Ola!!

Ok. Sorry for the no posting.

I've been battling 94% humidity and a bloated Vietnamese food baby for the past week or so.

Good Internet is not the simplest of things to come by in the sunny destination of Saigon - or Hanoi. Or on the 38 hour train ride that separated the two.

But the official verdict?

50c pints and $2 bowls of vermicelli goodness?

Happy, happy Little One (almost inevitably soon to be Not So Little One).

Of course on the first day my travelling partner in crime crashed from jet lag and I wandered the streets alone.

Do not let me wander the streets of Saigon alone.

I'll wind up on a plastic chair in a chilli eating competition with some Germans and some locals.

...

And I will lose.

Badly.

I made the big scary 6 foot something blonde descendents of Brad Pitt crossed with Hercules look like Mary Poppins, but geeeeez the locals demolished me.

So aside from spending my first 24 hours feeling like my face had melted off and seeing a talking coyote dressed as Boy George at the end of my bed, (91% sure not real...) things are pretty fucking fabulous.

In a few days I will be learning the greatest thing I think as a chef, I could possibly learn.

My kitchen hand from Melbourne (a delightful little Vietnames/Coburg boy by the English name of Martin -real name still unknown) has given me the address of his grandmother, an email ahead and told her to teach my how to make pho.

Please excuse me whilst I squeal in pure culinary delight!

I know by the end of this trip I will never be able to eat Vietnamese in Melbourne again, because 1. I will believe the price to be nothing short of extortion.

And 2. Because I will have evolved into a noodle snob who now believes that this so-called 'bun' is really just code for 'dental floss'.

But for now.

Happy times :)