When Vietnamese people speak about money, they will usually drop the “thousand” and just say “hai mươi lăm” (25) or một trăm (100) because the extra three zeros are implied and nothing will cost less than 1000 đồng (4 cents). After two months, I can translate the numbers and do the conversion in my head 100% correctly…80% of the time.
At the most common Vietnamese convenience store, K-Mart, a water bottle will cost you around 6,000 đồng, or 23 cents.
Every meal is a good meal in Vietnam; let me start by saying that. This week, I had a mix of fancier, more expensive meals in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), like prawn and soft-shelled crab. Also in HCMC, my friend who studies there took me to his childhood favorite bún cá (rice noodle fish soup) restaurant. This soup had rice noodles, fish and jellyfish–something that I had never tried before and is much crunchier than I expected! It also came with unlimited pickled onions on the side that added a sweet deliciousness I could not resist.
But I think that my absolute favorite meal this week was when I returned to one of my favorite restaurants in Sóc Trăng. A classic side-of-the-road place that cooks the food in front of you that you order on a pad of paper. Here, I ordered probably too many dishes because I was so excited. The first was snails cooked in a spicy, thick sauce that you eat by tearing off pieces from a fresh bánh mì (Vietnamese baguette) to grab the meat and soak up the sauce. The next dish I ordered was noodles with grilled octopus.
