Gastronomical Changes, pt 1

It goes without saying that when you move to the other side of the world, things change. Your outlook on the world changes, your ability to adapt to strange new situations changes, and your place in the societal hierarchy changes. One of the things that no one tells you, however, is that your diet will change. It may seem obvious but I had expected that in a modernized, large metropolitan city like Ho Chi Minh I would be able to find just about any type of food I could want. And for the most part, that's true. But due to scarcity or price there are some food items that just tend to fall out of most western people's diets when they move to Vietnam. Here are a few of them.

• Dairy. Besides those who are lactose intolerant, most western people get a lot of dairy in their diets. Be it milk, ice cream, chocolate, cheese, etc, these foods are just not as accessible as they are in America. There are some dairy items that are fairly popular here, such as yogurt, condensed milk, and to a certain degree ice cream. However, you start to notice that most of the dairy from your home diet seems to disappear. Regular milk like the kind that you'd put on cereal is expensive and unavailable in any decent quantity. Good chocolate is expensive. Cheese is especially hard to find and when you do, you'll likely balk at the price. Back home I had access to a smorgasbord of fine cheeses: brie, emmental, feta, mozzarella, camembert. If I want a chunk of brie cheese here I practically have to sign over the rights to my first-born child. 

• Bread. Besides the ubiquitous french baguette, good bread here is much harder to find than in America. I'm used to only eating high-quality multi-grain wheat bread; in Vietnam the "wheat" bread is likely just white bread with food coloring. Not to mention that once you do buy some, if you don't keep it in the refrigerator the heat and humidity will birth mold on your bread before you've had time to make a sandwich. It makes sense; rice is the staple here and for good reason, it's one of the most fertile rice-growing areas on earth. Sadly that comes at the expense of good grain options. 

• Beer. Now, here beer is a more commonly available beverage than water or tea, but the lack of high-quality suds here is disappointing. It ties in with the bread, as both are grain based and as of yet no one has found a way to make rice beer (I think). There are a few breweries that produce a good product, and some venues import beer from overseas, but generally speaking you're limited to 4-5 different beers, all of which are just lower quality clones of Budweiser or Coors. 

So there you have it; 3 staples of the American diet which fall to the wayside once you decided to move to Vietnam. There are more ways in which your diet changes in an Asian country; some things that are less integral to your diet and some that are more. Ho Chi Minh is a city of 9 million people, thus any type of food is available here: Mexican, Indian, American, Italian, you name it you can find it. But in your day to day life it's unrealistic to think that you can make this move without having to adjust your eating habits. In part 2 I will cover a few foods that I didn't eat much of back in America but I have found myself eating relatively regularly here.