Cham Island

Even though I spent nearly all of April in Vietnam, I somehow managed to miss out on the popular dive sites in Nha Trang. For one reason or another, I just didn’t make it there.

I did manage to squeeze in one day of diving while in Hoi An in between getting some shirts, dresses, and pants tailored.

I went out with Cham Island Diving and while it wasn’t the best dive company I’ve ever used nor was diving in Hoi An anything spectacular, it was still good to be out in the water again since it’s been eight long months since my trip to Roatan, Honduras.

Cham Island Divers

I did two dives and froze by butt off on the first dive. I miscalculated the temperature of the water.

Note to self: Use Google next time instead of doing any calculations in my head! If I had Googled “22C to F”, I would have gotten “71.6 degrees F” instead of an erroneous 80 F derived from fudged up brain math and I would have brought my thicker wet suit instead of a thin 3 mil meant for more tropical waters. It was the first time I ever had to end a dive due to being cold.

On my second dive, I borrowed another 3 mil to go over my own and was much more comfortable.

The visibility was pretty low at 25 to 30 feet (8 to 9 meters). This was due to a storm having just passed by the day before and something about the dive season having just started.

After our two dives, we were taken ashore to Cham Island for a lovely lunch and a bit of chill time on the beach and relaxing on hammocks.

Cham Island lunch

Between the crappy visibility, forgetting the flash diffuser for my underwater camera, and issues with my ears equalizing, this might have been the best photo I took:

Diving Hoi An

Oh! The cool thing about these dives, and it took me awhile to realize it, was that the coral was all alive!

Not that they were dead to begin with. But during day dives, you usually only see the hard structures of the coral, not the soft polyps that emerge from the many holes of the coral as they normally only come out at night to feed – a sight that makes night diving so spectacular.

I leave you with this short video which gives a better sense of the dive experience and the live coral!

Related posts:

1. A Week of Scuba Diving in Roatan (Honduras)
2. What We Did in Praslin (Seychelles)
3. What We Did in La Digue (Seychelles)
4. We Saw Leopard Shark!
5. Back from Roatan (Honduras)

Rice paper.

Most of the English speaking world use that term to describe the edible wafer-thin papery sheets made of rice flour, water, and sometimes tapioca starch, and dried on cross-hatched straw to give it a distinctive weavy pattern. They are used to make Vietnamese summer rolls or deep fried for spring rolls.

But all my life, I’ve known it by its Vietnamese term: Báng Tráng. It’s one of the few Viet words I know – the others, of course, are also food related. Those are the words that I seem to retain the easiest. No matter the language.

“So where should we eat tonight?”

I love this question when traveling. There are so many new restaurants and street vendors to explore. In Vietnam, it wasn’t just the never-before-tried-foods that were exciting because even the familiar foods took on a whole new level of food exploration. I’m convinced that the food tastes better in Vietnam not only because everything is so fresh (bought daily from the early morning markets) but also because it’s served with the proper accompaniments – unlike in the U.S. or in Dubai when a lot of omission or substitutions have to be made.

“There is this place famous for its bánh tráng,” suggests my mom’s friend.

Sure, I thought. I like bánh tráng, I’ll go along for the ride.

(And ride I did! A very nerve-wracking first time on the back of a Motorcycle, nervously pressing my lips together, tightly gripping the driver’s waist to the point of possibly cutting off her breathing and circulation, even at speeds of only 20km/hr, feeling very vulnerable without the protection of airbags and seat belts, constantly wondering if my helmet would offer any protection from a crash every time we navigated a ridiculously large round-a-bout with traffic rules I didn’t understand or weaved in and out of traffic.)

When we arrived at the restaurant (safe and sound but it took a while to peel my lips apart), we chose a table outside on the sidewalk and as we settled into the stools, my mom and her friends began to discuss what to order.

Banh Canh restaurant

The restaurant seemed to operate out of two seating areas separated by about 20 feet of space so the wait staff shuttled food back and forth between the two store fronts.

Waitress shuttling plates of herbs

We ordered the specialty of the place and when the báng tráng arrived, it was very different from what I expected. First it was folded in quarters and second it needed no re-hydration at all. The báng tráng we use from the U.S. are dry sheets of rice paper and need to be reconstituted in warm water then used right away or else it turns to mush.

Third, it did not have the characteristic cross-hatch pattern.

A different kind of Bánh Tráng (rice paper wrapper)

They remind me of defrosted spring roll pastry in their ultra thinness and springy texture. But these báng tráng did not need to be deep-fried as they would be eaten raw.

