World Culture Tour: Vietnam part 1 - Pho

Still virtually traveling Southeast Asia, we move from Thailand into Vietnam. Before we get into the history lesson of the Vietnam War, we decided to first try some Vietnamese food. Our first dish: Pho.

For starters, you can take 4 pounds beef soup bones, 1 onion (unpeeled and cut in half), 5 slices fresh ginger, 1 tablespoon salt, 2 pods star anise, 2 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce, and 4 quarts water to make your pho broth.

Or, you can cheat like us and buy pre-packaged pho broth. That works too, and there's still plenty for you to do.

• However you choose to get or make pho broth, heat the broth in a bowl of its own.

• In a separate bowl, cook rice noodles.

• Cut thin strips of sirloin and cook.

• Add the noodles into bowls.

• Top each bowl of noodles with the thinly cut sirloin strips.

• Cover the noodles and meat with pho sauce.

• Finally, garnish the disk with bean sprouts.

For the remainder of our Vietnam itinerary:

*Once again, we skip scenes that are too graphic, but otherwise we want to show the realities and history of the areas we're visiting.

Movies: 

• Forest Gump

• Operation Dumbo Drop

• Hamburger Hill

• Platoon

• Full Metal Jacket

• Missing in Action

• Tropic thunder

• Uncommon valor

• Good Morning, Vietnam

• James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies

• Rambo 2

• Vietnam History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr5Z0-AsGgM

• Mi Lai Massacre

Food:

• Boba

• Banh Mi

• Pho

Music: Traditional Vietnamese, Vietnamese War protest songs

Stories: How Tiger Got his Stripes, Coconut Boy, Starfruit Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDn5IijV6k0

Craft: Dragon Parade http://www.adoptvietnam.org/vietnamese/tet-dragon.htm

Custom: Tet

Click to see more of the World Culture Tour!