Rach Gia

Rach Gia was the tiny town we flew to, its where we accessed the river to be able to get to the bride's home.  It was tiny, no fast food places, a couple of grocery stores, no big shopping centre, no tourism and certainly no english.  There is no way we could have managed there without some Vietnamese friends! We stayed in the fanciest hotel there and it was $20 a night. It was ok! We stayed here for two nights as the only real reason we were in this particular town was to get to the weddings.  We did manage to fit in some amazing meals, some of the more memorable were a cold beef and rice noodle salad dressed with fish sauce, lime, vinegar and sugar with fresh coriander, mint and chili (for breakfast - YUM - that'll wake you right up!), a pork dumplings and noodles in a spicy tomato broth (again with fresh coriander and mint - that stuff gets addictive) and my favourite discovery (though not a meal) was Vietnamese Ice Coffee (or Cafe su da - i managed to be understood by the end of the holiday when I ordered this in restaurants!)

The glass on the right is cold ice green tea, nothing to do with the ice coffee but it is served as a complimentary drink as soon as you go into a restaurant. So the glass in the middle has the cool little percolator on top which has the coffee grounds in it (a particular type of Vietnamese coffee) and the boiling hot water running through it.  The white layer on the bottom of the glass is condensed milk.  After all the water has drained through you use the spoon (provided in the glass of ice -see?) to mix the coffee and condensed milk together and then pour it over the full glass of ice.  The ice melts and chills the drink and you are left with an insanely tasty ice coffee that is reason alone to go back to Vietnam.  We bought all the tools while we were thee to try to re-create this at home but I don't think I can recreate the atmosphere.....



Justin shopping in the local grocery store.  As you can see - people there are generally a lot shorter than Justin. Note the shelves that only go up to his shoulders and trolley that looks like a toy.  And in the trolley? Tiger beer - a great beer available in Asia.

1USD=20,000 Vietnamese Dong.  Equals difficulty when trying to stuff such large amounts of currency into your wallet. Yes they are $500,000 notes. 

 Walking to our hotel - it is the tallest building you can see there in the distance.

Taken from the boat when we were coming back from the weddings - this is in a larger section of the Mekong Delta.