Bánh Tráng filling

At this restaurant, there seemed to be only two meat fillings to choose from – both of the pork variety. My mom tried to explain to me that one cut is from the upper leg and the other is the lower leg, possibly the shank. We chose the mixed platter. Then you can choose the size of the platter – for 1, 2, or 3 persons.

The thinly sliced pork for the báng tráng filling came with these accompaniments: thinly sliced pickled daikon (white radish) and carrot, pickled pearl onions, mung bean sprouts and this amazing basket of fresh herbs.

fresh herbs

I recognized some from my mom’s herb garden and others were completely new to me. My favorite that night were the young mango leaves. Tender and lemony, they added a subtle tang to my báng tráng rolls.

Assembling the Bánh Tráng

I followed my mom’s lead on assembling these báng tráng rolls (using our hand as a plate) first the lettuce, then fresh herbs and pickle, and then the meat.

Assembling the Bánh Tráng

Finally it is rolled tightly, a tad haphazardly as I had to do it in mid-air, and ready to be dipped into the all-important Vietnamese fish sauce (nuoc mam cham), which provides the “dressing” for this rolled up salad.

Banh Trang dipped in Nuoc Mam Cham

I enjoy making and eating báng tráng rolls because I can personalize the fillings to my own liking. The flavors of the pork mixed with crunchy fresh herbs and tangy pickles makes for a great combination.

For drinks, I noticed that Schweppes soda water served over lots of sugar and ice seemed to be a popular drink in Vietnam. Sure enough, my mom’s friend ordered a few glasses for the table but it was too sweet for my taste.

Soda Water with Sugar

It seemed that no meal in Vietnam was complete (at least for us) without a bowl of noodle soup so we ordered a few bowls of the restaurants name sake Bánh Canh Trang Bàng. My mom explained to me that “Bánh Canh” is the name of the soup and “Trang Bang” is a province in southeastern Vietnam. The restaurant’s name also includes “Út Dung” which could be the owner’s name.

The rice noodles used in the soup were round and about 1/4-inch thickness. The broth was made with a pork stock and served with pig feet and fresh herbs. I tend to eat just the meat off the pig’s feet and discard the skin since the texture and flavor of boiled pig skin in this form never appealed to me.

Bánh Canh - Rice Noodle Soup

Slurping down the noodles and soup in between making báng tráng rolls, I wondered if I would ever learn the background and secret of how these rice paper wrappers were made or if I would ever experience eating them again outside of Vietnam.

*   *   *   *   *

Bánh Canh Trang Bàng Út Dung restaurant: 441 Nguyen Tri Phoung, Phoung 8, District 10, Saigon.

Banh Canh restaurant

Related posts:

1. Emirati Recipe: Rice with Chicken in the Bottom (De-jaj ta-ha-tah)
2. Emirati Recipe: Chicken and Rice (Machboos / Fogga Dejaj)
3. A Long Day’s Travel – Lost Luggage – Mom’s Comfort Food
4. My Saigon – From Past to Present
5. Delicious Vietnam #19 – November 2011 Round-Up

ààÕc Ðào in Saigon

This week marks the one-year blog anniversary for Ginger and Scotch and I thought I’d celebrate by writing a post about…

…Snails!

One of the great things about having friends and family living in a place you’ve never visited is the insight they provide on the best places to eat – more often than not, places that are off the tourist map.

Although Õc Ðào restaurant (Õc means snails) may not be off the tourist map anymore, it is a place my mom and I would never have found it on our own.

“Do you like snails?” my mom’s friend inquired.

With an enthusiastic nod from me in response, the deal was sealed. We ventured into the tortuous back alleys somewhere off of Nguyen Trãi and Cong Quynh streets (in District 1) with the goal of introducing me to more varieties of sea snails than I could imagine.

Õc Ðào Storefront

Our cab pulled up in front of the main storefront (pictured above) – which actually seats very little – so we headed over to the larger seating area just across the road.

But first I strayed behind to gawk and salivate over all the different baskets of snails and other mollusks - from what I could see, there were also clams, scallops, large shrimp, and mussels. A mollusk lover’s dream!

Choose your snail!

We arrived at the end of the lunch rush which meant that we didn’t have to queue for a table.

Apparently, this place is so popular that even with the large amount of seating they have, it still gets jammed packed!

Õc Ðào - Annexed Seating Area

We settled ourselves on red plastic chairs and low tables that were more appropriate for the size of Wee Scotch and his little friends than five grown adults.

