After maybe a week traveling through the Mekong region and southern coast of Vietnam, I realized something about the food there. It’s all extremely fresh. I mean really fresh, as in it was killed that day (maybe the day prior) or pulled from the garden that morning. It’s kind of funny really, because here we are, in the great old innovative USA, thinking we’re all leading the charge in eating local & buying local. The reality is, we’ve got nothing on the Vietnamese (or anywhere in SE Asia really…or the rest of Asia…or maybe the rest of the world even…) Nearly every meal you order from a restaurant, big or small, is going to be ‘made to order’. (That being said, I can’t necessarily say the same thing about the thousands of movable food stalls dotting the streets and alleys…some were very good, while others, such as the vegetarian buffet in Prabang, Laos, were really really bad.)

There is a routine to getting the food as well. If you’re not growing it yourself, than most likely your marching down to the local market and buying it fresh, everyday. From the tiny villages of central Laos to the acres of stalls in Saigon and Hanoi, every where you visit, you’ll find a market. And these aren’t your Saturday Farmers markets.

This photo was shot at a locals market in Luang Prabang, Laos. (Yes, in certain places the tourist markets differ from where the locals shop.) Besides the mounds of colorful spices, rows of vegetables, tubs of fresh-caught fish, there is the meat section. It is here where your senses will be overloaded (if they haven’t been already) with the pungent smell of the living and the dead. There are the external parts – legs, feet, heads, skin, and the internal – organs, hearts…and liver…covered in blood. In some odd way I already miss it.

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