April 8 and 9

(This first entry was written on the plane to Hong Kong)

An adventure can’t always start out great.   This one didn’t.   Our flight from Orlando to Dallas was running too late for us to make our Los Angeles flight.   It was a good thing Chef Tran suggested we get to the airport between 1 and 1:30.   We needed every minute if it to re-ticket all 20 of us.   We were sending students off 2 and 3 at a time as flights became available and by 5 pm the last of us were on our way.   Those of us that flew to Dallas to connect finally all met up and had a couple hours to kill, so we had some dinner at a Chili’s.   We finally all got to Los Angeles in time to catch our flight to Hong Kong.   1 hour into the flight the captain announced that there was an unauthorized piece of luggage on the plane and we had to go to Vancouver (yes, I mean Canada) to get rid of it.   This turned a 14 hour flight into a 16 hour flight.   We are half way between LA and Hong Kong now.   I have totally lost track of time, couldn’t even guess the time of day.   I know the sun is out.   The entire trip was done in darkness, as the crew kept the lights turned off and the windows closed.   I guess when you have a plane full of people cramped up for 16 hours it is best that everyone just sleep.

April 10

We arrived in Hong Kong finally!   Everyone is very happy to be off of the plane.   Fortunately we had a four hour layover before heading to Saigon.   The airline gave us all hotel rooms at a luxury hotel in the airport because of the delay, so everyone got a chance to shower and have a leisurely lunch.   The hotel was beautiful.   Everyone commented on how English friendly it was there.   I reminded them that Hong Kong was a British colony up until just a few years ago.

Back in good spirits we headed to Vietnam.   When we landed in Vietnam you could tell right away that we were truly in a different world.   The airport was not a real happy place.   Lots of men in uniform walking around and the general populace were very subdued.   4 students had pieces of luggage missing, but it was tracked down and will be here tomorrow.   We met Quynh (our guide for the trip) and his entourage and they were very friendly, helpful and well versed in English.   We left the airport in a very nice bus and got our first look at city traffic in Vietnam.   It was unlike anything we had ever seen.   The main form of transportation is scooters and small motorcycles and they are everywhere; weaving in and out of traffic, basically ignoring any road rules, running two, three, and four abreast, changing lanes cutting each other off, etc.   It was amazing and fun to watch.   You see entire families on one motorcycle sometimes.   The Father driving, the young child sitting between his legs, the mother on the back, and she is carrying something!   We even saw people riding in this melee and dialing cell phones!   Amazing!   We didn’t see one traffic mishap.   Quynh later told us that the main rule was that the smaller vehicle gets the right of way.   The most important thing was a big horn and good brakes.   It just flowed.   I think the main reason it was so smooth was that everyone goes around 15 miles per hour.   The city was packed with people.   Quynh told us that 60% of the population was under 30 years old, so it was jumping.

We ate at a wonderful restaurant called the Mandarin.   It was very elegant.   Everyone loved the food and the atmosphere.   The service was impeccable.   We all retired to our hotel, The Bong Sen, and slept the sleep of the dead.   What an amazing three days this has been.

April 11

            This morning after some much needed rest we all had some breakfast at the hotel.   They had traditional breakfast meats and breads as well as Pho (noodle soup) and of course juices and the mud they call coffee.   It’s not too bad with a lot of cream in it.   We then boarded the bus for a traditional Pho restaurant.   Pho is traditional Vietnamese breakfast with broth, noodles, herbs (cilantro, Thai basil, jalapeno, sprouts, condiments (sriracha, chilies in oil, hoi sin sauce or oyster sauce) and beef or chicken.   In the South it is usually beef, called Pho Bo.   It was delicious!   We were able to look into the kitchens and it was quite a sight.   Large pots simmering the beef, usually brisket, women slicing the beef, preparing broth and cleaning herbs.   There are large pieces of beef hanging over the pots and dripping into the broth; nothing like what we see in American restaurants.   The food is always freshly made.   There is no preparing the day before.   The tables in the restaurant are laden with platters of herbs and sprouts.   You dress your Pho with whatever you like in it.