I arched my neck to stare at the selection of snails from the table next to ours – I couldn’t wait to start ordering! I was so excited, I forgot about sitting al fresco and sweating in the sweltering heat.

Table next to ours

The menu was all in Vietnamese so didn’t make one iota of sense to me but my mom’s friends did all the ordering so I just sat back and waited for the food to arrive.

Look at the choices! There are about 27 varieties of shellfish on the menu and we barely made it through one-third.

Õc Ðào Menu

We began our snail fest by first ordering two things that I have grown to love since traveling to Vietnam: young coconut and bread.

Not being a big fan of coconut (whether in milk, cream, or shredded forms – the smell sometimes makes me sick), I’m constantly amazed at how much young coconut juice tastes nothing like it’s mature form. In fact, by the end of my month-long trip in Vietnam, I was ordering a young coconut at almost every meal so that I could drink its clear, thirst-quenching liquid. And a chilled coconut yielded much better tasting liquid than one at room temperature.

We also ordered some lovely bread which I could go on and on about but it really deserves a post on its own. For now, let’s just say that the bread plays a wonderful role in mopping up all the saucy goodness from the snail dishes.

As the snail orders began to arrive, we were provided with tiny two-prong forks to assist in prying out the snail meat, and two different dipping sauces: Vietnamese fish sauce (nuoc mam cham) and freshly squeezed lemon juice with finely crushed white pepper (my fave dipping sauce for bringing out the flavors of seafood such as lobster and crab – no clarified butter for me).

*   *   *   *   *

And here is what we ordered…

1) Õc Len.  These were served in a mild Thai yellow curry-like sauce.

To taste the meat of these snails, I had to learn and perfect a sucking action as the tiny forks could not reach into the openings. The first 2 I tried weren’t very succesful but by my third I got the hang of it.

Õc Len

2) Õc Mõ’.  Served stir-fried in sweet and sour sauce.

Õc Mõ'

3) Sò Ðiêp.  Grilled scallops sprinkled with scallions and peanuts.

Sò Ðiêp

4) Õc toi.  Large snails with a lovely smokey flavor from the grill. When I thought I had pried all the meat out, my mom could always find a few more pieces.

Õc Toi

5) Nghêu.  Clams in a very spicy lemongrass broth.

Nghêu

The broth was so packed with flavor that I started to use my small sauce spoon to slurp up its yummy goodness but then gave up on these tiny efforts in favor of my drinking straw.

Broth was slurping good

6) Sò Huyê‘t.  Small clams that were all closed and necessitated the use of one’s fingernails to pry them open. Defies the belief that closed clams should be discarded.

Sò Huyê't

I had been so focused on eating the snails and other shellfish that it wasn’t until this dish that I noticed the little bits of fried pork fat in the sauces. There are few things better than a well-fried piece of pork fat (and on that note, crackling too!).

With each bite, there was some crunch and there was some tenderness. These tiny morsels were insanely addictively good. I could not stop eating all of it. Okay, I did eat ALL OF IT.

Hey, I was on vacation. Screw the calories and possible artery clogging properties. Nothing was going to stop me from eating ALL OF IT. Mmmm…pork fat, come to mama!

Allow me to zoom in on more of the fried pork fat heaven.

Fatty goodness

7) Õc huong .  Snails flavored with dry chilli.

Õc Huong

8 ) Chem Chép.  Mussels that were more tender, less chewy, than the New Zealand variety. The meat was soft and plump with a briny oyster-like flavor.

Chem Chép

9) Õc Ðo.  Possibly the largest snails on the menu. The meat was tough and chewy – grilled with a sweet and spicy sauce.

Õc Ðo

Õc Ðo

Our table was one big mess by the end of our meal as the dishes weren’t cleared in order to tally up the plates for the bill. Amazingly, with all this shellfish around, we were only annoyed by two flies (yes, I counted). In Dubai, even when the weather is nice to sit outside, Scotch usually opts for indoor seating as we are often besieged with flies often even before the food arrives. Perhaps we landed at Õc Ðào at the right time of day or year.

Oh, the bill came to a whopping 790,000 VND.

Sounds like a lot but it equates to $38 for 5 of us. A bargain at less than $8 per person. Crazy cheap in my books for all that food.

Oc Dao Receipt

Unlike Americans, I’ve noticed that the Vietnamese and Chinese are very stingy about their napkins. But moist towelettes seem to be ubiquitous at all the restaurants – though you are charged for how ever many you use. However, I still prefer a nice large DRY napkin and tend to bring my own.

