This is the kind of stuff that the tour guides don't tell you about. I hopped on the back of my local colleague's scooter (which is a story in and of itself if you've ever seen the weaving no-helmet carbon monoxide-laden traffic in Saigon) and headed out to what is known as bo ke, or basically sitting at a spot on the street near a very small river. The food taunters in this area were quite ballsy given that they actually stood out in the middle of the street trying to stop scooters from whizzing by to get them to come in and eat...and you thought those guys back at Singapore's Boat Quay were aggressive!
Anyway, we initially just came for dirt cheap beer (which they had in plastic bottles with screwtops so tight that they had to give nutcrackers to help you open them, BTW). But my colleague decided to order a bunch of local dishes, the primary of which was dieu hong lau, a stew of sorts featuring fish in a slightly sour and sweet broth. Grab some bun noodles, put it in your bowl together with some of the fish, veggies, and broth, and slurp away (dip in fish sauce as needed).
He also got us some oc buu, or river snails. Despite the French colonial influence in the country, this was definitely not the butter and garlic topped escargot that we've all come to love. This was steamed directly in the shell from what I could see, and seasoned only with some of that laksa leaf garnish on the side. Grab a toothpick, wiggle out the snail (it took some skill to get the inner piece of it out in one piece, BTW), dip it in a clear ginger-based sauce on the side, and eat it with the leaf. I'm not a fan of that leaf, so I skipped the last part, but it was still interesting to try this rather tasteless (but firm) creature.
We had a few other items like okra accompanied by a fermented tofu dip, but the value for me here was seeing the real local scene. A table next to us was very friendly and chatted us up as best they could too, and it was clear that everyone was having a good time.
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