Orphanage Lunch

A three hour drive through rice fields in Vietnam brought us to our destination- a Catholic Orphanage. Our focus on this trip was to play with children, hold babies and  visit the orphanage director. The focus  for our new friends at the orphanage was to celebrate International Women’s Day. After at tour and a chance to play with the children, we were the honored guests at a lunch with 80 children and 30 orphanage caretakers.  The lunch was an incredible spread of traditional Vietnamese food. Stir-fried beef, shredded pork, bean sprouts, sauteed vegetables, noodle soup, rice, pork… far more than can be recalled. The delicacy of the meal was consumed first. Not by me, but by my dining companions. The plate of eggs in the far corner of the photo are not ordinary hard boiled eggs.These are fertilized duck eggs, or hot vit lon. Essentially, the fertilized duck egg is 16 to 20 days old. The older the egg, the more characteristics of a duck inside the egg: feathers, beak, bones. The younger egg will resemble an actual egg with veins. This is the type that was served at our table.  For more information on fertilized duck egg, click here for a definition or  here for a video. I skipped the eggs and enjoyed my lunch of rice, noodle soup, beef and vegetables.