            We then visited Thien Hau pagoda, a temple where people worship, pray, and light incense to pray for family, friends, and the dead.   It was a very serene setting that was spiritually moving.   Beautiful carvings and motif were on display and the smell of incense was everywhere.   Quan Yin energy was felt as we observed people praying.

            We then proceeded to the Ben Thanh market.   It looks much like our flee markets except the fresh foods are on display all over the place, and I mean fresh!   There are stalls with every kind of animal you can think of (lots of it still alive!), women cutting and butchering, pork, beef, ox, fish, shrimp, frogs, squids; you name it, it was there.  The produce was abundant and endless!   These stalls were on the outside of the market.   On the inside you could get lots of these foods cooked and served to you.   Further in were all of the stalls where they sold clothes, jewelry, knock off watches, kitchen utensils; I bought a food carving kit for around $9 that sells in our bookstore for $120.   The currency exchange rate here is phenomenal.   16,000 of there money (called dong, pronounced dau) is equal to $1 of our money.   Everyone had a great time shopping.

            One of the sad things about Vietnam is the poverty.   Just like in America, the rich are the smallest percentage of the population with the most money.   There is a middle class here, which makes up a large portion of the population, now that they have a free market society.   The poor however are everywhere.   Unlike our country, the poor people are out in the streets trying to sell you everything.   There is no waiting around for government assistance.   They work all day to sell trinkets to feed their families.   You feel sorry for them and want to help, but sadly, it is like throwing bread to seagulls.   Once you start you get surrounded.   I think I paid for the first semester of college for one girl because she was so persistent, pathetic, and cute.   Mothers with babies on their arms, young school age children, and disfigured or disabled people are everywhere.   They sell pamphlets, stamps, t-shirts, trinkets, carvings, etc.   You name it and they sell it.   It is so cheap by our standards that you think “Why not”?   Of course at the end of the day you look at your wallet and realize just how persistent (and successful) they were.

            We then took a trip to the Vietnam War Remnants Museum.   A truly life changing experience.   This was a very sad and touching experience.   Everyone was moved deeply by the pictures, and accounts of soldier’s struggles and the results of the war.   It was very disturbing to us all.   Man’s inhumanity to man was on display in pictures and war correspondences from the battle field.   It was very hard to stay in any area for long.   It was quite an experience; not one I want to do again.   There were fighter planes, tanks and rocket launching devices on display as well as actual prison cells and torture chambers.   I have a hard time even writing about it now.   We were all moved to tears.   Thematic exhibitions included; historical truths, vestiges of war crimes and aftermaths, requiem (collection of photos taken by war reporters), and US weaponry used in the Vietnam War (they call it the American War).   To quote Forrest Gump; “That’s all I have to say about that.”

            We visited a huge post office; a catholic church built by the French and saw beautiful architecture and national buildings that are dear to the Vietnamese people.

After a short break we went to dinner at Ngoc Suong seafood restaurant.   This is a local restaurant that caters to local clientele.   The food was excellent.   We had Prawns steamed in coconut juice, Seafood Fried Rice, Sautéed morning glory with garlic, Ngoc Suong seafood Salad, Grilled river prawns (they were huge!) and watermelon for dessert.

