Hoi An Cooking Class

The food in Vietnam is not like the Vietnamese food in Australia.

It's full of the most amazing flavours, smells amazing and uses the freshest produce available.

So when Nick and I saw an ad at the hotel for a cooking class, we had to book it in.

First we chose our menu:

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

Fish Cooked in Banana Leaf

Traditional Chicken Curry

And then the head chef from our hotel took us to the markets to purchase our ingredients.

From there were went back to the hotel by boat and got cooking.

They even gave us cool chef outfits to wear.

1. Hoi An Markets - This is the meat section. It's very scary that all the meat is just sitting out in the hot open air, but everything is killed and cut up fresh that morning. We bought our chicken and pork at the markets, but our chef went out earlier that morning to get our seafood for us.

2. Nick and I at the markets. - We got fun bags to put all of our purchases in.

3. Market vendor - I'm not sure what they were peeling but I thought it made for an interesting photo.

4. Hoi An Market Noodle Section. The entire market area is broken up into different sections just like a regular supermarket.

5. Fresh Vegetable - and eggs? All the vegetables are super fresh and this area of the markets is so colourful and doesn't have any suspicious smells like the meat and seafood areas do.

6. Vietnamese fishing boat. We got a boat back to the hotel which took about an hour from the markets and got to see some pretty amazing stuff along the way. Unlike Western areas of the world, there is not as much prestige affiliated with living on the river front. There are many shanties around the river.

7. The boat trip back. Our tour guide fell asleep on the way home so we had many questions to ask, but the guy driving the boat didn't speak any English so we're still not sure as to why there are suspended nets all over the river.

8. River front living in Vietnam.

9. Making tasty things in chef get-up complete with cool hat!

10. We made these all by ourselves! We may have had a little help from the chef with the decorations.

Such an amazing experience and it cost around $50AUD pp for the whole day which included the food, transport, and the private lesson. I would highly recommend doing one of these tours if you even remotely like food.

Hayley Jane
xx