If your idea of Vietnamese food begins and ends with bánh mì and a bowl of phở, HCMC has plenty more to show. Here, noodles come in countless forms, a plate of broken rice can be more satisfying than anything fancy, and salads can be fiery, crunchy, sweet, sour and deeply savoury all at once. There are crisp-edged bánh xèo to tear apart and eat with herbs, bowls of hủ tiếu with their quietly complex broth, and chè in every imaginable combination of beans, fruit, jelly and coconut milk.

There are plenty of reasons to be drawn to Sichuan – pandas, food, the local opera style, extraordinary natural beauty and glimpses of Tibetan culture spring to mind – but honestly, you could ditch the sightseeing completely, decamp to a teahouse, sit with the locals, break out the melon seeds and be perfectly happy. 

If you want to understand Ho Chi Minh City – or any city, for that matter –eat it. While pho and banh mi have become global shorthand for Vietnamese food, they are only the beginning of what to eat in HCMC; truthfully, the variety can be overwhelming. It would take years to eat your way through all of this city’s great dishes, but here’s Part One of a delicious introduction to how Ho Chi Minh City eats.

Sichuan is one of China’s great food regions, and Chengdu is its culinary capital. But Sichuan cuisine is much more diverse than its reputation for chilli and hotpot suggests. From málà dishes and hand-made noodles to mountain tea, river fish and extraordinary local produce, food in Sichuan is inseparable from the landscape and culture of the province.