But one advantage of the moist towelettes is that they are printed with the names and addresses of the restaurants so I took pictures of them as a way to record the places we ate at.

I *think* this was where we were. I can’t believe I left my iPhone at home that day and thus couldn’t google map it. But my mom’s friends say that the taxi drivers should be able to take you there.

Õc Ðào Restaurant: 212B/C79 Nguyen Trãi, P: Nguyen Cu Trinh, District 1, Saigon. Phone: 0909.437033.

Related posts:

1. My Saigon – From Past to Present
2. I Finally Ate at an Emirati Restaurant!
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Pho Vendor on Auntie's Street

The house used to smell like leather tanning all the time. It was an awful smell. But the cow skin was so fresh that the meat was often still attached – we would use it to supplement our meager food rations.

Since arriving in Saigon, the stories about my childhood and those of our family have been streaming out from my mom, Grandmother, and Aunties. I didn’t pay much attention before but now that I can put some visual context to the stories, I’ve been asking more and more questions. I didn’t know my family were leather tanners!

Your great-grandmother originally had 4 plots of land here. We needed the space for the leather tanning business. We sold 3 plots many years ago. Then bought 1 back recently to expand the current house.

I try to get more details out of my mom but the language barrier makes it difficult. She doesn’t know the English terms to explain the leather process and I don’t understand the technical Chinese terms she uses.

This is where you fell down the stairs when you were barely one year old and I had to call out to your mom and dad to take you to the hospital.

My grandmother has told me this story a million times before in New York but this is the first time I can actually visualize where it really happened. I looked in the direction of her pointing finger at the central staircase and tried to imagine how frightened my parents might have been. Especially in light of Wee Scotch’s two trips to the Dubai Emergency Room for head trauma.

This is my eldest daughter from America. She’s come to visit with me and has brought her son as well.

My mom still knows a few people in the maze-like neighborhood where Auntie’s house is. A few neighbors will greet us each time we leave the house. Since Auntie lives in the Cholon district of Saigon, many speak Chinese although I do not know how to make conversation with them so I just smile shyly and shuffle along with Wee Scotch. The streets around us are free of litter and I notice that each morning they are swept by the shopkeepers or homeowners with triangular straw brooms.

Wee Scotch paying respects to the departed on Remembrance Day

The pho [rice noodles in soup] is freshly made. Not dried and packaged like in the States.

Auntie has bowls of Pho delivered almost every morning for breakfast and everyone can’t help but remark about the fact that we are eating freshly-made noodles. I am amazed that the noodles are delivered in real bowls complete with chopsticks, spoons, and dipping sauce instead of in disposable takeout containers with plastic utensils. After the meal, the bowls and chopsticks are placed outside the house for collection by the Pho vendor.

Bowls of Pho arriving for Home Delivery

We couldn’t afford shoes as children and used to run around barefoot in the streets even with the glass factory next door. Sometimes, we would help the workers paint and decorate the little glass jars. They’re used for gas lanterns in areas that don’t have electricity.

One of the owners of the glass factory on Auntie’s alley allows me into her shop to take pictures of the glass-making process. She has known Auntie since they were small children and has taken over the family business along with her sisters. Inside, workers old and young bear the oppressive heat to churn out large glass jars and small glass lanterns. Outside, straw baskets lined with more straw are piled high, ready to transport the finished glass products.

Glass Factory on Auntie's Street

Baskets to transport the finished glass products

The city is going to pave our road one day so our house could only be expanded to a certain point. The government says any day now but that could mean another 5, 10, or 20 years. 

Auntie’s front gate is always locked – she said someone once snuck in and stole her motorbike. As I walk around the uneven cement street, I notice that many of the houses have their front gates open since they also serve as storefronts. Their owners or tenants mill around – in flip flops or barefoot – sometimes napping on a chair or right on the hard ground. Everyone seems to own a motorbike and indeed every house has a ramp so that the bikes can be pushed into the house for safekeeping.

Auntie’s neighborhood, like all of Saigon it seems, is one bewildering maze with one alleyway branching into others. There is a mix of residential and commercial – just on her alley alone is a small shop where we bought our mobile SIM card, an internet cafe that seems to be always packed with youths, two three four pho vendors (each bowl costs about $0.50), a small pharmacy, and at the end of the alley is a cart selling Bánh Mì (Vietnamese baguette – I like mine filled with meat, paté, cucumber, cilantro, and pickled veg) for $0.75.

Pho Vendor on Auntie's Street

See that three-story school across from our street? That used to be the tallest building around and now it’s one of the shortest. If you get lost, just try to find your way back to that school.

