ROBERT MAKŁOWICZ WIETNAM odc.169 „Po prostu Sajgon”.

ROBERT MAKŁOWICZ WIETNAM odc.169 „Po prostu Sajgon”.

Quite a spring around me, one might say. And this is, ladies and gentlemen, Saigon indeed. The partner of this episode is Zen. In Vietnam, you have to pay with million-dollar banknotes , so it’s more convenient to pay by card or withdraw money from an ATM at a good exchange rate.

The partner of our entire Vietnamese escapade is the website wakacje.pl, thanks to which you can also come here. Saigon. Damn… I’m in Saigon. Ladies and Gentlemen, at the very beginning I must honestly admit that it has been a long time since I have been so excited and excited about traveling

. Here I finally found myself in a place I had dreamed of and which I had never been to before. This is the largest city in Vietnam. Historic Saigon, i.e. Ho Chi Minh City. And this is the guy from whom this city

Got its name after the victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam . Ho Chi Minh. In our country, it is wrongly called Ho Chi Minh. He was a man, because first we need to say a few words about this national hero. He was an extremely worldly and outgoing man.

Not only in Moscow, also in Paris, but also in London. Moreover, he is a human being, which is very important for the main topic of our program. A man who knew his way around the kitchen because he cooked, he was a ship’s cook and also a cook at London’s Carlton Hotel.

This is a significant address. A man who spoke many languages. And a national hero. And what is next to it is huge and wonderful. My dears, Ho Chi Minh, or Saigon, and it is this city that we will delve into now. Behind me stands the opera building,

Built at the end of the 19th century. These were the times of French colonialism, French domination in Indochina. Around the middle of the 19th century, the French, under the pretext of persecuting Catholics in Vietnam, occupied this country and from the south of Vietnam created a creation called Cochinchina, with its capital in Saigon.

Well, this quarter of the city simply looks like a piece of Marseille or some other French metropolis. There we had the end of the 19th century, and here we have the 1920s, in my humble opinion, but here we already have modern Vietnam because we have skyscrapers.

The city is full of history, so this building also has historical, later connotations. Well, during the war between communist Vietnam, North Vietnam and South Vietnam, here in the Rex Hotel, which is still a hotel, there were accredited war correspondents and the local bar was a treasure trove of unofficial information.

Everyone sat there, drank and exchanged information about what happened, where, at the front or in politics. The hotel is open, the bar has a terrace, so maybe we can get there. Hotel Rex did not disappoint us. The terrace works, the bar works, and they have coffee. Of course, Vietnamese coffee.

In the Warsaw episode, I showed you this characteristic brewer and the addition of condensed milk. Here in the south, where it is much warmer than in the north, it is most often served cold with ice. Well, almost like a frappé. An American news agency also had its headquarters here during the Vietnam War

. It was a kind of press agency and there were briefings for journalists here every day at five o’clock . Well, not only those who lived in this place, but also those who lived in the entire city. This is described in many sources, and since we are touching on history, well,

As briefly as possible, I have to tell you all about it. Well, you already know that it was the French first, around the mid-19th century. The Second World War. The Second World War. The Japanese are coming. They leave the Vichy French administration, but in reality they are the masters of Vietnam.

Việt Minh, an organization working for Vietnamese independence , is founded in the north . Political and armed organization. World War II is ending. The French return, and a conflict breaks out between the Việt Minh and France. A war in which the French suffered a disastrous defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

And we have the Geneva Accords. Two Vietnams are created. The boundary is the seventeenth parallel. The communist one in the north and the one in the south. Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam. The Americans support the Republic of South Vietnam. And so the Vietnam-US-Vietnamese war begins .

This war lasts, if we take it as a whole, i.e. the French and American episodes, it lasts from 1945 to 1975. In 1968, the famous Tet offensive. Then it was not the Việt Minh that fought the Americans, but the Vietcong. The Vietcong suffers a military defeat, but is a moral and propaganda winner.

In the West and in the United States, people do not want to die in Vietnam. Therefore, Americans are leaving. North Vietnam wins. In 1975, the North Vietnamese enter Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City is born, and we are here now. Fortunately, it’s a quiet time for Vietnam , so I can

Sip a Vietnamese coffee while thinking about these different things and admiring the landscape. Cooled, which is very important. It’s safe to say that we are in the core of the former French Saigon. We have two buildings here that once provided some form of communication for at least some of the city’s inhabitants.

