∏One of the things that we consistently read about in everything was about how great the street food was in Vietnam. What we have tried, we have liked but wanted to explore further. We booked a tour with I Love Hue, and the awesome Van and Thuyen were our street food guides for the night.
I Love Hue is a different sort of tour company. They employ exclusively females as the tour guides, and use a lot of students studying.
Me, Van, Thuyen and Ash living it up
They showed up on motorbike, so ash and I jumped on board….after putting our helmets on. Well I didn’t really put the helmet on, as it was too small for my melon head. We hit our first of 5 stops for the night.
There we tried three different dishes. Beo cake, Nam cake, Loc cake. They were various savory dishes, with meat and rice or tapioca flour ladled with fish sauce.
We then walked over to a different place where we got more cake – Banh Koah. This was meet and a quail egg on a fried cake, that you crushed up, rolled in rice paper and then dipped in fish sauce. It was so tasty.
By this point, we were already getting full. Maybe our problem to date has been that we only eat at one place. We jumped back on the scooters and zipped into the old town for more eats. The next spot was a BBQ place, where we had bbq shrimp, duck and pork. This was my favorite of the night, especially the pork. They also had Okra mixed in.
Back onto the motor bikes for the 4th stop. It was really fun to get to ride around the city on the motorbikes. Van and Thuyen expertly moved their bikes through traffic getting us to our places. On top of that, we got to see the city after dark. Hue is gorgeous after the lights go down, we loved the colors on the walls of the Citadel which we had visited early in the day.
The 4th spot held ash’s favorite dish – Bun Bo Hue. It is sorta like Pho, but different. It is a traditional dish found almost exclusively in Hue. I also enjoyed it.
By this point we are really getting to know Van and Thuyen. They are both students, 22 years old. Both are studying to learn to become tour guides. Their English was excellent, and not only did they teach us about street food. They also taught us a lot about Hue, and what it is like to grow up in Vietnam.
Che Hue
The last stop was for dessert. I never had beans for dessert until tonight. We were served a medley of different sweets in a glass with ice. A combo of beans, corn, coconut and several other things I didn’t recognize.
What was so great about the tour was getting to try all of this street food. We definitely would have gotten some street food, as Hue is well known for its street food. But we would probably not tried anything we had tonight, and all the dishes were Hue centric dishes. We got to know Hue through its food. We definitely will do another tour like this.
Sounds like a lot of fun. We are enjoying your posts.