FOOD:

Before we left I feared a bit that all we would eat in Vietnam was going to be rice with fish or fish sauce. We were very pleasantly surprised by the variety of food. Yes, there is either rice or noodles with pretty much every dish but they come with all variations of meat, seafood, veggies and fruit in spicy, sweet and sour, soy ... sauces (a bit comparable to Chinese food). The meat, especially the beef is very tender and you can taste that the cows are grass fed (at least that’s how Nathan explained it to me). And even the smallest restaurant has menus “as thick as phone books”.
We did not see a single menu with dog on it, however some of the restaurants offered frogs, snails etc.
The food often was served in pretty original ways. Once we got our own little barbecue, then there was the “Hot pot”, where you get a pot with broth/sauce on fire (almost comparable to Fondue) and raw meat, fish and lots of vegetables to cook as you like. Another time we had meat cooked and served in a very nice clay pot and once wrapped and steamed in banana leaves.
Though the Vietnamese have noodle soup for breakfast there is a wide choice of breakfast alternatives for the international traveler. Once we found out that almost every little restaurant served pancakes (more like the French crepes than American pancakes) we had pancakes with chocolate/banana/pineapple/honey and lemon or a mixture of those for almost 3 weeks every morning. What a healthy way to start the day!
The fruit was the best. Some of them we have never seen before. Fruit was sold on every corner, juices and shakes of all kinds of fruit are on pretty much every menu.
The Vietnamese seem to take all their meals on the street. Then the sidewalks are blocked with little plastic tables and chairs.