Saigon Street Food by Day VI 16 Nov 2017

As we were walking around in the local markets in Saigon, we noticed Banh Khot being made in a number of different places, always quite popular, and at nearly every stall there were people waiting to order.

This morning Alvin woke up early in the morning and he went back to the Thai Binh wet market again to look for some early snacks. While exploring Thai Binh wet market, he stopped at a Banh Khot stall.

The lady quickly made her Banh Khot, pouring in the batter, and the smell and sizzle could be detected from across the market.

The batter of Banh Khot is made from rice flour, coconut milk, and a hint of turmeric powder to give it that slightly yellow colour. The batter is then fried in a hot griddle, the same pan looks like a smaller muffin pan.

As the batter is sizzling away in plenty of oil, a shrimp is placed in the centre of the griddle pancake along with a sprinkle of green onions, which cooks into the top of the batter. The Banh Khot is finished when the batter is cooked, and the outside is golden and crispy.

Alvin did take away for us to eat in the hotel when he came back from the market. Banh Khot are the little pancake sliders, and makes a delicious little light meal or snack.

Saigon Street Food by Night V 15 Nov 2017

We walked quite for a while after our late lunch at Cơm Gà Xối Mỡ Su Su. The shop is located at the main road, and there were many cars passing by. It is indeed a busy road and kind of difficult to get a taxi. As all of us were tired as we have walked since the morning.

Our family walked for almost 30 to 45 minutes under the hot and shinning sun, and we still unable to get a taxi. After all, Alvin told us to gather and asked us to pray as a family to Heavenly Father, so that we were able to get a taxi back to our hotel. And we did our prayer.

It was a miracle that we were able to get a taxi just next 5 minutes, and all of us were so happy and felt the blessings from the Lord. We were so stunned when we entered into the taxi, and our hearts were full. We experienced the power of prayer as a family! We can feel Father’s love to our family!

We were so happy when we arrived in our hotel, we took a good bath after a fruitful and tiring morning walk exploring Cholon areas and FITO Museum. All of us were totally flat and take a good sweet nap in the afternoon.

We decided to come out from the hotel for our street food hunting again around 6.00pm, but this time we were heading to the Asiana Food Town which is situated within the Sense Market Shopping Center, located underneath the famous 23/9 Park just across the Pham Ngu Lau street.

We quite delighted with the location as it is in the heart of the southern metropolis and within walking distance of popular tourist destinations such as Ben Thanh Market and the Bui Vien Street backpackers area.

The entry road to the Sense Market is lush with green vegetation bordering it. Sense Market Shopping Center has a unique and modern architecture, nestled beneath the bustling city centre.

Surprisingly Asiana Food Town is spacious and housed a lot of food stalls offering distinctive cuisine from various Asia countries, such as Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Laos, Singapore, India, Korea and even Malaysia.

Each stall is decorated in a different theme, all of which harmonize in an atmosphere that embodies eastern culture and cuisine, providing diners with traditional taste and high-quality service.

Alvin ordered pizzas for both kids at The Pizza Company. We got the promotions with buy one and get one free, with beef pepperoni and Hawaiian chicken flavour. Annabelle was smiling happily after having only eating local street food for days, when she saw her favourite food here!

While Alvin and I were having the typical Vietnamese noodles again. Initially I ordered a bowl of Bún Riêu and Alvin ordered a bowl of Canh Bún.

Bún Riêu basically is a crab soup based and with tomatoes ingredients inside the soup, it is to make the soup more rich with seafood with sourly taste. Along with the wonderfully flavorful broth in a bowl of Bún Riêu, the noodles are often similar in shape and size to spaghetti noodles, except soft rice noodles.

Topping the noodles are pieces of golden fried tofu, sometimes meatballs, hearty chunks of pork, squares of congealed pig’s blood, and finally a slab of rich crab paste.

Alvin was having the Canh Bún. It really looked the same as mine. Both of us thought it was almost the same, but after that only that I got to know there are difference between these two.

At first glimpse of a pot of Canh Bún, many people may mistaken it with Bún Riêu (Crab Noodle Soup).  Similar to Bún Riêu, they both originated from Northern Vietnam but this dish is definitely different in taste and texture.

Canh Bún's broth and Riêu (crab mixtured) are much lighter.  Canh Bún's riêu is soft and  fluffy while Bún Riêu's riêu is sturdy.  In addition, it doesn't have tomatoes; the noodles are thicker and they have the reddish color once cooked in the broth and eaten with boiled water spinach.

