Vietnam is quite possibly my favorite place in the world. I went to Vietnam last spring for a baseball trip, and I loved everything. The food, the art, and the people were what made Vietnam so magical.
My favorite food that I ate while I was in Vietnam was pho, from this small, and very tall rickety building. We walked up the stairs, and ducked the low hanging ceiling, and stepped into a brightly lit white room. We looked at the menu, and decided on what we would order. When the food came, I was served a bowl of steamy soup, with raw meat sitting in it. Because the soup was so hot, you could see the meat cooking in the bowl. It was heavenly. The strong pho, flavored with star anise, Thai basil, and hot peppers, burst into flavor and we tasted our food.
One really fun thing about Vietnam, was that my grandfather came to join us! He met us at the pier and we disembarked the boat. Climbing into a taxi, he started to tell us where the hotel was. We stayed at The Royal Saigon, which was right next to the town square, surrounded by French, colonial architecture.
The next day we started the journey to the Mekong delta, the outlet of the Mekong River. We were greeted by a medium sized boat named The Mekong Eyes. As well as my family, there were also a number of others on the boat, including a couple from Seattle! We ate delicious food on the boat, such as fried river fish spring rolls, and sweet and sour pork. We were able to get off the boat at specific times, and we visited a home, a burial site, as well as a coconut candy factory, that was family owned. My time in Vietnam was a amazing, and an experience I will never forget.