I take a picture of the school because my memory can’t seem to retain any of the Vietnamese words. Speaking the language is even worse. My attempts are similar to Joey learning to speak French on Friends and am constantly frustrated at my inability to properly pronounce the sounds. I wonder if this is how Scotch feels when he tries to speak Chinese.

Soon, our four generations consisting of Grandmother, Mom, Wee Scotch and me will begin our tour of Vietnam by flying north to Hanoi and slowly making our way back south to Saigon. I’m sure I will continue to hear more stories of not just mine, but their childhoods and those of their parents as well.

More than forty years ago, when I was about nineteen and before I met your father, I traveled with a group of Buddhist monks to see the countryside. It was an affordable way to travel and along with two other nursing friends, we traveled with the monks from Saigon to Danang to Hue. Those were the days we were young and carefree.

Related posts:

1. Scrumptious Snails in Saigon @ Õc Ðào Restaurant
2. Inaugural Week, Day 6 – Ginger and Scotch Chilli Martini
3. I Found Bubble Tea!!!
4. Dubai to Ho Chi Minh City
5. Burj Al Arab – Turtle Rehab Center

Last week, with the arrival of my grandmother in Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC), just a few hours after my own arrival from Dubai, there were four generations of my family together: Wee Scotch, myself, my mom, and my grandmother.

My mom and I were born in HCMC and although she’s been back a few times to visit family, this was the first time I had stepped foot on Vietnamese soil since we fled Saigon as “boat people” (in the late 1970′s) when I was only one year old.

Growing up in New York City, I had no concept of what life was like in my place of birth except from the stories recounted by my parents and relatives. I was not taught the Vietnamese language as our ancestral tongue was Cantonese and back then, not many could foresee the importance of being multilingual. The only thing I knew about Vietnam was the food but even that was limited to what my mom could cook or what we would order at Vietnamese restaurants.

It was a dark and stormy evening when we arrived in HCMC last Saturday. I can only imagine how treacherous that weather would have been for us three decades ago when we were stranded at sea for months before being rescued and brought to a refugee camp in Malaysia where we would spend many months before being accepted by US immigration officials.

But that day last week, I was ecstatic to see rain after a particularly long dry spell in Dubai. More excited was Wee Scotch, who had been reading about rain, thunder and lightning in his little storybooks, and kept urging me to take him out from our sheltered location into the storm.

As you can see from the video, the terminal lights were flickering on and off as if threatening to lose power completely. Palm fronds swayed back and forth tumultuously and I worried that the whole tree would topple over. Surely this weather is typical and the trees are strongly rooted?

Auntie later told me that by the time she returned to the airport, a few hours later to pick up my grandmother, many of the trees had been knocked down by the storm.

On the short cab ride to Auntie’s house, aka home-base for the next 4 weeks, I could hardly see anything except rain splashing onto the windows.

The weather in HCMC is the same as Dubai at the moment (highs of 90 F / 32 C) except more humid. I had been warned by my mom that there was no A/C in Auntie’s house except for the bedrooms.

Lucky for us, the rainstorm had brought about cooler weather and a respite from the hot and humid air. The night breeze was cooling and oh-so-refreshing after a long day’s travel (a 2 am flight is never any fun especially with a toddler).

When we finally arrived at Auntie’s three-story house, I carried a weary Wee Scotch up to our new room on the top floor. If heat, humidity, pollution and crazy traffic congestion was going to prevent me from exercising and running outside, at least I could achieve buns of steel from climbing those flights of stairs every day.

Wee Scotch's Travel bed

With Wee Scotch settled into his travel bed, I was ready to start exploring the neighborhood but I knew that that was not an option until the storm had passed.

Exploring would have to wait for another day.

Scotch was supposed to join us on this trip but due to last minute work demands, we had to cancel his plane ticket. In the middle of Skyping with him to let him know that we had all arrived safely, the electricity went out.

I worried that we’d be without power for days as had happened to me in NY last summer with Hurricane Irene. But amazingly, power was restored within a few hours (thank god because my iPhone was down to 20% power and without it, I feel like my right arm has been cut off).

As I settled down to sleep, all I could hear was the wind howling, shutters banging, and the crashing of heavy rains on corrugated rooftops. We left the windows open and it was so nice to feel fresh air blow across my body.

Hoping that the storm would soon pass, I drifted off into a travel-weary sleep.

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2. Wild Ginger @ Deira City Center
3. Dubai to Praslin
4. Dubai!
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