More food - duck embryo anyone?

My former father-in-law ate fertilized duck eggs. I've forgotten what the believed value of eating the fertilized egg is. However the egg simply being fertilized didn't necessarily make the egg desirable. The more desirable egg had a well defined duck embryo inside!

I can remember seeing him relish eating eggs with a clearly identifiable duckling, head, eyes, bill, webbed feet etc. all clearly visible. The eggs are eaten hard boiled.

Well, I never ate one and neither did any of his other sons in law.

Yesterday Huong took me to a hot pot restaurant. Never seen anything like it before except in a video game my kids had. You order a hot pot with broth which goes into a recess in the counter at your seat. There's a conveyor just beyond that which goes past all the seats in the restaurant, like an airport baggage carousel. On the conveyor are dishes with various ingredients that you pick off and dump into your hot pot to make your own meal. This conveyor had the fertilized duck eggs on it.

I was at the restaurant with my Huong and her oldest daughter. She asked me if I wanted one of the duck eggs and said it is one of her girls' favorites. Before I could think about it there it was in my hot pot. So I ate it. As it turned out mine didn't have a really well formed embryo so there was no visual of a little duckie being eaten. There were lots of veins in the egg and plenty of downy feather filaments though.

Now that I've overcome my reluctance to eat a fertilized egg I may need to try again, and again, until I get an egg with duckling inside. Then I'll know what it's like to eat one of the really desirable eggs.

More Food

I like to try all kinds of food. George Carlin set me off on a quest for the "blue food" ages ago. Like him I still haven't found it but I've come across plenty of mighty tasty things in the search.

Last night I went to a food festival in Hochiminh with my fiancee and her daughters.

Huong broght back to our table some grilled meat on skewers. Turns out one was deer and the other crocodile.

I've had deer before in the US. It's usually a bit gamey and tough. This deer was much the same.

On the other hand the crocodile was tasty. I would definitely enjoy having more. "It tastes like chicken" is often used to describe unfamiliar meats. In the case of crocodile it actually does taste something like chicken. The meat has a texture like beef though. It makes for an enjoyable combination of flavor and texture. I'll be having me some more of that!

And now that I'm back in Vietnam I need to get back on track sampling the unusual meats I didn't get to sample last visit. So still to come cat, rat, snake, cricket (bugs are meat, aren't they?), horse and I'm probably forgetting some.

and the new Vietnam adventure gets a noteworthy start!

This is my 2nd trip to Vietnam within a few months. I was here in September. Lots of good experiences that time around and some unusual ones too.

Last trip my taxi was in a traffic accident. I wrote about it in a blog entry then.

This time my taxi was in an accident before I even got from airport to hotel! Or maybe better to say we got hit by someone on a motorbike! I snapped a quick picture of the cab before getting into a following cab and completing the ride to the hotel.

We were stopped at a traffic light. Unusual enough that I took note of it. While still sitting at the light and the light still red there was a thump at the back of the taxi and then someone slid along the cab at my right side passenger window and then down to the pavement! And just behind him, falling to the pavement outside my door, was his motorbike.

The street was VERY busy and in typical Vietnamese fashion nothing stopped. All the traffic kept moving past the cab, the motorbike driver and his motorbike.

The driver got up off the ground pretty quickly, picked up his motorbike and seemed to be attempting to start it. My cabbie got out, walked around to the motorbike driver and took the keys from the motorbike.

Not sure if he did that because he didn't think the driver could drive safely or because he wanted to keep him around for the police report.

In any case there was an empty cab in the road right behind mine. Moved my luggage into that cab and completed the journey to the hotel.

So, I guess, welcome back to Vietnam! The adventure begins anew.

Vietnam's tallest building

Vietnam's tallest building is the BITEXCO Financial Tower.

UPDATE: now 2nd tallest















At least for now its the tallest. It's just a short walk from my hotel. Pay $200,000* and you get an elevator ride to the 49th floor observing deck. It is just a few floors below what I think is the helipad. Before I went up I was hoping maybe the observing deck was outside on that big platform. No :-( . Still great views of HCM from the deck. I'd definitely go up again.

looking west, Ben Thanh market is in this picture

I've was told an even taller building will be completed in Hanoi over the next few months. Even after that it is still a great view. No matter, its nice place to get a view of the city after all the walking around it that I've done.

Ben Thanh Market

As I've walked around HCM I've used the building as a guide post to set my direction and distance from the my hotel. In addition to being easy to see it's unique shape makes it obvious which direction things are relative to the building.

looking east

* $200,000VN = $10US the view's worth it!!

The rules

Rules are posted in a fair number of places. Much like in the US but the rules are generally more extensive. And usually there are elements to the rules that make me wonder just exactly whether there's a snowball's chance in hell the posted rule would actually be broken. 

This small boat I was on is a fine example of that.

Below are the posted rules. Note rule 3. The end of the first line and the beginning of the second. What is the likelihood radioactive materials or cattle might be brought on the boat? The radioactive materials could certainly be hidden but a cow, a cow. How could a cow be brought on board without the crew knowing someone was attempting to bring aboard a cow.

Garbage town

There is a lot of trash everywhere I've been. The beach I went to, Can Gio, is a real mess. In HCM there is trash on the streets everywhere and on the tour bus rides I've taken small trash piles are everywhere along the roadside. And Tây Ninha where the Cao Dai temple I visited had trash on all the streets the bus drove along.

In places like HCM it is difficult to find a trash can. Every other city I recall visiting has them pretty much at every corner and often times along the block as well. In Vietnam I've had too look carefully to find trash cans. This is true even in the resort I visited. And the beach at the resort is not one I'd like to go barefoot along.

I see street cleaners are everywhere in HCM. By "street cleaner" I mean a person in an orange jump suit pushing a rolling bin and carrying a broom and dust pan. A veritable army of these people sweep the sidewalks and streets. The street gets cleaned and the cycle starts all over again once the cleaners abandon the streets. My impression of the Vietnamese approach to public sanitation, at least in HCM, is "throw it to the ground and the street cleaners will pick it up."

This works after a fashion in HCM but I don't imagine the street cleaner vs trash ration is high enough once outside the city center. Judging from the trash piles I've seen along the roads it isn't. Much of the trash is inorganic, plastic, so it will be around for a while. Plastic bags are abundant and many beverages are sold in plastic bottles.

One item of trash I haven't seen much of is glass. From my bicycle riding I've developed a keen eye for glass to avoid flats. In the US it is everywhere. Even along quiet country roads. Given the amount of beer I see being consumed from glass bottles here I expected there to be plenty of that along the roads too. I'm not seeing it though. I don't know if there are bottle deposits but I guess glass must be valuable enough a resource that it doesn't qualify as trash.

Traffic never sleeps

Another video from the back of a motorbike. This time in the evening after dinner. Perhaps its the narrow streets, maybe it's that nobody walks and everyone's in the street on a motorbike, pedal bike, three wheeler with or without motor or maybe its just the unfamiliarity of it all but it seems to me that more than any other city I've been in HCM is always bustling.

There has not been a time when the streets are not busy. For me its fascinating.

Life happens on the sidewalks here and moves in the streets. Motorbikes park everywhere and crowd the sidewalks. Where there aren't motorbikes there are vendors on the sidewalks selling pho (soup), rice and rice flour dishes and sandwiches. Also drinks of various sorts.

Then there are the customers sitting all around on various sorts of low plastic furniture. There is hardly room to move on the sidewalks. So everything that moves, pedestrians, bikes, motorbikes, three wheelers, cars, etc. moves in the street.

If you ever come to Ho Chi Minh be prepared to experience traffic in a way you've never imagined before.