Culinary highlights on the Mekong River

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Eat white rice, drink rice wine in Can Tho

There are few places where rice is as delicious and fragrant as in Can Tho, just like the song "Can Tho has white rice and clear water". A bowl of white rice is so ordinary, yet it lingers in the hearts of many travelers. A foreign friend curiously asked me why Vietnamese people often greet each other with the question "Have you eaten yet?". I answered, it is not really a question, but also a greeting, like Westerners often ask each other "How are you?". Especially in the West, every time I visit my friend's house in Can Tho, my friend's mother will surely smile and ask "Have you eaten yet?", and I will also greet her "Have you eaten yet?".

Can Tho rice is more delicious than any other region in the country, producing sweet, plump and filling grains. A bowl of steaming hot white rice, emitting a clear aroma, topped with a few slices of beef accompanied by stir-fried passionflowers… makes anyone passing by turn their head to look. After lunch, sipping a glass of rice wine, lying in a hammock swinging is a wonderful pleasure.

Wherever there is good rice, there is good wine. The way of enjoying rice wine in the West is as open and friendly as the character of the people here. To have a glass of good rice wine, people have to take care of each grain of rice, each lump of yeast, and be careful with every movement. The rice is cooked, cooled, and then fermented; the yeast is ground from herbal roots, or from cinnamon, cloves, tangerine peel, longan, betel, etc., depending on each family. Wine is brewed in the traditional way: using straw and rice husks is the wine with the best flavor. But this method takes a long time, so people usually only brew a few jars themselves, so when friends come to visit, the host will be excited to take it out to serve.

Go to Chau Doc market to visit the "Kingdom of fish sauce"

Eating in this mysterious That Son region, you will see a very clear cultural exchange between the Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham, and Khmer. Palmyra fruit is typical of the Khmer, tung lo mo (beef sausage) is a Cham specialty, fish noodles are very Chinese, hotpot is very Southern... Coming to Chau Doc, you must slurp a bowl of vermicelli with fish sauce, or "drink" hotpot with fish sauce full of shrimp, meat, fish with more than 20 types of leafy vegetables with friends. Nowhere else in Vietnam has a cuisine as colorful and "cool as the sky" with vegetables, spices and fresh fruits as in the West.

Nowhere else in Vietnam is the cuisine as colorful and “cool as the sky” with fresh vegetables, spices and fruits as in the West.

The best thing to do in Chau Doc is to visit the fish sauce market, where you can find all kinds of fish sauce in the world: Thai fish sauce, linh fish sauce, snakehead fish sauce, snakehead fish sauce, climbing perch, chot fish sauce, anchovy fish sauce... These are products of the flood season, usually from September to November every year. The fresh fish are marinated with palm sugar and roasted rice to create a very unique flavor of the people here.

If you go up Sam Mountain to watch the sunset, don't forget to stop halfway and buy some hot palm sugar cakes, golden in color. What could be more wonderful than the feeling of immersing yourself in the afternoon sun, sitting on the windy mountain top, looking out over the rice fields, and sipping on a sweet palm sugar cake. The spongy taste of the cake, the sweet and fatty taste of sugar and coconut, mixed with the characteristic aroma of palm sugar, reaching your nose, is unmistakable. Palm sugar is made from natural ingredients, containing potassium, magnesium, vitamins and antioxidants... not only helps to nourish, but also purifies the body completely naturally. Those who like sweets can eat as much as they want without fear of gaining weight.

Coming to the West, the land of “white rice and clear water”, the place of sacred mountains and fertile alluvial fields, you will experience interesting journeys that are both mysterious in history and unique in cultural exchange. And above all, you will find yourself immersed in fresh and delicious cuisine while sailing down the Mekong River.

The Thanh