Vietnam price information Fixed-point observation 20250509 Shellfish specialty shop at a local market

2025.05.08 At a shellfish specialty shop in a local market in Ho Chi Minh City Bivalves: 1kg = 40,000 VND = about 240 yen Hot, just plain hot—we're at the very start of the rainy season. By the time I'd finished running all my various errands, it was a little past noon. "Ah, at this hour the market's probably going to be deserted," I thought—but the fridge was spectacularly empty. Once it comes to that, there's nothing left to do but go buy the things I actually want to eat! So I made up my mind. Even in this heat, for some reason I got a craving for "hot pot." Tonight it's yosenabe, yosenabe! Ho Chi Minh City is, needless to say, a "shellfish paradise." All sorts of shellfish, cheap and delicious. Rows and rows of shellfish whose names I don't even know are lined up. Among them, I thought, "It's been a while—I'd love some razor clams," so I steeled myself and headed to the market, but…… I couldn't buy any. No, it's not that there weren't any. There were two bundles, each of about 20 of them, sitting there, and I said, "I'll take one of these," but for some reason they wouldn't sell them to me. Maybe there was a reservation on them—the reason remains a mystery. With no other choice, I looked around the shop and… large, medium, and small hard clams, small ark clams, various sea snails, and rows of bivalves too. From among them, I safely went with the orthodox, standard bivalves. One kilo! Honestly, 500g would've been plenty, but—"Well, I can just remove the sand and freeze the rest," I figured.

If you buy them there, 1kg = 40,000 VND ≈ about 240 yen. Talk about cheap~! Clams really are best bought by the kilo. *The amount of 1kg is about 2.5 times what's in the photo. I used three trays to let them spit out the sand~ I hurried back home, gave them a good rinse-rinse, made some salt water close to the concentration of seawater, and plopped the clams right in. Sand-purging time in the shower room. A whole kilo is quite a lot, but this is where you dig in with some spirit. If you don't get them to spit out the sand properly, that gritty "crunch..." when you eat them kills your appetite and ruins everything. And so, that night I fully enjoyed heaps of clams in a hot pot and stir-fried greens with garlic.

The next day, I enjoyed it in miso soup! Relocation Life Ranking