We have traveled to southern Vietnam to the Mekong Delta courtesy of one trip tours and let me tell you these next four weeks are gonna be completely insane the Mekong Delta is a huge maze of interconnecting rivers swamps and islands and we are here looking for the most unique food in this region I am talking giant and gourami I'm talking an entire freaking chicken cooked in mud we've got our chicken in the mud let's go Grill it up.
I am talking floating markets another beautiful breakfast boat has rolled up on us and this lady has everything so check back each week because we are doing all this and more right now we are headed downriver to on our first destination and as far as I know we're gonna get some coconuts Finch a is famous for its coconuts and today we're visiting the coconut lady herself so she's making all this candy herself yeah Wow okay a spry 62 year old Vietnamese grandmother living on the bank of the Mekong Delta where she's making some amazing natural candy what is the most popular thing here at this yes that's the most popular thing in the Mekong Delta and today she's offered to show me her secret recipe do you know how to climb up a coconut tree oh I dunno well you went through a whole array of emotions just now but first we're gonna need some coconuts welcome to climbing a coconut tree 101 and look you can't make coconut candy without coconuts and it happens that it just so happens that the coconuts are up in the tree they're up there.
I'm with my dude the boat man himself mr. Lim yeah and you're gonna teach me how to climb the coconut tree you first and then I'll go right after that you your left hand - both right here and okay until friend you know so good I'm up like this you know something ought to do the next step doesn't mean to do it yeah oh my gosh okay well you're up there could you grab a coconut for me I'm kind of thirsty how many ah there's the crew want any no they're good okay yeah just one for me oh it's very hot.
So I need a nice yeah yeah no problem I'll throw a knife up to you a big knife here you go oh my God look at this guy he's doing it and you know food tastes so much better when you work for it and that's what I'm doing that's what he's doing right now you want me to catch it okay here we go oh hey look I helped to buy do you want to jump into my arms no notice I said morrel I'll get a coconut for you next it looks pretty easy I'm pretty nimble I'm a flexible guy I think I can do this here we go was that good what do you say I have pretty good I have another metaphor for you easier for you yeah like maybe an intricate pulley system no another why'd you do like this it's maybe it's better for you oh oh okay all right I have another way for you okay okay oh okay all right you can move you can move hey kite get a really low angle so it looks like I'm high is it working.
Wow guys I made it all the way up here ah and kai is on a ladder right now so he can take some video pretty amazing um we're gonna we're running out of memory card space we have to cut you're not gonna see me climb anymore sorry we got to switch the battery is running out okay cut it's coconut candy time and my lady here is gonna show us how to do it from beginning to end and her name is go through it go to head go to ass I know okay.
I'm working on it sorry okay I'm doing my best alright so first she makes work of this coconut like it's nothing oh okay okay look it's very dangerous this plank is attached to this piece of wood so you have a strong foundation easy Oh oh gosh okay BAM look at that oh gosh can you just do it I don't know what I'm doing no she's saying that she's not gonna hate you oh oh can I have some of that oh I love that sweet coconut juice we got a coconut and we got to peel out the coconut meat and that is no easy feat look at that oh my god it's like a cereal bowl she doesn't like it's nothing peeling all the meat no waste uh why is one bigger than the other because she's gonna peel away all that coconut Ryne the kind of woody inside part and just reveal the nice meat of the coconut now.
We are cleaning off the coconut it turns out we you know she put it on my chest but she doesn't want my chest sweat to remain on them gross so we have our secondary a little peeler here peeling the meat into little strips I'm gonna do my best and I'm gonna impress you more than my real grandma yeah what do you know about that extra productivity look at this I'm doubling the output we're gonna make money grandma here we are we got our coconut strips we've been working hard we're gonna use our giant chopsticks to put them in a pot and that's all I know so far so we're just going straight in with the granulated white sugar and we're gonna mix them about with the choppy sticks there we go put in a bunch more sugar it does not get any more country than this we aren't basically like an outdoor cooking area here we have just an old school make your own fire kind of range he's got some of this dried plants matter a little bit of paper she lights it on fire.
She throws it in there that's so freakin cool we've mixed up the coconut with all the sugar we have it in her pot and we're just gonna throw it on the fire yeah yeah oh God nailed it this is like like at the apocalypse hit she said your house is apocalypse proof right like she's on the water her stove starts witches fire okay when the zombie apocalypse comes she won't even know until three months later should be like we're all the tortoise with the coconut she's kind of caramelizing and candying the coconut I like to do the cross mix method like that beautiful if you're super into coconuts I mean look at this we've got bowls made of coconut we've got candy made of coconut this candy is made of coconut my drink is literally coconut juice it is all about Oh is this from coconut - no not really alright I don't even want to we went through the whole coconut process and we mix it up on the fire for about an hour then let it cool in the Sun for about 15 minutes and what you get is this final product right here this beautiful sugary candied coconut look at that you look at it ya know the big moment that we've all been waiting for everybody out there is one drink gosh what does coconut taste like well.
