This year I took my first vacation in quite a few years with my fiance and we traveled through the Central and Northern parts of her home country, Vietnam. The trip consisted of 3 main parts, the first of which was spent in the Central part of Vietnam and the rest would be further North, which I'll share additional posts about.
First off, my fiance is from a small town in the middle of Vietnam called Do Luong (Luong happens to be her name as well), which is about 1.5 hours from the Vinh City international airport. So from Seoul, we flew to Hanoi and then connected to Vinh City and it was quite easy and convenient to get to where we were heading. We met up with her family first and we spent a few days at the beach town Cua Lo.
The weather was really nice, but unbelievably hot. I'm from the Northeast in the U.S. and the hottest Summers never get as hot as some of the afternoons I experienced in Vietnam. Typically what I found was that people wake up super early while it's cool and get what they will done after breakfast. Then another big lunch is on deck (the theme is always eating, A LOT!). After lunch, it's time to nap somewhere cool to wait out the high-noon heat.
The food in Vietnam really was my style. South Korean food is yummy in its own way, however I like the brighter and fresher flavors of Vietnamese food quite a bit more as they use a lot of herbs and different kinds of fruits and veggies in their cuisine.
Who thought seafood porridge could be so good?
These shrimps (not sure what they really are called) were no joke. Hard to eat but so freaking delicious.
Tender steamed squid with lime and wasabi soy sauce. Ridiculous!
And of course... crab!
The best thing had to be the seafood in Cua Lo. There were these hut style restaurants by the beach where they served you on plastic picnic style tables. My fiance's brother in law went down to the water and bought piles of these shrimp/lobster looking crustaceans from fishermen unloading their catch.
Besides being slightly sharp, pointy and unwieldy to eat, they were absolutely delicious. Definitely much better than shrimp. More tender than lobster and sweeter than crab. Nobody had an English equivalent word for them. With lime and salt, we literally just ate kilos of them until we could barely move.
Overall, Cau Lo was a nice place to visit with my fiance with her family. I didn't see another foreigner the entire time I was there, which was nice. It felt like I was somewhere that local central coast Vietnamese people go for their summer vacations. The locals weren't too impressed with me as a foreigner, but I must say besides getting sold something at any chance they got, they were mostly nice and accommodating.