April 12        

            This morning when went to a small family owned restaurant that served Pho to us on a makeshift table on the side walk in front of the place.   It was excellent.   We also had sticky rice with peanuts and pork floss (finely shredded pork).   The daily Pho has become a habit and a great way to start a day.   We then traveled to the countryside in the Mekong Delta.   The family that we visited makes noodles.   They had a small factory behind their house.   They buy the rice, a short grain variety, and soak it overnight.   It is then placed in a big grinder.   They had mechanical equipment, but in the past it was done by hand on big grinding tablets much like the old olive oil presses used in Europe.   The ground rice is then put in big sacks and weighted so that it drains and becomes compressed until it looks like curd.   The solid mass is then ground again until it is a paste.   The noodles are cut and cooked and cooled.   The whole family is involved, making about 400 lbs. a day.   These people are very poor and some of the friendliest people we had met.   The kids were thrilled with us and we played with them, posing for our cameras and cutting up.   We went to another family operation where they made rice paper.   The equipment they used was very old.   Large pots fueled by burning rice husks were simmering.   They had a plastic lid that fit on the top with just enough room to allow a little steam out.   Ground rice water is spread evenly on the lid and then covered for about a minute.   They use a flat stick to carefully lift the cooked paper of the lid and rolled onto a round pin, and then unrolled onto bamboo mates.   They are dried in the sun.   The pattern that you see on rice paper is from the weave of the bamboo mats.   They make about 30,000 a day and their profit is about 30,000 Dong per day.   That’s about $2.00.  They also raised pigs.   The mother pig was huge!   They had about a dozen piglets as well.   We wanted to take them home.   We stopped on the way back at a little restaurant and food store where we had some banh trang; basically a local Pho.

Our next stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels.   During the Vietnam War a huge tunnel system was utilized to hide from the superior fire power of the invading forces.   We were shown tunnel entrances that were so small it was amazing.   Some of us took turns going into the small entrance.   I am 150 pounds and I just fit in the hole.   They also had on display the booby traps that were used.   It was horrific.

We went back to the hotel for a little rest and then to a hands on cooking class with Cam Van, one of Vietnams most famous chefs.   She has a restaurant in Saigon and cooking shows that play nationally.   We did little spring rolls with pork and shrimp, a rolled mustard leaf with noodles shrimp and pork and shrimp, and a wonderful roll using lot leaves and, yes, pork.   The spring rolls were fried, the mustard leaves were eaten fresh, using cooked product inside and the lot leaf rolls were skewered and then grilled.   After we ate everything we made we went upstairs for dinner.   It wasn’t that good, to be honest, but that was no problem because we were all pretty full from eating the rolls that we had made.   Chef Tran is a better chef so now we know how spoiled we were.   A small group of us went to Tran’s family’s place where they had a ton of food and home made vodka that lit us on fire!   It was our last night in town so it was a touching experience.   We met Chef Tran’s father and various brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews.   We had a great time.   We were exhausted after our day and went back to the hotel to pack and get ready to leave.

April 13

            After a frenzied exit from the hotel we flew to Danang.   We stopped at an excellent fresh seafood restaurant called the Aspara.   Tran and I went back into the kitchen.   It was very clean and efficient.   In the kitchen they had tanks where all of the seafood they served was kept alive.   They had lobsters, shrimp, oysters, and fish all alive and swimming around.   A girl demonstrated a beautiful tomato rose carving for us.   Our menu consisted of crab meat and corn soup, quang noodles, crispy fried squid, grilled beef poached in coconut juice, belly fish simmered in clay pot, water spinach sautéed in garlic, and watermelon for dessert.   It was excellent.   We visited the most spectacular mountain called the marble mountain.   We had to climb up the mountain on steps carved out of it.   It was an exhausting climb but well worth it.   There was a large cave in the mountain that is used for worshiping.   Daoism and Buddhism were represented in little shrines and there was a huge carving of a deity way up on the wall.   The energy in this cave was exhilarating.   Words don’t suffice to describe the feeling in the air of that cave.   We then continued on to Hoi An to our resort.   It is paradise.   The people are friendly and helpful, the resort is simply beautiful.   It was nice to be out of the city.   For dinner we walked into the little town and had a great meal at the Brothers Café.   Our menu consisted of Minced beef and fungus soup, spring rolls, Hoi an White Roses dumplings, Grilled beef with chili and lemongrass, green mustard leaves broth with shrimp and sponge cake.   Sufficiently stuffed we walked back to the resort for some pool time and then early to bed to be ready for our 5 A.M. wake up call to take a boat to the fish market.

