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After so many days of being weak and trembly in the belly, finally felt strong and hungry. This is a first snack at a place called banh cuon LA. It's clean and modern, and would look just as home on Melrose Avenue or Main Street in Santa Monica. Things cost about twice as much as they would at a hawker stand, meaning about 18,000 VND or about $1.20 for this plate. It's freshly made steamed rice noodle/wrapper with Vietnamese sausage and crispy shallots. The sausage is surprisingly close to kielbasa, having that nitrite-ey, brined and smoked taste. [It's served with a soy-based sauce, so the overall effect is very similar to the look fun noodles you might get at a Hong Kong style dim sum joint - the ones with some shrimp or green onions rolled in them]

I spent the afternoon unsuccessfully looking for a particular vendor of bun mam noodles. So when I spotted this little stand with about 35 customers at 11:30pm, I had to check it out. That's really impressive, given that the blocks around here aren't so busy at that time, even though it's only a few blocks from Ben Thanh market. This contains the slightly thicker rice noodles (udon sized), with a couple of squares of pork skin, a few cubes of pork blood, and a nice slab of pork shank that was cooked tender, but still toothy. Before you start turning your nose up at pork blood and skin and so on, I'll just say it's delicious. And worth many times more than the $0.90 cents I paid.

Here's the view of it from across the street. It's a different restaurant during the day, they just use the sink and the sidewalk at night. I thought I would get the name of the dish from the signboard out front, but it didn't come out in the picture. Something like hiu something heo?

On the way to Nha Trang, some fishing boats -

Some duck wranglers -

I've seen a lot of tapioca farms throughout Thailand and Cambodia, but this is the first harvesting I've seen. In Spanish, it's known as yucca, and it's usually fried crispy and served with mojo de ajo in Cuba and Central and South America. I believe it's made into flour for desserts and wrappers in Asia, so it's being dried.

After the 11+ hour bus ride, including a decent banh mi sandwich, some undistinguished fish soup for lunch, and a crappy cake thing, I was looking for some grub. Here's a grill-it-yourself eel setup. The marinade seemed to be soy based, sweetish, with a lot of ginger and lemongrass.

Another dish of the south is caramel braised pork in a claypot. I neglected to take a picture of the cucumbers provided with this - they're fresh and raw, and added at the table so they don't get so cooked. The cucumbers themselves are a bit yellowish, and drier and crisper than most of the cukes I usually see in LA. This one was nicely balanced between the caramel, the black pepper and I think a little turmeric, and not too sweet.

I'm off to explore Nha Trang.