After looking into Alvin’s bowl, I noticed that there was brown noodles in it. I looked at the menu signage and took a closer look what is in the bowl. It seems like there was mistakes in our orders.

In actual fact, I was having the Bún Riêu which I had was with the clear soup instead of sturdy. So, I do not know I was having the Bún Riêu or Canh Bún because we have a plate of blanched water spinach or ‘kang kung’ .

Well now it seems to me that Alvin was having the Bánh Da Cua, that have the pink brown of crab, brown noodles, green color of vegetable, green onion, lemon; fresh red colour of chili and yellow colour of dry onion.

We just accepted whatever in our bowl, and had our dinner. Both of us just put the blanched ‘kang kung’ into our bowl of soup and ate together with the noodles.

After our dinner, we walked about around the 23/9 Park. There were a lot of people. It is actually a huge social hangout area for young people, further more there was Gyeongju International Cultural Festival 2017 which 23/9 Park was one of the main venue.

23/9 Park was hosting the opening and closing ceremonies, fashion shows, and artistic performances. Apart from that, 23-9 Park was be home to an exhibition on South Korea’s culture during the Silla period, the old capital Gyeongju, and another exhibit on distinctive Confucianism.

Our family was just in time for this international cultural festival. We noticed that there were some street food were being sold at the road side. The vendor was very friendly to all the passed-by tourists, sitting on a small stool with a small BBQ charcoal pit in front of him, and the prepared ingredients at the side.

It looks like a snack to us. It is a park snack in Saigon which most of the locals love. It called Banh Trang Nuong, which translates into ‘grilled rice paper’, sometimes referred to as a Vietnamese pizza.

It starts off as a circular sheet of dry rice paper slathered with butter and then set a top the small charcoal grill. The vendor sprinkles the sheet with minced pork, shredded pork floss, dried baby shrimp, and chopped spring onions.

The finishing touch is some quail egg yolk to bind all the ingredients together and a squirt of chili sauce. When it’s done grilling, Vietnamese pizza has a crunchy bite similar to the consistency of a taco shell. It’s smoky and crunchy, and makes a good Vietnamese leisure snack.

On our way back to the hotel, we passed-by a stall selling Banh Mi. Alvin just bought one back to hotel, and we were having a group selfie at the side of the stall.

Cơm Gà Xối Mỡ Su Su Waterfall Fried Chicken 15 Nov 2017

We arrived at District 3 and looked for the restaurant called Cơm Gà Xối Mỡ Su Su for quite sometime. Then, only realised that the shop was moved to a new location after we failed to locate and did some internet searching on the shop.

We were much happy when we finally saw the Cơm Gà Xối Mỡ Su Su shop signage from the taxi which drove us there, because all of us were so hungry and it was almost 1.30pm and we did not have our lunch.

There was not much customers in the shop when we arrived. We sat down on a table and the shop assistant brought us the menu. We have been given two different choices, the leg or the wing. We decided to order 2 sets of chicken legs and 2 sets of chicken wings with fried rice.

Cơm Gà Xối Mỡ Su Su is so famous is because the owner have a different way in making the fried chicken. When the Owner saw Alvin and I taking photos, and a video of how the fried chicken being prepared, he personally came up to us, and explained to us about this commercial cooking inventions.

The owner of Cơm Gà Xối Mỡ Su Su was an absolute character, and an incredibly friendly and nice man. To our surprise his English is really good. He is a mechanic or mechanical engineer. We can really saw some mechanical parts at the back of his shop.

This is really one-of-a-kind deep fryer literally rained boiling hot oil over a piece of chicken, making the chicken golden and crispy within a few minutes. The chicken was pre-cooked, probably about 90%, maybe just in an oven.

As soon as the customers orders come in, the shop assistant would grab the lengthy pair of tongs, and toss in the pieces of chicken, and let it sizzle on the poring fountain of hot oil. This is the final crispy-frying process, till the chickens turns to golden brown colour.

The owner is so friendly and decided to invite Alvin to test out the machine for himself, and handed him the long tongs. He even volunteer himself to take Alvin’s photos when handling the chicken.

Well, felt pretty good to take a piece of chicken, stick under the waterfall of hot brown oil, and watch it slowly turn from yellow white to golden brown. It was really fun in watching the home made oil-raining machine.