This is Notre Dame Cathedral. Notre Dame de Saigon Catholic Cathedral. She provided those who wanted communication with God. And here is communication with the world, for those who wanted it. This is the post office building. Excellent. Put into use in 1891.

At first glance, it was visible to the inhabitants of our part of the world. This architecture seems familiar, but it is not a purely European style. Here we have a connection between Europe and Southeast Asia. Well, above the entrance there are lotus flowers at the top of the roof,

Just like in Buddhist temples . Below there is a large head of a jellyfish, but on one and the other side of the jellyfish there are two other heads. One of them is a tiger’s head and the other is a dragon’s head. And the inside, the middle, is simply candy.

The entire structure of the hall is based on a metal frame with very characteristic pillars. It is somewhat reminiscent of, for example, the famous market hall in Pest. And that is why this construction is wrongly attributed to Gustave Eiffel. In Budapest, he had his hands in the market hall.

Not here, but that was the fashion at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Especially in France. Here we have a map illustrating the telegraph connections of southern Vietnam and Cambodia, as of 1936. Next to them are telephone booths. Well, today it’s gutted, because no one uses

Landline phones anymore, but I didn’t tell you about it. Hotel Rex was initially a car garage, and then a car showroom. Citroens were sold there, so you can easily imagine the director of that Citroen showroom sitting in this cabin , because he has just ordered an intercontinental call to Paris and says

Bonjour, Bonjour, Allo! Bring me 10 new lemons in a hurry, because they sold out quickly. It could have been so. However, the telephone is faster than the telegraph. Well, this is still a working post office. There are post office windows there. From here you can send a postcard with a characteristic local stamp.

So what else do we have here? Well, here we have a symbol of later times. Namely, the largest portrait of Ho Chi Minh in all of southern Vietnam . Just a few years ago, there was a man at the post office who helped people write letters.

Well, not everyone could write, and then it was more of a type historical presentation, because there has been no problem of illiteracy in this country for a long time and it is clearly visible in this place. What do we have in this alley? Bookstores only. Authors’ meetings are held here on weekends.

Well, like the weekly book fair. Only bookstores on one side. On the other side of the pub. Pubs coming soon. Bookstores for now. Well, I had to buy professional literature. I acquired it. ABOUT! The bookmark fell out. And I acquired it. And The banh mi Handbook is a thing that leads us

To a very important area of ​​the local culinary world. What remains of the French in Vietnam today? Apart from the colonial architecture. Well, the alphabet. As you can easily see. Everything is written here in the Latin alphabet. This is what French priests and missionaries did. The idea was to translate the Bible

Into the local language as easily as possible. Well, it would be easier to catholicize Vietnamese society. But there are also important culinary traces of this presence. One of them is the love for baguettes and baguette sandwiches. So we are touching on something extremely important, which is called banh mi for short.

In such places, you can always find baskets of fresh, crispy half-baguettes straight from the bakery . They are smaller and shorter than the long, traditional baguettes. So what? There is pâté for this, but there are plenty of other toppings as well. I have a version called banh mi Huynh Hoa.

This is a maximalist version, not a minimalist one. You can request various things. There is pulled pork inside. There is a type of mortadella, there is a type of salsesona, there is roast pork. It’s not spread with butter, it’s spread with something like mayonnaise. Crispy onion, of course, and lots of additions

That you either put inside or chew on the whole thing. We have chives, we have coriander, we have onion, we have carrots, we have chili, we have turnip. And yes, of course, if we buy it at the airport, for example, it often stays there for a long time.

It is put in a plastic bag and then it is not crispy. However… A huge cucumber. The basis is fresh, crispy bread. And that’s how you eat it. Like I said, the maximalist version. They are less complicated, less complex, but generally the point is the same.

I’m talking a lot now, because in a moment I won’t be able to speak anymore. This is one of those examples where the original was transformed into something much richer. Well, baguette with ham, baguette with cheese. This is a good thing, but it just takes away the taste buds.

