Early morning, breakfastless, tuk-tuk to Chiang Mai's airport.
The airport experience was rather confused, but we did check our bags and make it through security only to find that the eating options were limited to buns in plastic wrap. Husbear bought one. I turned my nose up and said "hrmph" and went to work on an internet terminal.
Air Asia didn't offer us food, but when you pay like three dollars for a flight, what do you expect?
Since we'd be switching from Air Asia to our old nemesis, Air France, for the Bangkok - Saigon flight, we had to pick up and recheck our luggage in BKK. But we had four hours between flights, so checkin wasn't even close to open. What are a couple of deliriously hungry people to do?
Strap on the backpacks and compare menus at all of the eateries to be found in Bangkok's ultramodern Suvarnabhumi airport, of course.
We ended up at a place with an interesting-looking Thai menu, though let me tell you that that airport has all sorts of places that looked really great for eating.
We ordered lotsa stuff plus beer.
Tom Young Goong (otherwise known to me as tom yum - spicy sour shrimpy delicious soup we learned to make in our class):
This was a blander iteration to which we added lotsa chili flakes and fish sauce. However, the Sukhothai noodles (named after another of Thailand's historic capitols) were even blander-er, thought they had a good porky flavor and a tasty fried noodle topping.
The dish that actually brought us into the place was their crispy som tam. It's the green papaya salad that was our obsession throughout our stay in Thailand, but here the papaya shreds were actually breaded and fried!
This was an outstanding idea, and adding in the textural variation to what was already a well-flavored som tam was a seriously yummy coup. BUT. The fried papaya shreds had been tossed in the fish-based som tam dressing before arriving at our table, and started to get pretty soggy midway through the meal. I think dressing on the side, for dipping, would be in order here.
After eating, the checkin counter at Air France Sucks was open - we dropped off our bags and went exploring.
This airport, Suvarnabhumi, has been open less than a year. It's spic and span and shiny and new and full of great shops and great restaurants and life-size dioramas of apparently well-known Buddhist stories that left this Jew and her Christian husband scratching their heads.
My one real beef with this airport is that once you're past the final level of security there's nothing to do but sit and wait for your plane. Or pee, since luckily there are bathrooms. For a girl like me, who likes getting to the gate an hour and a half before the flight but then gets bored and wants to wander and window-shop, this sucks.
But it is rather pretty, in its emptiness.
We were lucky to have brought books, so we just spent some quality time with those while waiting for our delayed flight to start boarding.
It turned out that we were getting on the second leg of a Paris - Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) flight, so when we finally were allowed to board a crowd of dead-eyed travelers stared dully at us.
We took off with no particular worries and were, well, "fed" a hideously strange stacked sandwichy thing, some sort of red bean and coconut jelly cake, and yogurt. And airplane coffee. We did get some free wine, though, so that helped - and we had full access to Air France's entertainment offerings. Woot!
We landed in HCMC after filling out our immigration cards, on which we were told to use a black or green pen.
Our visas cost us $50 US and were waiting for us on arrival. Currently, you have to arrange entry visas prior to arrival in Vietnam - we had a contact who'd be showing us around the next day who prepared our paperwork for us.
And a guy from our hotel, the hong hoa, picked us up at the airport! When he dropped us off in front of a grocery store, though, we got a little worried.
Turns out the hotel has its own grocery store. Sweet.
What's the first thing we did after checking in? Well, as most young married couples do, we played a game of...
Count the Currencies!
Seven! It was fun to take a little memory trip through the last year.
Eventually, though, the novelty wore off, and it was time to recommence eating! We walked down Pham Ngu Lao, keeping our eyes open for some streetfood.
First up? Our first banh mi. This Vietnamese sandwich was probably half the reason Husbear wanted to visit Vietnam.
Here's banh mi 1-1. Sold to us by a grouchy guy. I guess the words for sandwich and bread are the same in Vietnamese (kind of like Italians call sandwiches and small rolls panini), and he thought we just wanted a roll... but we wanted it stuffed with things. Pate and pickled daikon and carrot, delicacies of that nature.
This one was ok. The bread was good and crisp, as were the pickled veggies, but the pate was not to my taste.
Of course we had to try another one. Banh mi 1-2. Better pickled vegetables, better pate, but the bread wasn't as good.
Eventually we came to a little enclave of streetfood stalls. We had no idea what anything was, but we did have a leg up on Thailand since we could at least read the signs more successfully. We looked at what the various stalls seemed to be offering and settled on banh bot chien and goi cuon.
What are those?
Goi cuon are an old favorite of mine - the spring rolls you see in the back. These were stuffed with pork and lots of greens. They might have been good, had we gotten them right when they were made, but these had been sitting out for a while and had dried out considerably. Unfortunate.
As for the banh bot chien, that's what you see in the foreground. It's stir-fried rice cakes with egg and onion, served with a salty (soy sauce based) sauce. I agree with Noodlepie's assessment of this dish - it's greasy and has some good textures due to the frying, but it doesn't have much flavor. Just grease.
I was stuffed at this point, but Husbear really wanted to see if he could fit one more banh mi in his stomach. We stopped at an impressive-looking banh mi store. The other two places we'd stopped had been simple, just a cart set up out on the street, but this place was more permanent. They had a lot more room to show off a larger range of foods.
We doscivered later that pork floss is extra tasty and completely delicious in a sandwich, but we didn't know that at the time and so Husbear ordered just a regular banh mi thit, again with the pate. But lots of peppers this time!
This one was just in a different league. I managed to eat one bite of it, but don't worry - it didn't go to waste! Their pate was better, their pickles had more crunch (and there were more of them, which made us very happy), and their bread was wonderful.
Tomorrow - maybe more banh mi, and we get our own pimp ride for exploring HCMC.
