Good Morning Vietnam

Ever since last week I have been thinking about Vietnamese food and it made me recall the time that the Doll and I went to Vietnam.  We visited the Mekong river delta, where I quickly discovered that there is a rustic floating equivalent of all the vehicles we take for granted on the road, and indeed many of the buildings on our streets as well. There are floating petrol station boats, rice boats, fruit and vegetable boats, meat boats, fish boats, cargo boats, refrigerator boats, clothing boats, fire boats, ambulance boats, taxi boats, police boats, and even floating (3 storey!!) school boats.

The Doll organised a taxi boat to take us to an orchard on one of the many small islands in this vast vast river.  We were to have a “local experience”.  It turned out to be like many of our experiences in that it was a “you go first Ted” experience.  So I did … I met this lovely old man who told me he was 91 and I figured that if after the age of 60 he had lost one tooth every year, then he could be telling the truth. I bravely drank all the little samples of “wine” made from the various fruit he grew.  Then he served us some smallish fried morsels, which now fortified, I insisted the Doll try first. “Kinda like chicken” she said. So I tried them and took the “wine” he offered.  He then announced that it was fried snake and snake blood wine.  We slithered back to our taxi boat and made for home while I still had legs to stand on.

Thankfully you won’t find any snake on the menu at Cay Tre in Soho, or indeed its original restaurant in Old street.  We ate some really delicious food here, including bbq pork ribs, shrimp stuffed aubergine, many mushroom hot pot, minced pork in lot leaves, and duck stuffed reindeer squid (see their antlers). We drank tea from the cute glass teapots – the ingenious little spring in the spout traps the tea leaves.

Now ... completely unrelated .. as many of you liked the little Ghandi ditty, here comes another one .....

What do you get if a Frenchman throws a live grenade into his kitchen? (of course it’s a man, most women aren't silly enough to play with live grenades) … answer … Linoleum Blownapart.