Bún Đậu with Tuan

Tuan, who I met last week at the Couchsurfing meet-up, picked me up from my hotel at noon and we drove over to a restaurant selling Bún Đậu, a northern street food dish. Traditionally it was a dish for the poor consisting of just tofu and noodles pressed together and cut in to large cubes. It's since been updated to include various meats along with salad. It's usually eaten with a fermented shrimp paste which you mix with lime, sugar and chilli. Most tourists and even some Vietnamese find the shrimp paste too strong or disgusting but I think it worked really well as a dip, especially in small quantities. We all needed chewing gum afterwards though! 

We ate with two of Tuan's friends and they were all on their lunch break so we didn’t stay too long. We drove back via a famous coffee shop and then I didn't do much for the rest of the day, mainly because I felt unwell (I'm pretty sure it was unrelated to the shrimp paste). I had to cancel some plans I'd made and I didn't have any dinner but it wasn't too bad.