It’s impossible not to try it in Saigon, and there are also bahn mi, I’ve seen vegan addresses. This one is not vegan. Divine. Dear trip, here is another building symbol. It’s called the Reunification Palace. Today, because it was once the seat of the French governor of Indochina.

It was destroyed and rebuilt in the 1960s. To this day, it bears the same form from that time and was the seat of the President of the Republic of Vietnam. South Vietnam. And on April 30, 1975, at 10 minutes 45, a North Vietnamese tank drove through this gate, which was a symbolic end

To this long and terrible war. It’s hard to escape from the topic of war here. Well, there is no need for that, because this war is history and we should know the history. This is the War Museum, or to be more precise, the Museum of war remains. A multi-story exhibition, lots of photos,

But the largest exhibits are outside. Here’s something we’ve seen many times in various videos about the American presence in Vietnam, the UH-1 helicopter, the popular Huey. He fired both rockets and machine guns. It had runners. It could land in rice fields. One more pill. The war with France was the Việt Minh.

Then the war with the United States and South Vietnam became the Vietcong. So, the Vietnamese have already won against two empires, first against France, and France was still an empire at that time, and then finally against the United States. This is the famous twin-rotor Chinook. Symbol of the American evacuation from Saigon.

Here we have a wonderful view of modern Saigon. We also have a river. There will be more about the river and even rivers. Now we should focus on eating. Here on the table I have all the necessary ingredients to make a local salad called Goi Ga. Ga is chicken. Goji is a salad.

Chicken, chicken leg that has been cooked. We bought them. If you cook them at home, simply cook them in water by throwing them into boiling water. The water needs to be salted. You can also add lemongrass to add flavor to the meat. Now the sauce. Two liquid ingredients.

Namely, lime juice and fish sauce. This has to go in the bowl. So we have sour and salty in the bowl. So now we also need to make it sweet. These are chopsticks not for eating. They are great. These are special cooking chopsticks. They will serve as a stirrer for me.

So, add the sugar here and stir to dissolve it. Now we’re going to make it sharp. So, to make it spicy, we will add some chili pepper. Here, it’s not like these tiny chili peppers are the hottest. I tried this one and it’s hot as hell, so only a few pieces.

At your discretion. This can always accompany the publisher and you can refine it a bit. And you have to garlic and onion it. This is a very characteristic thing for the local cuisine. Namely, single-clove garlic. This is a bulb of garlic, which consists of only one clove. Extremely strong and aromatic. See?

How pretty. So now I’m going to chop it up first and then I’m going to add some red onion inside. Let her macerate in this sauce for a while. Then it will be less intensely onion-like. Raw red onion. We cut the onion into these characteristic boats. If you want it to be milder,

Much milder, you can add some salt to it, leave it for half an hour, then rinse it under running water and dry it. But red onion isn’t terribly spicy, so we add it here. Now I’ll put on gloves. I’ll wear gloves because I’ll be tugging at a cooked chicken leg.

They need to be peeled and torn into fibers. I didn’t peel the whole leg. Do not be afraid. It won’t be wasted. I just make one demonstration batch. You can do the same with baked chicken, so this is a great idea. If you have leftover roasted chicken or meat, just make Goi Ga.

I’m putting it aside because I won’t need it anymore. I’ll need this. The idea is to keep the wind from blowing it away. Well, now and now. Cabbage. White cabbage. I also read somewhere that it is also made from Chinese cabbage, but white cabbage is more characteristic.

I don’t have a mandolin here, but I do have an excellent local knife chopper, so it’s as thin as possible. Make the cabbage pieces as thin as possible, because the cabbage will not be macerated, i.e. it will not be kept in salt and then squeezed. And how much? As much as we want.

The question is, should it be a cabbage salad with chicken or a chicken salad with cabbage? This is surely enough. Of course, you have to shake it a bit with your hands, and mix, so the sticks move. The point is that everything should be taken away by this sauce, which is

Extremely aromatic, and very good, sour-sweet-spicy. And now the finishing touches. I’m finishing up now. What can you buy almost everywhere? You can buy it. This is a roasted shallot. This is one thing to sprinkle. The second thing to sprinkle is peanuts.

