VIETNAM: Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon, is situated on the banks of the Saigon River and 60 km from the South China Sea.

Coffee is strong and mostly black here too but there's also a variation that we hadn't seen anywhere else: Weasel coffee. There's no weasel IN the coffee but they contribute a great deal to the coffee. The beans are fed to the weasels, digested and later collected, ground and brewed. You should end up with a musky and yet smooth coffee. This will make the coffee incredibly expensive of course so it's most likely that you will be sold a fake where the beans are fermented with the help of an enzyme rather than a weasel.

Bun thit nuong is a great breakfast dish of grilled pork served on cold thin rice vermicelli, fresh herbs like mint, pickled carrot and daikon, bean sprouts, peanuts and served with a sweet fish sauce.

Summer roll or Vietnamese spring roll filled with pork and shrimps alongside freh herbs and wrapped in thin rice paper.

Haven't seen coconut like this before but so much easier to take-away it can almost compete with a bottle or can of soda pop, but then you can't open a can and eat the fresh juicy flesh inside, can you?

Phở is a Vietnamese noodle soup, usually served with beef or chicken but in my case with tofu. The rice noodles are served with sweet basil, lime and bean sprouts that are added to the soup by the diner. There are regional differences in the North and South of Vietnam when it comes to the garnishes and the width of the noodles.

Fresh sugar cane juice is the best in this heat and I couldn't resist taking a big gulp before I took the photo...

CAMBODIA: Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh, the capital and largest city of Cambodia is located on the banks of the Tonlé Sap, Mekong and Bassac rivers and was once known as “The Pearl of Asia”.

A morning without coffee is like sleep so I like mine strong and on ice in this climate and here it comes with a good dose of sugar in the form of condensed milk. Love the sling. Great if you take your drink with you on the moto.

To go with our coffee we bought a selection of pastries at the market. Deep fried in the wok of course.

We found some more interesting things at the market. A great selection of fruit like soursop, rambutan, dragonfruit and longans.

And fresh snails ready to be pickled in hot and spicy chili paste.

And fried quails. Or such.

Deep fried ants.

No, not what you think. Think she just liked to cuddle up in this Cambodian bbq...

We took a cooking class today and these are the basic ingredients for a yellow Khmer curry: lemongrass, kaffir lime peel, galangal, chili, garlic, shallot and turmeric.

Add some mild red chili paste so it will change colour and a little bit in flavour and it will be a red curry.

And this is the finished result, nicely presented in a banana leaf parcel: Amok, one of the most iconic dishes in Khmer cuisine. My version includes tofu but chicken or fish would be the classic ingredients to use.

CAMBODIA: Sihanoukville

Sihanoukville is a port city 185 kilometres southwest of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. There are some great beaches to relax and amazingly fresh seafood to be had.

Fresh mini lobsters with some pepper and some freshly squeezed lime right on the beach. Couldn't be much fresher.

What an ingenious way to serve the fresh coconut. Love the idea with the slit by the side for the straw!

If you don't like fresh coconut have some fresh lemonade: freshly squeezed lemon juice over lots of ice.

This is one of the more unusual snacks we came across. For a change it's not fried and there for promising to be healthy and we weren't dissapointed. The fresh white lotus seeds have a light nutty flavour.

CAMBODIA: Siem Reap

We found some interesting things at the market today. First some fruit like pomelo slices and white grapes in a sweet and salty chili sauce. Later some deep fried and crunchy crickets. Sometimes sold alongside snails or black olives.

A Cambodian meal will usually include a soup served alongside the main courses. This one is beef with vegetables and rice noodles.

Nom kachay are chive rice cakes served with a milder chili sauce and a hot and fiery one.

This dish is called Kralan in Khmer. It's sticky rice with coconut milk and beans, packed inside bamboo tubes and roasted over a fire.

More sweet sticky rice. Wrapped in a banana leaf with a banana in the center and then grilled. The banana gets super sweet and delicious. Or you can just grill the bananas. On a stick. Nice too.

This is my local bakery. Notice it's also the local gas station. Not an unusual mix here in Cambodia.

Gas station and ice cold drinks. Don't mix them up though. Cold drinks are in the red cool box.

Gas station and cigarettes. Interesting combination. Can you see the 'no smoking' sign anywhere? No? Well, maybe there just wasn't one.

LAOS: Vientiane

Vientiane is the capital and the largest city of Laos and the French influence is omnipresent in the iconic Patuxai, a monument modelled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, though built in the 1960's entirely from concrete incorporating traditional Lao motifs. There is not too much to blog about street food this time. Not that it doesn't exist but there is such a wealth of great international cuisine to sample in this city that we went slightly off brief. There's anything from Japanese okonomiyaki, Korean bbq, Swedish bakeries, Indochina fusion and of course great French food.

Iced tea with lemon and tamarind is slightly sour and very sweet but also very refreshing.

Laap or Larp is a Laotian minced meat salad (though this one is vegetarian made with seitan and thinly sliced wood ear mushroom)and is regarded as the national dish of Laos. It can be made with chicken, beef, pork, duck or even fish - raw or cooked - mixed with vegetables like green beans and flavoured with fish sauce, chilli and fresh herbs like mint. You eat this with sticky rice, the most important staple in Laotian cuisine.

This vendor sells a drink made of coconut water with slivers of young coconut flesh. Sooooo gooood! The other one in the background is the Laotian version of a drink/dessert that keeps following me throughout Southeast Asia: sweet coconutmilk with green pandan rice noodles. Same same, but different!

These sweets are made with sticky rice and there's pandan and soya flavour which is slightly salty-sweet. Glutinous rice or khao niao is cooked by soaking for several hours, steaming in a bamboo pot and then kneaded with a peadle to release the steam. The rice kernels with stick to themselves but not to your fingers.

I have been posting a lot of different waffles recently but this one is by far the most creative one. Penguins. We found them on Talat Sao morning market, which is actually more like a mall. You can choose between taro, cream, chocolate and pandan filling. Guess which one I went for?