At 6am the next morning we met the congenial owner of our Cần Thơ homestay, Hung, for a tour of his local market. It was a completely voluntary excursion, and not surprisingly, some people opted for an extra hour of sleep. I figured it’s not every day I’m offered the chance to walk through a small market in Vietnam before sunrise, guided by a willing local who speaks English.
Pink dawn on the Mekong
We walked down a dirt road to the ferry that would bring us to the market across the river. The ferry was little more than a wobbly canoe with room for 7 or 8 people. Local students ahead of us were crossing the river with their bikes on the way to school.
Students with bikes being ferried across the riverAn empty ferry returning
Hung jokingly called the market a “squatter’s market” because all the sellers squat in front of their goods. Given the water-centric nature of the Mekong Delta, there were a lot of fish and other seafood for sale, many still alive.
I believe I implied, but didn’t say, that our cooking class in Bali was a revelation. Every meal from that point on made more sense and choosing from menus became less scattershot. Knowing classes like that existed gave me a renewed sense of purpose—something to seek out whenever we came to a new place.
It was shorter in duration (10am-2pm) and more expensive ($40/pp) than the class in Bali, but the biggest difference was that we all prepared and cooked our own dishes. There was no market tour, and much of the prep work was done for us, but there was something very satisfying in preparing our own meals.
The menu for the day consisted of:
Chả giò hải sản (fried seafood spring rolls)
Gỏi gà bắp chuối (banana blossom salad)
Phở bò (beef noodle soup)
Ingredients for the spring roll (Chả giò) filling
We started out by julienning some taro root to add to the already prepped fillings for our spring rolls: minced squid, fish, and shrimp, carrot, wood ear mushrooms, glass noodles, shallots, garlic, salt, and pepper. We mixed all the ingredients together with our hands, divided the filling in thirds, and rolled our three little spring rolls in circles of handmade rice paper. They had stations set up to fry our spring rolls, which cooked in about 5 minutes.
Frying the spring rolls and practicing with large chopsticks
On our last night in San Dionisio, Jeoffrey wanted to treat us to a special local dish. He confided that he’d cooked it the week before just to ensure it would turn out ok. The dish was binakol na manok or chicken binakol, which most Filipino recipes describe simply as “chicken cooked in coconut water“. However Jeoffrey wanted to go a step further and make it the traditional Ilonggo way: cooked inside of bamboo over an open fire.
My first thought: how do you get chicken into bamboo? Grind it up and make sausage? Intriguing idea, but no. It turns out the bamboo grows pretty large in the Philippines, and their local chickens—which had, up until that morning, been pecking and scratching around the outdoor kitchen—are slimmer. The chickens’ throats were slit and bled—a job I was offered, but was happy to leave it to the professionals. Then they scalded and expertly plucked every feather by hand.
Plucking the recently-dispatched chickens
At that point it was up to Jeoffrey to get the chicken inside the bamboo and assemble the dish. As I recall, the key ingredients where shallots, tomatoes, coconut meat, lemongrass, ginger, and some aromatic green kamunggay leaves.
Preparing to stuff the chicken into the bambooHaving a little fun with the chickenGet. In. And. Stay. There.
The bamboo was topped off with fresh coconut water, and the hole was plugged with banana leaves rolled into a kind of stopper. Both bamboo vessels were set over the coals at an angle and left to cook into the evening. The end result was a fragrant chicken soup with lovely lemongrass undertones.
During our second day in San Dionisio, Jeoffrey arranged to have a local fishing boat take us on an island hopping tour of some nearby beaches. Given the lack of tourism in the area, this looked to be a pretty novel enterprise for all involved. As a result a whole bunch of friends and acquaintances came along for the ride. All in all I think we were 18 people including the fishing crew.
Getting onto the boat was a little tricky
The first beach we stopped at was nice, but nothing to write home about. We munched on jackfruit and played a bit in the water, but soon folks were eager to move on. The next beach however was so awesome, we decided to spend the rest of the day there and stop “hopping” altogether. It was aptly named, Sandbar Island Beach, and resembled a scene pulled out of someone’s deserted island vacation fantasy—the only thing missing was a solitary coconut tree leaning at an angle.
Landing on Sandbar Island
Panorama of Sandbar Island Beach
Fatima, Jeoffrey, Justin, and Stephanie
Folks immediately began setting up an amazing spread of food for lunch, using layers of the banana truck as plates. There was chicken pork adobo, chicken feet adobo, rambit adobo, rambit-muscle skewers, grilled barracuda and squid, salted egg salad, vermicelli salad, banana core salad, mangoes, and probably several things I’m forgetting. But the dish that stole the show, at least for me, was the barbecued pantat—or catfish.
They brought along the catfish we’d picked up on the way to San Dionisio (which had survived the journey and spent the night swimming in a bucket of water), skewered them, and grilled them right there on the beach. This was some of the best fish I’d ever eaten. The flesh was soft, and for the most part boneless. The skin was crispy and had just the right amount of fat, which was bursting with the flavor. I regret not taking a picture, but I was too busy digging in with both hands.
Setting up for an epic Filipino feast
After lunch we drank beers and splashed around in the water. We frolicked until the sun started to get low on the horizon and the fishing boat crew started to get drunk on the rum. As a result the journey back was a little slow and meandering, but no less entertaining, and included an impromptu tour of the many coastal fishing villages. We arrived back in San Dionisio at nightfall, wading through the waist deep water until we made it back to shore.
