It was lunchtime again and I was wondering what I should eat. After a bit of pondering I decided to pull out a pack of instant noodles, an egg and some frozen squid I had in the freezer.

I cooked the instant noodles with all the condiments and drained the broth out into a separate bowl, threw the squid in a fry pan with a little garlic and a tad of soy sauce. When the squid was nearly cooked I put it aside and threw in the egg breaking it up as it cooked. I then added re-added the squid and threw in the cooked noodles. I tossed and mixed the whole lot together and there it was, my egg and squid fried noodles.

I headed into the Pho 24 restaurant on Mac Thi Buoi Street in District 1 yesterday for a late lunch. I ordered combo 2 which included a bowl of pho noodle soup, beef balls and a fruit shake for 50,000 dong (USD$3.10). I chose the pho with the thinly sliced beef (pho tai) and the mango fruit shake.

The food was on the table within minutes and I wasted no time chowing it down. The pho was hot and tasty and the mango fruit shake was ice cold and full of flavour. So yeah, that was my quick and simple yet satisfying lunch at Pho 24.

Every now and then I get a craving for instant noodles but rather than keep it simple as instant noodles are supposed to be I like to spice them up a little by adding some extras.

I normally just throw in whatever I can find in the fridge or freezer. Things like prawns, squid, scallops, crab meat, crab stick, prawn balls, fish balls, beef balls, mixed vegetables, tofu, Chinese sausage and egg.

In a few of the dishes I added seafood tofu imported from Japan which is tofu mixed with seafood (probably mostly fish) and black sesame seeds. It’s tasty and has an interesting texture like just like a cross between fish balls and tofu.

So there you have it. My instant noodles with that little bit extra.

For Bien and Le Thuy’s second last night here in Saigon we decided to spoil ourselves with a lavish buffet dinner at the Saigon Cafe, a buffet restaurant on the 1st floor of the Sheraton Saigon Hotel. Man, this place never disappoints! Everything was so good. Bien and Le Thuy couldn’t get enough of the oyster mornay which was totally delish. The mud crab was also totally amazing. Between the three of us I think we downed a total of four or five crabs. We should have taken more photos of all the other amazing dishes that we ate but we were all too involved with eating we didn’t want to make time.

Anyways, check out the photos. And we were only able to make time to take the dessert shots ‘cause we were all pretty full by then. Haha, we sure did stuff ourselves that night.

Man, Singapore is one interesting city. So culturally diverse city with heaps of great places to eat. With everything from the super spicy Indonesian dishes, Indian curries and traditional Chinese yum cha Singapore has got it all. A highlight was the all you can eat steamboat buffet we had on our last night. For SG$12.80 per head which is about USD$8.50 you get half tom yum and half traditional chicken soup steamboat with unlimited small mud crabs, prawns, fish, deer, mutton, various varities of tasty mushroom and all the other traditional steamboat dishes. Nghia ate so much he had to leave the table early and head upstairs to lay down. Haha it was hillarious seeing him complain and shit.

We also did all the touristy things and visited the Night Safari and Sentosa Island.

Anyways, check out the photos. Some of these were taken from my camera phone so the quality isn’t that crash.