If you decide to travel to Vietnam for a holiday you should immerse yourself in the culture and that includes its cuisine. Every kind of international food is available in the towns and cities but surely you should try the things the locals eat and that means Pho for breakfast, noodle soup. Forget the bacon, fried eggs, pancakes or cold ham and cheeses. If you are up fairly early in the morning, and you should be to get the best out of your Vietnam travel package, you may like to try Pho from one of the street vendors. It will certainly be fresh because these vendors are likely to be serving Pho to locals who are on their way to work.

The smell is certainly appetising with the bowl of soup containing noodles as well as meat. On a cold day, and there are cold days in Vietnam at some times in year, it will warm you up. Even if it is not a cold time of the year, try it anyway.

The Cooking
The process begins by boiling water. At the same time chefs will fry whole onions at a high temperature until they are golden brown. The meat is added to the boiling water and the liquid is regularly skimmed to keep it clear. After about an hour the onions are added and usually some carrots and the broth is cooked for a further hour. The broth is about ready. The only thing to do now is to remove the onions and carrots, season the liquid with spices, some salt and fish sauce.

The noodles are cooked separately after being soaked in water. They take 10 to 15 minutes and should be drained in hot water to remove the starch and the cooked meat chopped up fairly coarsely. More fine slices of meat are prepared and a small amount of the meat is put into each individual bowl along with some raw mince. The noodles complete the dish and the hot broth is poured over.  All the flavours are already in the clear broth but to finish the job, the chef will add some lettuce, green onion as well as onion rings.

You have your bowl, a set of chopsticks and a spoon. Bon appetit!

What Do You Think?
You can eat rice noodle soup at any time and anywhere. It will appear on restaurant menus throughout the whole of Vietnam but the real experience will be eating it in the street with the locals. Your Vietnam tour package intends to show you every facet of Vietnam and that includes the environment, the people and their daily lives. You can see from the preparation that it takes some time to have it ready for the morning customers on the way to work and it will be something that has been started from the beginning that morning. The effort may be worth more money than you will be charged but the vendors will be smiling and happy, so all you have to do is enjoy.

Read more: Vietnam food and drink