April 14

            We woke up early and took a boat ride to the Hoi An fish market.   It was like nothing you can imagine.   Hundreds of people were coming and going by boats to load and unload fresh seafood.   The market itself was pure pandemonium.   Women squatting on the floor all over the place, sorting and cleaning fish, squid, eels, etc.   Further in there were aisles of people selling all kinds of things such as; produce, teas, Hoi An sandwiches, drinks; you name it, it gets sold in Vietnam.   We were giants in this market.   We were giants everywhere we went.   Two old woman let me take a picture of them for 10,000 dong.   They had black-green teeth.  Tooth blackening was (and still is) a deliberate process but it was the result from the habit of chewing betel.   A betel chew is made up of several ingredients: betel leaf, slivers of areca palm nut and a bit of lime paste.   The pieces of nut covered with lime paste are wrapped in a leaf of the betel pepper vine, making a tiny package that fits neatly into the pouch of the cheek.   The quid, as the entire package is called, releases a mild stimulant and anesthetic that relieves toothaches while suppressing the appetite.   Betel chewing is still a common custom throughout Southeast Asia and has the same geographic distribution as the custom of filing and blackening the teeth.   Indeed chewing betel does affect the coloring of the teeth but it conveys an irregular brown color instead of the lustrous black seen in Vietnamese who have had their teeth lacquered.   There were cultural reasons for tooth blackening.   It was believed that only savages, wild animals and the demons of the underworld had long white teeth.   In part, the original rationale for the filing and blackening of the teeth at puberty was the assurance that one would not be mistaken for an evil spirit.   This practice of blackening the teeth was still done up into the 1930’s and may still be done in some villages.   (http://www.thingsasian.com/goto_article/article.897.html)

            After breakfast at the resort we went to the Tra Que herb village.   It was truly beautiful.   Row after neat row of herbs, lettuces and small plants as far as the eye could see.   People working the land were dressed in the same garb and using the same tools that have been common for hundreds of years.   It struck me that if I were to see the same farm three hundred years ago, it would have been the same scene.   We went to the Hoi An bread factory where they make fresh baguettes.   Our tour guide, Quynh, told us that it was one of the few things that the French left behind that the Vietnamese still hold on to today.   Of course the humidity is so high that they eat the bread for breakfast because it doesn’t stay crisp for long.   We ate some right out of the oven.  It was a real taste of home for us and we all ate an entire loaf.

            That afternoon we went to Miss Vy’s School of cooking in the Cargo Club Restaurant and Hoi An Patisserie.   She was the most professional and polished instructor that I have ever seen.   She and her Sous chef were both beautiful women and very efficient chefs.   I kept looking around for cameras, thinking that we had messed up and this was the day we were supposed to wear chef coats for filming.   We found out later that she travels to Australia regularly and does a cooking show there.   Her show has been on PBS lots of times.   I thought she looked a little familiar.   The food we prepared there was just gorgeous, as well as delicious.   She blew away Cam Van from Saigon.   In her class we prepared fresh spring rolls, a wonderful papaya salad garnished with shrimp and a pepper flower, and grilled white mackerel with turmeric.   When they are called fresh spring roll, they are made with raw herbs and lettuces and cooked meat and shrimp wrapped in a very thin rice paper that is moistened just enough.   The grill mackerel was large diced and seasoned with garlic shallot oil and turmeric, and then wrapped in banana leaf (about 10 layers folded in such a way that no juices can leak out.   It is then grilled and as the layers of banana leaf burn the fish gets cooked.   When it comes off of the grill you careful open it and discard burnt leaves until you reach the last layer or two and that is simply opened and left on the plate for a beautiful display.   We then had lunch with these dishes and more.   We couldn’t eat any more and went back to the hotel for a nap.   Later that night we were on our own and most of us went back to her restaurant for dinner.   She had a very continental menu so we were ordering steaks and lamb chops and mashed potatoes.   It was very good.   Her staff makes a mean demi glace.

