Vegetarian Soup in Chinatown

 

A very different bowl of soup today, a 100% vegetarian bowl of abundant flavours, textures and colours, that I slurped my way through out in District 5, HCMC’s Chinatown. Today is the first day of the lunar month, so many vendors sell wholly vegetarian dishes, to suit the practices of their Buddhist customers.

This soup contained wontons filled with a taro mixture (instead of pork), fresh rice noodles which were tinted by the bright orange broth, two (maybe more) kinds of mushroom, squares of deep fried tofu, (chunks of) tomato and cabbage, shredded banana flour and morning glory, bean shoots, a few fresh green herbs, and something crumbled on top for the final flourish, I think it was wafer thin sheets of deep fried bean curd. As the wide girthed soup lady plonked it down in front of me, it was such an explosion of colour that I was dying to take a photo. However this was a particularly intimate table and seating arrangement, even by Saigon street food standards. I was shoulder to shoulder with a rather stern looking Buddhist nun, so it didn’t feel like the time to whip out my camera.

The food was much more successful than the intended purpose of my visit to Chinatown, to buy some fabric at a market out there. I did find a lot of fabric for sale. Actually I think I found the mecca of ‘day pyjama’ fabric for Saigon women, (see woman in yellow above) I passed stall after stall of this stretchy synthetic stuff in every garish pattern you could imagine. I know it suits millions of Vietnamese women, but not what I was after.

The photos above were taken at a pagoda just around the corner from the Fabric market. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been to it before. Though the hustle and bustle of Chinatown usually leaves me fairly disoriented, so I may have stumbled upon it another time. It was quite busy here, again because of the new moon. I think I saw the youngest worshippers I’m yet to encounter; a very small three year old girl praying most enthusiastically, and being very bossy with her younger brother to make sure that he did too.