Beyond Marrs

At home I felt kind of scared of trying foods because I was scared of not liking them. On this trip, I have tried a lot of foods. Now that we are away from home, I feel more confident in trying new foods because I know I will have to eat them the rest of the year, and we are in a new place with a lot of variety of foods. Here are some of the foods I have tried so far: kaya toast (a sweet coconut jam); bun cha (a dish served with cold rice noodles, pork and a fish sauce that I don’t use); rambutan (a sweet fruit with a hairy shell); mangosteen (a sour fruit with a hard shell); fried Basa fish (Vietnamese catfish); make – your – own spring rolls with pork; deep fried spring rolls with pork; lychee (a sour – sweet fruit with a soft, bumpy shell and pearl – white flesh) deep fried spring rolls with chicken; grilled pork with lemon; Che Huế (a sweet soup with various different things in it, but we had fruit in ours); Bành èp (a crepe – like thing with bacon/pork baked into it); and so many other things. So far, out of all the foods I have tried, my favorite one (and the one I have eaten the most) is pork. I’ve tried lots of different ways of eating pork. I like grilled pork. My muscles are already getting humongous!

I want to tell you the story about trying the fried Basa fish. While we were in Cat Ba, Vietnam, we decided we would go on a boat tour and go kayaking, swimming, and go to a floating village. We got a ride with other people from our homestay, we met our guide (Ryan/Hoan), and then we boarded our boat. There were lots of limestone karsts jutting out of the water, and there was lots of people and we went for a boat ride to a dock where we put on swim suits and life vests and got into kayaks. We went through caves and at the end, we went and saw a pond full of jellyfish. 

On the way back, we were close to the docks and our friends tried to stand up and paddle but their boat flipped over and they both fell out! After we kayaked, we dropped our anchor and had lunch. They had a large variety of foods, including oysters, rice, pineapple, and fried Basa fish (Vietnamese catfish). At first I thought I was just going to eat the rice and pineapple, but Dad said, “why don’t you give the fish a try?” I wasn’t sure if I would like it, but you know what? It tasted pretty good, similar to a french fry.

Shortly afterwards, we dropped our anchor near a hidden beach, jumped off the boat, and swam to shore. Our guide, Hoan/Ryan did a surprising backflip off the top of the boat and smacked his face on the water! That day was quite the adventure. I’m looking forward to trying delicious foods in Kathmandu!