Eating in Vietnam

The Vietnamese diet is amongst some of the healthiest in the world. They live on rice, fish, fruit and vegetables. You seldom see an overweight person living and working in Vietnam.

We found there were three distinct styles of cooking. In the North the food is rather bland and does not use a lot of herbs. Central Vietnam uses the chili rather freely and the food is hotter and spicier than any other region.

The food in the South is sweeter due to fact that the people here use sugar cane in many dishes.

I didn't have a favourite region, but I did eat a lot of fresh (not fried) vegetarian spring rolls everywhere. Pho was a regular at all meals, including breakfast. Pho is a noodle soup often containing pork or chicken. You add your own flavourings when you eat your soup, things like basil or beansprouts.

We tried lots of other foods, some of which we didn't have a clue as to what we were eating. I know we didn't eat dog or rat! We tried the rat meal once in Belize and once is enough!

Fish didn't make make my list of favourites and neither did the chicken.








Rice and fruit were served everyday and in hundreds of different ways. I didn't try them all, but those I did eat were excellent. The most interesting way of cooking rice was the sticky rice ball that we saw being cooked at a roadside restaurant.