April 15

            We woke up this morning very sad that we had to leave Hoi An.   It was a 2 hour drive to Hue (pronounce hway).   We stopped on the way at a woman’s house that made fresh tofu.   It was practically identical to cheese making.   She gets up at 2 in the morning to start soaking and cooking her soy beans.   If they cook too long they get sour so she must start this early and keep a close eye on it.   They are then ground and strained in to a bucket.   It looks the same as the rice slurry used in making noodles and rice paper.   She then cools it off a little and slowly adds sour juice from the previous days beans to act as the curdling agent.   As it curdles she strains it out, puts it in a very simple and old press lined with cheese cloth and presses it into a long brick.   We all tried it and it was amazing.   It tasted like very light eggs or something.   We sprinkled seasoned salt on it and ate it still hot.   It was so good.   I now know what tofu is supposed to taste like.   We then went to a Buddhist Nun’s Convent where we had a vegetarian lunch of:   potatoes soup, spring rolls, fried dumplings, stir fried vegetables, tofu in tomato sauce jackfruit salad, fruits and “phu the” cake (traditional wedding cake).   It was very good, but we all commented that we were hungry an hour later.   The convent itself was very peaceful and calming.   It had a nice garden and inside the worshiping building were a huge drum and lots of statues and incense burners.   We checked into our hotel, The Morin.   It was a French style hotel, very elegant.   We then took a cyclo ride around town and for a visit to the Citadel.   The cyclo is a Pedi cab, or the Vietnamese version of a rickshaw.   My driver was 72 years old and a war veteran.   I felt bad almost having him do all the work for my pleasure.   He was nice as can be and I tipped him big.   He told me that I would never need to walk anywhere around his town again.   I am sad to say I never needed him again.

The Citadel was constructed by Emperor Gia Long in 1804 for the private use of the emperor and his household, the enormous moated Citadel is comprised of three separate walled enclosures.   The outer citadel, surrounded by a six-mile (10km) perimeter wall punctuated by 10 gates, frames the Imperial Enclosure used for official business.   At the very centre is the Forbidden Purple City, the restricted residence of the emperor and his concubines.   (http://www.wordtravels.com/Attractions/Countries/Vietnam/Attractions/The+Citadel)

We retired back to the hotel for a rest and then went for the best cooking class and dinner at the Tha Om house.   It is a spectacular garden house, where all of the walls are open and you step from room to room over low ledges.   The gardens were splendid, filled with bonsais and lily ponds.   Our class consisted of learning yet another type of spring roll made with lace rice paper, grilled beef on a tile, and another beef in lot leaf dish.   Lots of the things we are seeing and learning are starting to be repetitive, but in name only.   Everywhere you go they prepare the same dish but with their own regional differences.   We sat down to dinner to the accompaniment of a traditional Vietnamese band playing the sweetest music.   At dinner each table had there own personal waitress that served and cooked right at the table,   They wore traditional Hue girl outfits that consist of form fitting slacks and tight silk tops that go down to the knees, but with a slit up both sides that reveal about one inch of skin at the waste.   It is said of these outfits that they reveal nothing and everything.   The food was superb and many things that we experienced here brought tears to my eyes.   I have cried more on this trip than I have in years.   I toasted the owner of the house at the end of the meal by telling him that we didn’t want to leave because for the rest of our lives we will be disappointed in the food and hospitality after experiencing his.