It would be a good idea to roast the peanuts in a pan in advance and crush them a bit, but this is not necessary. So let’s sprinkle both. I like it very much, although it is not a dietary thing because it is fried. And finally, coriander. I have a bunch here washed.

Lots of coriander. My dears, this is it. I know, these aren’t chopsticks, but I don’t have any other ones here. I’ll take a bite of the chicken dipped in this sauce. The city lies on two rivers, but there is also one river, all-encompassing, flooding all the local streets. It’s a river of two-wheelers.

I tell you honestly that I have never seen anything like this in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Phnom Penh, or any other metropolis in Southeast Asia. Once we are standing in this place, we should also take a look at this monument. The great Vietnamese leader, Trần Hưng Đạo.

The man who repelled the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. The Mongols were also the rulers of China at that time. And then the Chinese ruled Vietnam for almost a thousand years. I talked about the Vietnamese victory over two empires. Namely, the French Empire and the American Empire, but we must remember

One more history, much less known in our country. Well, after the unification of Vietnam, communist Vietnamese troops occupied Cambodia and expelled Pol Pot’s regime from there. Probably the cruelest regime ever in human history, but Pol Pot was allied with Maoist China and in 1979 the Chinese invaded northern Vietnam.

There were even such slogans. The road to Hanoi is open, but the Chinese have also been hit. So the French, Americans and Chinese got the booty. How can you see this mass of people today, numbering almost 100 million people in all of Vietnam? When you see how hard-working, active and thoughtful they are

, I’m not surprised at all, but I’m not surprised at all. Let’s return to the actual rivers, one of them is Đông Nại, and the second one is even more important because it was from its name that the city took its original name, i.e. the Saigon River. And the city of Saigon.

Saigon flows into Đông Nại and then it all flows into the South China Sea, which is quite close to here and these are still very important trade arteries. Waterways. Well, here’s an illustration in the background. There is quite a large unit sailing. Officially, 10 million people live

In Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh City . Officially, because that’s how many inhabitants the city has according to the list of registered people, but unofficially no one knows. It may be twice as much. And we also see a new city. It is developing extremely dynamically.

Everything is going up, but what was is still there. This is a wonderful combination of history and modernity. I can honestly tell you that this city really captivates me. When dusk falls, it is worth going to one of the local skybars. There are at least several dozen of them here,

But as you can see, there is no shortage of high-rise buildings here. Many have hotels and bars on the roofs or on one of the highest floors. And most importantly, there is no glass here. Therefore, you can actually see this extraordinary theater , not through the glass.

Well, the traffic is almost like in Manila, but there is a big difference between Manila and Saigon. In Manila, they also honk, but everything is at a standstill. And here you can also hear the horns, but everything is moving. Coming back to what I was talking about a moment ago,

I.e. the entry of Vietnamese troops into Cambodia and the expulsion of the Kmer Reds. I recommend reading an absolutely brilliant book. Bamboo Hourglass viz. I know that its author, Wiesław Górnicki, was a PRL propagandist, a fanatical admirer of General Jaruzelski, but at the same time an extremely talented

Journalist and a great writer, and he was one of the first, if not the first journalist, who entered Phnom Penh together with the Vietnamese. . Fights with the Red Kmers were still going on there. He saw the enormity of these crimes. This is a shocking report.

Coming back to what I have in front of me. This is the cocktail I ordered deliberately. Not because of its appearance, because it doesn’t look exciting, but because of its composition and name. It is a local cocktail called banh mi, a reference to my lunch today. Why banh mi?

Because it is a gin composition. Okay, gin isn’t in the sandwich, but everything else is, or can be. It is gin infused with mango, coriander, star anise and cinnamon. It’s not very sweet. And this is a fantastic moment of breath and a moment to stimulate your body into action, because if you think

That life in Saigon, in Ho Chi Minh City ends at dusk, you are wrong. Life, especially culinary life, often begins here after dusk. Pho means noodles and the famous pho bo soup is made from it. But the quality of this soup depends, of course, on the quality

Of many ingredients, but the pasta is the most important. So you need to find a place where rice noodles are made there. And so it is here. This is a place so famous that it even has Michelin recommendations. Pasta, wonderful pasta immersed in aromatic broth. This is the basis of success.

