Ambulando

Nha Trang was a sort of fist time bubble for me.
I had my first taste of crocodile, my fisrt taste of bassa fish and my very first scube diving.
Major actor in all of this was Mark, one hell of big texan guy running his own dive center in Nha Trang, met through CS. He moved to Vietnam one yer ago (one year, 20 days and a few hours, according to his calendar) and after one year (and the spare) he was quite at home in Nha Trang.
First night with him, we, with a fellow CSer from Zaragoza, Alex, went to a place just near his dive center.
It was a local restaurant and he was a sort of big customer there. The place served everything, or quite. I could not find dog or snacke soup, but the rest was there.
Crocodile, giant shrimps, octopussy, squid, wild boar, wild cat, giant frogs (more toads, in my humble opinion), venison, ostrich, grilled oyster and of course pork and beef.
Crocodile meat had the texture of pork meat, but taste is sweeter. I had it grilled. I do not know why, but I was expecting somethinng fishy. Instead it was like a good filet, and it met also the approval from my fellow diners.
Mark’s friend were a bunch of expat Newzealander, and it come also my second discovery of the night: I always thought of kiwis as sort of English of the down under, reserved and not quite loud. I was wrong.
So, after dinner and a few beers, we went home: Mark was going to take me scuba diving and we were expected to leave at 7 in the morning.
The next night, after the scuba (about it later), we went for another of the Mark’s usual. We were joined by the French friends of Alex and by a couple of Swedish guy we met on the boat in the morning. This time the place was run by an Australian Jew, specialised in bbq. I had my Bassa battere and with chips. Actually fish’n’chips. Complete with mint sauce aside. And the place was called Something Fishy.
The Bassa fish is a sort of cat fish farmed in the Mekong Delta. The consistency is creamy, I think due also to the fact that it was deep fried. The batter was not oily and the mint sauce was the perfect partner. Chips were chips.
I ate mine in a few seconds, maybe hungry from the diving, so that Mark took pity on me and shared part of his crumbled tuna steak.
It seems the speciality of the chef is Australian hambunger, that differs from the traditional hamburger for the fact that it comes with boiled red beetroot on top. It also seems that it got not the success it was hoped.
We finished the night in a one of the vietnamese beer bar, that is a draught tap and a few short stall on the pavement. The beer was Philippine’s San Miguel and it come for 30.000 dong a liter.
I went back to Something Fishy by my own the next day, this time for grilled tuna. Medium rare.
It came with chips too.