I am sure there must be some oil change sometimes in between a day – but as a lover of street food (one who travels for unique food experiences), this waterfall, raining deep frying machine, had me totally enthralled.

What I can say is that, the owner is really a genius in modified or invent the hand-made street food cooking devices.

Along with the raining oil fried chicken machine, the owner too invented his unique stir frying machine too. He sort of stir fried the rice and let the propeller spin at the same time, stir frying that rice in a whirl of motion.

Our meals came - a full plate of a chicken leg and thigh attached or chicken wings with breast meat attached, with the orange fried rice, a garnish of cucumbers and tomatoes, and a little side dish of his famous sauce.

The fried chicken, which had just been anointed in hot raining oil, was golden brown, crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

It was without doubt a bit on the oily side, but it was definitely worth every bite, especially when combined with the owner’s special recipe of the sauce and rice.

Alvin took a selfie with the owner of the shop, and we took a group selfie too, before we left the Saigon famous waterfall fried chicken! It was really a worthy trip to eat here!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Puchong Branch ~ Harman Keyboard Grant Students 2017 Christmas Recital

Developing Talent #2 ~ Learn to sing, play, or lead a song from the Children’s Songbook. Teach or share the song in a family home evening or at Primary. Discuss how developing talents helps prepare us for service to Heavenly Father and others.

It was all started with the small and kind hearts of our couple missionary, Elder and Sister Colman from US. Both of them indeed are a very kind, genuine and sincere people who come from US and serve in Malaysia. They had sold off their farm land back in US, so that both of them can serve and doing the Lord’s work in this foreign land.

Sister Colman is a very nice and sweet lady. She is very hardworking too. She volunteer herself to teach the interested sisters and brothers whom wants to learn music. Sister Annie from our Puchong Branch gathered all the interested names or participants to submit to Sister Colman.

Sister Colman helped to write and submit the letters and application forms whichever needed to the Jack and Wauna Harman Foundation to get the music training materials and the keyboards sets.

This is the Harman Grant sponsored training, which required no fees at all. But all of the participants need to sign a guarantee form that, they would serve in the Church after acquire this talent from the coarse.

Issac is one of those participants in this Church-sponsored program. The program was started back in March, every Saturday in Puchong chapel with 2 time slots – 11.00am or 12.00 noon. We choose to attend 11.00am class as Issac and Annabelle have their routine art class at Jane Yap Atelier at 1.00pm.

The coarse started with teaching how to conduct the music for the first and second lesson, then it was continued with the keyboard course. Learning how to see and read the music notes, play the simple hymns and practice at home.

All of the participants, took them about 7 months, learning the keyboard from no or zero basic knowledge at all to pick up the skills of the basic concepts of playing piano or keyboard.

There are Sister Saffron, Sister Chee Mun, Sister Amy, Sister Annie, Sister Yna and our very own young boy Issac. Issac is the only Primary boy that participated in this program and taught by Sister Colman. And, he is the youngest among all!

Sister Colman organised this small Christmas Recital during this Christmas season to celebrate and let all the students to present what they have learned throughout this 7 months.

Both Elder and Sister Colman came early today as they set up the light refreshment corners at the side of the chapel. There were simple and sweet: a nice pumpkin roll cake, some brownies and cakes, prawn and fish crackers.

Before that, an invitation card had been given out to all the participants and their family members, to invite friends and family to come and join this meaningful event for all the Sister Colman’s students!

The program started with Sister Colman giving her speech, she expressed her love to each and every student, what is their strenght and how is their learning process and all about their goodness! She is indeed a kind and loving lady.

The program begins with High On a Mountain Top by Sister Saffron.

Away In A Manger by Sister Chee Mun.

Oh Come All Ye Faithful by Sister Amy.

Jingle Bells duet by Issac & Sister Colman.

Silent Night by Sister Saffron.

Away in A Manger by Sister Yna.

Joy To The World duet by Sister Annie & Sister Colman.

The Christmas Recital was a successful one! Even though the audiences turned out are all the family members of the participants, but it is really a delight to know that your loving ones have pick up a skill and can be serve in the Church in the future.

Our family feel blessed and grateful for the service and the love shown by Elder and Sister Colman to our branch. We are grateful to have the opportunity to meet with this couple missionary too.