The place is called Phở Việt Nam and you can go there for pho, or rather pho bo. Pho is just noodles. Pho is a soup. Well, you can get a doctorate in this matter. Let’s start with the fact that pho bo looks slightly different in the north and slightly different in the south.

Well, in the north we wouldn’t get such a set of herbs. In the north, it would be coriander, usually thrown straight into the soup. Coriander and chives. We have chorapa here, i.e. Thai basil. We have lemon filet, we have chili, we have squeezed limes and we have soy sprouts.

So now what other than the broth? The broth is lighter in the north, darker in the south, but beef broth. Most often, there are also modern vegan or chicken versions, but the real one is beef. I have the most classic version, i.e. the version to which pieces of beef leg

Are added at the last minute . He is just touched by this heat and that makes him soft. I have it in front of me. I have other things ahead of me. This is something that is placed on a hot plate. It is wood, but there is heat underneath and now

It is a very similar principle to, for example, fondue. We have raw beef here and you add slices of this beef yourself . It won’t take long for the temperature to drop. Firstly, heated from the bottom, secondly, hot from the outside. There is an energy bomb here, because in addition to the

Pieces that I have in front of me, we also have pieces of very long-cooked beef. We have pieces of oxtail. This is it for example. We also have pieces of beef ribs. And yes, to that. If that wasn’t enough for anyone, there is also a very classic local broth with egg yolk.

And since I can’t eat it all myself, let me season just one soup. What do we need to season? This is also a classic southern combo. Namely, sriracha is lighter and very spicy. This is hoisin sauce, which is a sweet sauce from China. This is not added.

Pieces of meat are soaked in this and eaten, but the broth itself is seasoned, i.e. the broth should be acidified and added to it as desired. Marinated garlic in rice vinegar also adds acidity, because we have vinegar. These are incredibly spicy pickles. Red onion, garlic and chili. This is a really cool thing.

We also have various chilli pastes separately here. Like chili oil. This must not be overdone. And we have fish sauce, in case anyone thinks it’s not spicy enough. Now yes, it’s a northern thing. The kind of dough that is deep fried, more or less like donuts, and in the north it is simply

Dipped in soup and chewed. They serve it here, but it’s not a local, southern custom. I put it off and now I do. We still have some chilli to season. We either snack on these herbs, or just before taking the next portion, we add some of it.

Thai basil, or horapa, will give it an extra anise kick because that’s what it tastes like. A little bit of sprouts. And my dears, we mix and try. I do it for you, in the sense that I eat it with a spoon, because normally I eat

All the solid content with chopsticks, and I just drink the rest that way . My dears, this is absolute soup. This is an absolute soup, but how unhappy I was so far that I didn’t eat it where it was made, because I ate it many times in various Vietnamese

Restaurants in Poland and beyond, but to see Leonardo’s works only outside Italy, you have to come to Italy to understand What is it about. Well, now I’m here and I understand. Excellent.

Wizyta w południowym Wietnamie byłaby nieważna bez odwiedzin jego dawnej stolicy, historycznego Sajgonu, dziś Ho Chi Minh City. Zobaczymy tamtejsze zabytki, pochodzące z kolonialnych czasów francuskich Indochin, zobaczymy też współczesną, tętniącą życiem metropolię, jedno z najważniejszych miast całej Azji Południowo Wschodniej. W sajgońskim menu zaproponujemy same tamtejsze klasyki, z legendarnymi kanapkami banh mi oraz zupą pho bo na czele. Wizualnych i kulinarnych atrakcji z pewnością nie zabraknie.

Partnerem odcinka jest serwis Wakacje.pl – największa w Polsce platforma sprzedaży wycieczek, gdzie w kilku prostych krokach zarezerwować możecie wyjazd nie tylko na Mauritius ale do mnóstwa innych pięknych miejsc na naszym globie. Sprawdź oferty wycieczek na: https://www.wakacje.pl/wczasy/wietnam/

Link do rejestracji karty ZEN https://www.zen.com/?utm_medium=ROBER…​
Kod Rabatowy: MAKLOWICZZEN gwarantuje 60 dni bezpłatnego użytkowania i korzystania z ZENefitów.

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