Antidote to Burnout

More healthy food?

I do not intend this blog to become a food blog, but good eating is such an important benefit of living in Vietnam. So I occasionally post on a current food subject. In my posting on 9 August 2009 regarding... Read more →

Healthy eating in Vietnam

While back in America last winter, I was struck by the contrast in eating habits compared with the more healthy food in Vietnam. It is, of course, an oversimplification for a very sophisticated and diverse cuisine, but Vietnamese food can... Read more →

Tet Parties

My Tết holidays this year were enjoyed in Dắk Lắk Province at the home of my Vietnamese friend's parents, introduced in this previous posting. A subsequent posting presented their home as a typical rural Dak Lak house. Since the Tết... Read more →

Street Vendor of snacks...

A moving display of color and texture -- snack food: Read more →

More on jungle cafés...

Last year about this time, I expressed my frustration about the constant rains characteristic of the final month or so of the rainy season in Ho Chi Minh City. This year we just accepted it like most Vietnamese and didn't... Read more →

Impressive large themed cafés

In my posting about American coffeehouses a month ago, I mentioned that the stores are much smaller than Vietnamese cafés. The design of these stores are almost always retail in nature and rarely explore themes or provide environments more comfortable... Read more →

New restaurant concept....

I suppose somebody can tell me that they have seen this kind of restaurant elsewhere in the world, but it is the first time I have seen an all-hammock restaurant. This restaurant is located south of the Royal Palace complex... Read more →

Cà phê at cafés in HCMC

Jon over at the blog The final Word...in Saigon posted the other day about places to "chill out" in Ho Chi Minh City, meaning cafés, otherwise known as coffeehouses in the western world. Jon subtitled his posting "Part I", indicating... Read more →

Slaughtering pigs for Tet

Jon over at the The Final Word...in Saigon blog has posted beautiful pictures of preparations for the Tet festival and holiday here in Ho Chi Minh City. His posting is entitled "Tet Prep : Pig Crazy" since this coming lunar... Read more →

Meat Markets....

One sentence news item from the Saigon Times Monday 4 December: "The HCMC Pasteur Institute last week announced 98% of meat samples was infected with E.coli bacteria and more than 29% with Salmonella." In HCMC, I come across street-side meat... Read more →

Neighborhood breakfast stand....

Noodlepie has the street stand food scene in Ho Chi Minh City well covered in his blog archives, although he no longer blogs from Saigon. Think of a particular Vietnamese street food you might be craving, look it up in... Read more →

The social dinner....

Whenever I have dinner with a Vietnamese group, I always think of the very articulate words of Mark in the now inactive blog Six Months in Hanoi. Mark wrote eloquently about social groups here and here in Viet Nam, and... Read more →

Working 365 days a year here....

Not me, of course. This blog is about the antidote to burnout, after all. But the vendors bringing by the food every day in our hẻm (alley) in TP. Hồ Chí Minh come by every day without fail. The most... Read more →

The rainy season in TP. Hồ Chí Minh...

The rainy season in southern Viẹt Nam runs from May through mid-November. So we are well into it now, and each day has been unsettled with a thunder storm and hour-long downpour arriving at some point each day. The citizens... Read more →

More on café cà phê coffee...

My 17 April 2006 posting on coffee in Việt Nam discussed urban coffee houses. Since then, we have been expanding our experience beyond Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh to the suburbs. These suburban districts are still part of the administrative... Read more →

Café Cà Phê Coffee Everywhere in Viet Nam....

This posting is dedicated to my coffeehouse-aficionado friend in San Francisco/Oakland, Mark. Mark and his son are planning a trip to visit us in Việt Nam, so I want him prepared for the very pleasant Vietnamese customs in the coffeehouses.... Read more →

Fish and Mollusks...

This posting is dedicated to Jan, our Bay Area biologist/writer friend, who has been researching for us safe levels and types of fish to eat. We told her we have been eating all kinds of fish several times a week.... Read more →

Bánh Xèo in Chợ Lớn

noodlepie has defined the wonderful Vietnamese dish bánh xèo very well in a posting a couple years ago about a restaurant in Sài Gòn (District 1 downtown). This dish is a very thin crepe or pancake with shrimp and pork... Read more →

Street Vendor Food....

All day long, street vendors go by our house on the hem (lane off the main street). They sing out in patterns that one learns quickly so that you can step out of the house when you hear them coming... Read more →

No chickens in Hà Nội?

Yikes! Xe Maybe just posted that the VN government has cleared all chickens out of Hà Nội. That is very hard to imagine considering the chickens everywhere that we saw when we were there last month. And like Xe Maybe... Read more →

More Bia Hoi....

In a 4 October posting, I described the bia hoi (fresh beer) places in Hanoi. Of course bia hoi is available all over in Ho Chi Minh City also. In my earlier posting, I had said that one never sees... Read more →

Egg and chicken

As I have mentioned in earlier postings, my wife prefers street food in Asia. In this case in Hoi An, she bought an egg which was ripe with a fully formed chick. She ate it through an opening in the... Read more →

Beer Aplenty....

The vietnamese seem to have developed (with the help of Austrians) something that the remainder of the world should copy. Nameless microbrewies make kegs of unpasteurized draught beer daily and deliver it all over the country. This beer is used... Read more →

More snacks....

I don't intend for this to become a food blog, but food is such a large part of travel, especially in Asia. Vietnam certainly continues our fascination with food snacks. We are traveling on the "backpacker" economy, which means cheap... Read more →

Local snacks....

The location of the photos in this posting don't line up correctly with the text and I couldn't figure out how to adjust it while in the internet cafe with limited time, so this will be a test of your... Read more →