April 16

            After a breakfast of Bun Bo Hue, the pho of the central region, we took a sightseeing tour of the Royal tomb of Tu Duc.  It was interesting but somewhat anticlimactic.   We are getting a little more history than we really wanted, but it is still enjoyable to most of us.   We had lunch and a cooking demo at La Residence hotel with Chef Stephan.   He is an international chef from France who has worked all over, most recently in China.   We asked him if he spoke Vietnamese or Chinese.   He said no, that English is spoken all over the world and that was the common language.   Also kitchens and cooks all over the world are the same and communicate with a lot of sign language and of course tone of voice is not hard to understand.   The food was exceptional as we ate out on the deck near the pool of this beautiful hotel.   Again the service here is impeccable.   There is no labor shortage or labor cost control here.   Everywhere we go is overstaffed and you’re every need taken care of.   We then took an afternoon flight to Hanoi.   Once again we were very sad to leave this beautiful place.  We checked into the Guoman hotel in Hanoi.   We once again found ourselves in a big bustling city with tons of traffic and noise, accompanied by the constant sound of the cycle horns beep beeping 24 hours a day.   The air here is hard to breath, exhaust is the main smell.

            We went and saw a show at the Water Puppet Theatre.   This is a puppet show dating back to the 1100’s.   The rice farmers would stage these shows in the water.   The puppets are controlled by long poles and the puppeteers are behind grass so you can’t see them.   It was amazing.   A band is on the side of the stage and they provide the music and some of the puppets voices.   Very entertaining.   We had dinner ant the Indochine Restaurant.   Our menu consisted of hot and sour seafood soup, fried crab spring rolls, grilled beef with honey sauce, steamed tofu with perfume mushrooms, stir fried morning glory, baked rolled pork with coconut, stir fried prawns with peanuts, steamed rice and fresh fruit.   It was a feast, to say the least.

April 17

            In the morning we went to the Koto cooking school.   KOTO started as a small sandwich shop run by nine street children in Hanoi.   It was set up by Jimmy Pham, a Vietnamese Australian who had been working in Vietnam as a tour guide and who got to know some of the street kids.   The idea was to provide these young people with hospitality skills that would enable them to gain employment.   KOTO is an acronym for Know One Teach One which expresses their goal.   It is best explained using a quote from KOTO’s founder, Mr. Jimmy Pham.

“The greatest accomplishment for the person who has helped you is to see you stand on your own two feet or to reach your destination and then in turn to watch you come back and help someone else that reminds you of yourself, because if you Know One then you should Teach One.”

KOTO trainees either come from living on the streets of Hanoi or from extremely poor circumstances.   Each has a sad life story to tell, however KOTO chooses to focus on the positive changes that each individual trainee has made during their time with us.   The trainees do not always want to talk about their life before KOTO.   (www.streetvoices.com.au/common/pdf/FAQs.doc)

            We were instructed by Nguyen Thuy Ha’ who is a graduate of the program and is training to be an instructor.   She was very good, could easily work at our school.  I said earlier that cooks all over the world are the same and that body language and tone of voice work as well as spoken language.   At one point Thuy had misplaced something and she barked out something in Vietnamese; one of our students immediately picked up a bowl and handed it to her, knowing that was what she wanted.   We all laughed.   All of us were touched by the story of the school and many students plan on sending money, cookbooks and supplies to them when we get back to the states.   We had three of the garnish tool kits left and one of the students had a cleaver he had bought, that we donated to the school.   We felt very good about this.   Also the boxes weren’t going to fit in anyone’s suitcases.   J

            We had a wonderful lunch and once again were welling up inside.   Chef Tran talked to a class that was experiencing their first day of school and the staff and students just loved it.   To have a VN person tell his success story about hard work and never giving up was very special to them.   We made many new friends and I am already starting to receive e-mails from some of the students.

            We then went to the ancient quarter where there are literally thousands of shops where each street features a different product or food.   The shopping was phenomenal.   Everyone went crazy.

            We went to Cha ca La Vong for dinner.   This is one of those family owned restaurants that have been in existence for hundreds of years.   They serve one thing and there is always a line out the door.   You sit down and they bring you a drink, a cold towel to wipe the sweat off.   The food is simply fish seared on the table in a charcoal burning stove with vegetables and turmeric, and rice noodle are served on the side.   There is one stove for every three or four guest so the place is very hot.   They know how to keep the fire at the perfect level because it never stops cooking and it never burns.   It was outstanding!   The servers just keep the pans full until you stop eating.   We were stuffed and happy.

