Food, food and more food - October 10th

Having been here for a month, I think it's high time that I write about food, seeing as I've written very little as it is.

The food I eat:
Pho (pronounced like Fuh) is a noodle soup for breakfast. Its absolutely delicious, but honestly, I see it more as a lunch food than breakfast. The noodles are thin but wide, made of rice and delicious. The soup is either chicken (Ga) or beef (Bo - pronounced bo-ah) based. It has lots of vegetables and spices and I can see why it'd be the perfect meal to give you energy for the day.

However...for breakfast, I prefer...

Banh My Tru'ng: basic eggs and baguette - its essentially an omelette in a baguette with chilli sauce. Nice and spicy, and a good way to start the day. Of course, most vietnamese, if they are eating eggs for breakfast, prefer duck fetuses....If I had been aware what exactly this was the first time I tried it, I probably would have refused. Veal? alright. Unfertilized eggs? definitely....but a FETUS...never again.

Bun - this is kind of like Pho  but the noodles are thinner, much like vermicelli but made of rice (my cousin, Christian, would be ace in this country). The bowls are huge and there are often other smaller bowls surrounding them with things to add to the soup as you choose. Sometimes its spiced, grilled, meal worms. Sometimes its just chicken, beef, or shrimp. Often, there's a bowl full of basil and another bowl full of various cooked vegetables.

Generally, meals include soup of some form, cooked or grilled vegetables, some form of meat, or multiple forms of meat and rice.

There are also some treats that people have as snacks:
Pomello - a fruit that tastes much like a less bitter grapefruit. They usually eat slices of this dipped in salt.
Khô Bò: this is much like beef jerky but spiced with ginger. It's SO good
Ô Mai: dried fruits steeped in salt. It's usually apricot and its INCREDIBLY salty but very popular here.

More importantly though, I've now truly learned that it is so insanely magical that the Western world decrees Saturdays and Sundays as days off. Having been here for one full month, I finally got my first day fully off on Thursday and I have to say that Wednesday night, knowing that I did not have to go to work the next day, that I was only my own schedule for a full 24 hours, was bliss. I finally understand why my Dad just wants to watch TV when he gets home every night; I, admittedly, do the same...