horrible racket while you're trying to sleep?

This one is giving me a hard look:



This is Bun Cha, a popular meal in Hanoi. Bun is the type of noodles. You get a bowl of fish sauce/broth with a few sliced pickled vegetables plus grilled pork belly and grilled minced pork patties. Add a mess of herbs and chilies to your bowl, then dunk the bun noodles in there. Cucumbers and lettuce too. Not pictured: Nem (fried spring rolls). It's hella good. YES, that is a big bowl of chopped garlic with bird chilies.



Another bun cha, this one in progress. Comes with nem! Nem Cua (crab nem).



The fine establishment which serves the 2nd pic (and bia hoi, but this was lunch - too early for me to drink beer:



This lady in Hanoi makes a good bun cha. Here she is, eating her lunch (not bun cha):



Another popular meal is "com" (big plate of rice) where you pick what meats and vegetables will go on top. Price is based on what items you pick (and how much you look like you can eat, somebody told me).

Here's a Com situation in Dalat. I don't have any close-up pics of a com vender's wares. But these aluminum and glass trolleys are typical. Dalat seems nice and clean compared to Hanoi! (It kind of is).



And a couple of plates, which set me back about $1.50. Nice option if you're in a hurry, or want a lot of food, or you're tired of noodle soup. Those are roasted peanuts, and a shrimp somewhere, a fried egg, etc. And nem! (spring roll). Good ol' nem.





Sort of related (not at all, actually): Com Ga. Rice with chicken. It's not ala cart, so this is a lousy transition. But rice is involved (rice cooked with chicken stock). Nice pieces of chicken meat (no gristle in Vietnamese chickens, apparently). Black pepper. And a little giblet or something (that olive-looking thing) which I didn't eat. Com Ga! Humble but good.

[Lumpy]

This is Com Hen... rice with baby clams. It cost me 20k (one dollar). You pour the clam juice (pictured) over everything, and stir it up. All kinds of flavors and textures in there (starfruit, roasted peanuts, sesame seeds, shrimp paste & chilies, pork cracklin', fried something (noodle?), rice crackers, herbs). It was positively symphonic. I looked around for this dish, finally found it on my last day in Vietnam, in the 'food court' of the Dalat central market. It killed.



This is Bun Rieu ("Bun Zeyue" in northern Vietnam, "Bun Deyue" in central Vietnam... they have their own dialects). It's noodle soup (bun noodles) with crabmeat patties and in this case, a slab of pork shank. There's that shrimp paste again. I had some very average Bun Rieu in Saigon which made me think it wasn't a good dish. But this lady in Dalat made great Bun Rieu. OMFG.



She doesn't smile very much.



Her restaurant is on a little lane sandwiched between a busy highway (highway? road) and another road with a bunch of hotels and shops. There looked like a bunch of good food on this strip (lots of local people eating there).



More later.

[MadJohnShaft]

Yeah! heroic man.

I love all the toppings and condiments on everything. Amazing.

[RAGER]

Fukn great man!  Really inspiring.  Looking forward to more.

[peoplething]

Pretty cool Lumpy.

did you get the impression most of the ingredients were grown or raised by a small farmers or the people that actually cooked the food? or is it like here were one enormous  farm in california grows all the lettuce?

[deleted account]

epic posting, Lumpy!

[Lumpy]

Pretty cool Lumpy.

did you get the impression most of the ingredients were grown or raised by a small farmers or the people that actually cooked the food? or is it like here were one enormous  farm in california grows all the lettuce?

The climate is tropical (I guess that's what you'd call it?) so they are growing crops all over the country. Climates do vary, it's cooler in the north but even there, agriculture is big. The small food vendors sometimes have their own little herb and vegetable gardens on the side of the road (my friend said it was impressive, until you see a dog peeing there). Produce used to be controlled by the state for the bigger growing operations, I was told that is getting more privatized under "innovation" programs (same grow operations but privately owned). I will post some produce-growing pics. I don't know if this answers your question? I would say that "locally sourced" is typical, with most produce. Climate is kinda great, and national transportation infrastructure is kinda crap. Certain regions seem to specialize though, but I don't know for sure what that means. I was told that flowers from Dalat (central, moderate climate) were shipped to Saigon for sales (south, hot). Maybe it's not possible for one region to supply virtually all of their produce needs themselves?

/word salad