April 18

We went to the   big food market in Hanoi and it was a shock to us.   The market was terrible! It stunk, was seriously unsanitary, and they drive the damn motor scooters right down the aisles so one is constantly having to watch for traffic and step aside. The place is full of exhaust and horns beeping.   A complete mess. Some of the students liked it, but most hated it. I had to comfort one student for a half hour after she saw butchered dogs   at one stall.

We had a full day excursion, first stopping at Mr. Son’s farm.   It was quite an experience.   He is part of a village that is in the middle of nowhere and the local people all had to come out and stare at us because they don’t see white people in their village.   They never see people as big as us either.   Once again we see evidence of the fact that these simple people “work for living”.   They are not interested in becoming rich, and success to them is feeding their families and taking care of their communities.   Once again, very humbling.   We then had a three hour bus ride to Ha Long Bay, listed as a World Heritage Area of outstanding natural beauty.   Legend has it that it represents a “Dragon descending to the sea.   It has 1969 limestone islets rising from the sea and many of them have great little grottos and caves.   We explored one cave that was huge where they had cut out steps all through it making it a good tourist area.   We had a great seafood lunch on board the boat.   We stopped at one of the floating stores and bought live fish and langoustines.   Tran prepared the fish (steamed Shanghai Style) and presented it beautifully.   We also had steamed shrimp and crab.   They served us some fish that wasn’t good at all, full of tiny pin bones so no one enjoyed that, but it didn’t matter, we had Chef Trans fish and it was amazing.

            It was a three hour trip back so we all got to catch naps and talk about our experiences.

April 19

            We had a morning visit to a local pho restaurant to once again compare the pho of the north, central and south.   It was there that we were greeted by the cameras and reporter from the Hanoi TV channel and they followed us around for the rest of the day.   John Hickson, Phil Meola and I were all interviewed about our experiences and everyone was very happy.   We all wore our chef coats to represent OCA and it went very well.   We are all anxious to see a copy of the tape.   It will be on TV in VN sometime in May.   We then went to the old quarter and had a cooking class with Ms. Tuyet.   She is a famous chef from these parts, Anthony Bourdain wrote about her, and she cooks all of her old family recipes.   Her pho was the best yet.   Our class consisted of Morning glory salad, fish spring roll, and pho with beef.   Our lunch consisted of those three items plus imperial style prawn, honey roasted chicken, sticky rice and longan and lotus sweet soup for dessert.   It was presented very elegantly.

            Last but not least, we had our farewell dinner at the Emperor restaurant.   We had Green papaya salad with shrimp and pork, spring rolls, grilled beef in betel leaves, fried soft shell crab, steamed garrupa (grouper?) in dark sauce, eggplant in a clay pot and fresh fruit.   It was magnificent and a perfect ending to our extreme culinary tour of Vietnam.

April 20

            We had the morning free to pack and check out, went with our guide to another local family owned restaurant for lunch.   This one specialized in Bun Cha, which is a pork dish.   Pork is prepared three different ways and is served with rice noodles on the side and fresh herbs to flavor and garnish.   The pork was in meatballs, roasted and slice, and in   a deep fried rice paper wrapper.

            We met back at the hotel, took the ride to the airport and said our final farewells to Quynh.   It felt odd to us that he was not going to be with us anymore.   We were sad, but happy to be on the road again.   Or should I say in the air.   The trip home was much faster and smoother than the trip here.

I have tried to remember everything but know I have left things out of this because so much has happened.   We have all eaten so much food we feel close to bursting.   I myself have gained about 7 pounds.

This has truly been a life changing experience and I would recommend this adventure to anyone and everyone.

Dale Pyle

April 22, 2006