I'm about to tell you here we go ready go hmmm yes Jimmy it's very sweet salt Chuy's little chewy and to be quite frank with you guys and I'm not usually this direct but it tastes like coconut agreed that was unexpected what are we gonna have for lunch is this a normal fish or some kind of epic thumbnail clickbait fish it will be some epic thumbnail click double fish oh wow guys you can eat this fish or you can click it yeah let's go right now you can see we're in a stream that's super narrow and the whole Mekong Delta has thousands of streams like this that are interconnecting it's like a second highway here this is probably a more dependable highway than the actual streets there's just tons of boats and traffic everywhere there's somebody coming up here.
Let's say hi Jule we're connecting we are deep in the countryside of the Mekong this guys getting a haircut yo this is an authentic Vietnamese haircut vite would you agree with them okay let's get back over here to me so um what I'm really curious about is how much does this haircut cost in the country be how much one of these air cuts costume well I actually you know I can ask ah I know a haircut Mugen vol 1 whoa $1 really if you want a nice open hair haircut area then you got to come here it's $1 that's the cheapest intercut place I've ever seen should I get the haircut right now if you have okay.
Yes if I have hair to cut you know what I'm not let's just go we were on a boat and now we're here and we're headed to a restaurant that specializes in something called so Rami now you might recognize this name if you've ever been to a pet store or any mainstream aquariums you probably saw this fish about this size but we're gonna do one today that's about this size and they call it the elephant ear fish and I'm about to find out why so here we are in the back of the restaurant and we have this gigantic fish the gourami this is a freshwater fish so they're pulling it right out of the river why do you call it an elephant ear fish yeah because it's been and flat and look like an elephant's ear.
Oh yeah I probably could have guessed that so this is the biggest one and she told me like there's even lighting oh my gosh I've never seen anything like this come a little closer car she puts a little kumquat on to the fish and then now she's kind of scaling it ix jeez look at this thing this thing is massive it's my face sized cleaning it off she's gonna put some pitch dross on it so that is salty what would be better than being a fish and getting paid to fish sauce wait what that's like if we were based at people sauce okay here we go look at that whoa oh my gosh and right away all the scales are bubbling off and then she puts it and the scales and everything she's just peeling it right off like it's nothing that oil is hot as heck look at this thing.
I've never seen a fish that huge get tossed in a fryer that is crazy that oil must be insanely hot so she's taking out the scales we ain't gonna eat that we don't want those scales like right now kind of what I'm doing is what I like to call hiding cuz I don't want to get no royal splashed on me she sees me hiding now the oil has come to a normal temperature this thing is a massive fish the elephant ear fish come over here be gigantic and this thing is gonna fry in there for about how long yes they're out 15 to 20 minutes so this is like a giant fish steak okay possible from now here we are we have a beautiful array of foods before us and let me just point them out for you specifically here we have some rice noodles some herbs a bit of sliced pineapple and sliced cucumber some rice paper and then the main event the big daddy-o the gigantic gourami the humungous elephant ear fish are you ready to eat this.
ok am I in too intense right now V how do we do it rice paper is for you to roast that put everything in here and wrote it out and give it in this tamarind pissed off rice paper BAM then what how good your chopsticks kill seven out of seven my rice noodle pick veggies all of them you have to pick all of them I know what you're trying to do and you're trying to make me the cucumber I'm not gonna if you wish you can put cucumber but that's not mandatory there's such cool things inside of here oh it's super crispy oh my gosh there's still some tiny scales on here can we eat those yes of course it's still crunchy right now.
Oh God that hard and I'm gonna put it in my roll and then there's nothing for you today and I have a quick question yes what's up with this rice paper because this rice paper it's a little bit different than other rice paper I've seen it's not so hard so this kind of rice paper is used for like rolling kind of like stuck with her herbs and everything like this so are you saying are you saying these are rolling papers oh you said this is rice paper for rolling I think these are rolling papers alright these are the rolling papers son and what we're doing next is we're putting it in the sauce here yeah dip dip dip and are you ready yeah Cheers let's go for it that's awesome such a flavor combination it's kind of fruity there's a bit of the pineapple with the tamarind sauce together makes it like a little it's like a little starburst in your mouth that is nice.
I'm gonna take another dip this I've never had sauce like that before so sweet it's almost syrupy one more time we go rice paper or as we said they're called rolling papers we're good okay we're gonna put our price noodles on here do not miss the pineapple a bit of herb grab a piece of fish roll it up halfway close it like a Christmas present dip it in some of that rich decadent tamarind sauce in the food bin it has everything it's a little bit chewy put a little bit crunchy a little sour but a little sweet a little heavy from the oily fish but then light with the herbs this meal has what I like to call balanced would you agree with that balance thank you so much for showing me around this little piece of the Mekong Delta and look we have a lot more Mekong Adventures on the way but for you guys you have heard me talk about the one trip food tours but one trip is also doing one day and to date Mekong Delta tours from Ho Chi Minh City covering a lot of the places that you saw today
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