Eating our way around Puerto Princesa

A few decades ago, Puerto Princesa began opening its arms to refugees fleeing trouble-ridden Vietnam. The Vietnamese would arrive on the coasts of Palawan by boat, bringing with them their dreams for a better life ... as well as their delicious cuisine!

"Vietville" is what locals have come to call the Vietnamese Village, a village put up by a Catholic charity in the 1990s to house the Vietnamese refugees. In recent years, most of the Vietnamese residents have moved on--either to other parts of the Philippines, back to Vietnam, or to the United States where some of them have been granted asylum--but the structures in their village and their influence on Puerto Princesa's cuisine remains.

A tiny Catholic chapel sits on one side of the small village, and a Buddhist temple is on the other side, but the reason why tourists stay for more than just a few photo-snapping minutes is the restaurant right in front of the village. Nowhere in the Philippines will Vietnamese food get more authentic than this!

For less than US$2, order the beef stew, the most popular dish on their menu, and revel in the magical Vietnamese combination of flavors: sweet, minty, spicy, sour and salty .... With a side order of French bread, the food will make your mouth salivate and your eyes water with delight.

If you haven't gotten your fill of Vietnamese flavors, the souvenir store right behind the restaurant sells Vietnamese dried jackfruit, and Vietnamese fish sauce.

Vietville is not easy to get to. Organized day tours from Puerto Princesa to Sabang often stop here in the afternoon, on the way back from the Underground River. Otherwise, the easiest way to get here is by car or rented van. Your other option is take a tricycle ride; for a few hundred pesos, you can ask the tricycle driver to wait for you while you eat. The cheapest option is to take a P60 tricycle ride to Vietville, then when you're done, walk down a few hundred meters until you reach a part of the road where tricycles are easier to catch.

After eating some fantastic beef stew at Vietville Restaurant for our afternoon snack, we hadn't had enough of Palawan's Vietnamese cuisine. That same evening, we decided to whet our craving for more Vietnamese food. We asked Ryan, our friendly hotel receptionist, for a recommended Vietnamese eatery, and he suggest we try Bona's.

In Vietnam, "Chao Long" refers to a breakfast dish of pork innards in a kind of rice porridge, but it seems that here, all kinds of Vietnamese stews are collectively called "chao long." (So when looking for a Vietnamese eatery, just ask a tricycle driver where you can eat "chao long.") Vietnamese stews are so popular here, that it is almost like their street food: small, hole-in-the-wall eateries (carinderias, for you Filipino readers) sell Vietnamese stews for a US dollar per bowl, and people from all walks of life come to these eateries for a cheap meal or snack.

The "chao long" house to which we were directed seemed to be known by everyone as "Bona's," though the menu identified the eatery as "Bona's-Lan's Chaolong House and Restaurant." Regular-sized bowls of stew and pho cost P45 (US $1). Not as good as the stew we had at Vietville, but pretty good nonetheless, and excellent value for the price. Picky eaters who don't eat street food while traveling will not want to eat here, but travelers who will eat any place that locals eat will be happy here.

To get here, take any tricycle from anywere downtown and ask the driver to take you to "Bona's."