We’ve been in Vietnam nearly 2 months now. A Vietnam Visa is only 30 days, but with the uncertainties with COVID-19 influencing entrance into other countries (and the fact that our 2 flights out of the country have been cancelled), we’ve extended our Visa until the middle of June.
So, I’ll begin with a timeline of COVID response in Da Nang. When we arrived on March 13th, we’d noticed that many of the resorts and hotels were already closed or mostly vacant. There were still a lot of non-natives hanging out in the beach area. Many of the shops, karaoke bars and the amusement park had been shuttered. On 3/26 we applied for a 60 day Visa extension.
3/21: Medical Checks in and out of the city & at the grocery store.
3/22: Restaurants closed for dine-in.
3/30: Informed of fines for not wearing facemasks in public & recommended leaving residence for essential purposes only.
3/31: Informed apartments weren’t allowed to accept new reservations, so if ours expired before we renewed, we might have trouble finding a place to stay.
4/2: Grab (Asian Uber) stopped rides & food delivery was shut down. Beach taped off and patrolled to turn visitors away.
4/16: Grab resumes rides & food delivery (Yee-ha!).
4/29: Beaches and restaurants open again, just in time for Labour Day!
In case you didn’t read my Picky Eater’s Guide to Melbourne, I’m a meat and potatoes guy, so I’m giving this account from a viewpoint of accessibility to American foods and some things I’ve tried here.
Ground beef here isn’t consistently available and steaks are super-tough, like chewing on a 30-year-old piece of meat-flavored Hubba-Bubba gum. I highly recommend finding some spices too. You don’t really have much choice between cuts of beef or fat content. The ground beef looks a lot fattier than in the US, but it may be related to less artificial coloring/preservatives. Chicken breasts occasionally come with hidden bones in them. And we made the mistake of buying hot-dogs, but they had a thick skin that snaps when you bite through it and quickly chucked those bad boys into the bin.
I still haven’t found green beans since I left the US. Corn is the only canned vegetable I’ve found here (and we don’t have a can opener). We eat lots of frozen corn and on the cob. Potatoes are small and you don’t have a lot of choice. Loaves of sandwich bread – available only in half-loaves – aren’t stocked at convenience marts and can only be found at the full-size grocery stores of which we’ve found one in the area. Chips and Asian ketchup are very vinegary and we’ve avoided them. I’m very happy to report that I found GRAPE JELLY! Peanut butter is also available here.
Lemonade is difficult to find here, but you can find most other fruit drinks. Coke is readily available. Again with the plastic, but we buy a LOT of 6 liter bottles of La Vie Nestle water. It’s recommended not to drink tap water without boiling it first. There’s a good selection of beers and the better ones cost $1 each if you buy them in singles, better if you buy a case. The selection of wines isn’t great, but again, the prices are very reasonable. I didn’t much care for Vietnam wines… they taste like they’ve been stored improperly.
At restaurants, chicken isn’t chopped into pieces to eat around, it’s chopped right through the bone, presumably so you can suck the marrow, but it means bone fragments in a lot of meals. Down by My Khe Beach (where we hang out mostly), there are a lot of restaurants that server American foods, but mostly fried fare: burgers and fried chicken. We’ve found some great places that have kabobs. Our most regular visits are to a sports bar called Dirty Fingers and a beach-side joint called Apocalypse Now. There are a TON of cafes here, lots of places to get a drink, but nothing to eat.
Our favorite place to catch a meal (and probably COVID, cuz it’s crowded) is the An Thượng night market. Great food, great prices, cash only. Beware, there’s a karaoke joint in the market, so you might satisfy your stomach, but upset your other ears if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing.
At home, we’re eating a lot of chicken and spaghetti when we’re not ordering delivery. Grab charges about a $1 fee for food delivery + you optionally add a tip. I’ve gained a new appreciation for KFC and we found a great Indian joint called Mumtaz which has some excellent chicken tikka. We also like Hermanos for pizza/tacos.
For dessert, pastries are rare. Ice cream is available. There’s no chocolate/peanut butter candy here. It seems maybe a final course is not a Vietnam “thing”, as I haven’t seen much on the dessert menu that seems from the region.
For snacks, popcorn is difficult to find, but can be found in the convenience marts on occasion. I’ve been eating swiss rolls for breakfast and Oreos for late night sessions.
Those are my observations from our 2 months in Da Nang. We’re unsure where we’re going next, but we’ve reserved our apartment until June 6th ($350/month!? + ~$50 for electricity). We’ve discussed Tbilisi, Georgia, Bali, Indonesia & Oslo, Norway, but we’ll make the final decision as things sort themselves out over the next 3 weeks. Until then, stay safe and we hope we find you on the road to everywhere.