This pleasant lunch was actually part of a Mekong Delta cruise. We boarded the cruise in My Tho town, 70 km outside the very predictable Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam, not knowing what to expect. The fare for this private outing was reasonable - by Singapore prices. But with the kind of over-the-top attention and service showered upon us, I suspected we might have been their meal ticket for the week.

So we chugged down the river, in this oversized river sampan much like the river taxis in Bangkok's Chaophraya River. Except this was the Mekong, a lot more fertile and life giving. The soil on its banks was so fertile that if you dropped an M&M chocolate button, cocoa plants will probably grow on the spot. It also meant half a day of cruise with the smell of fertile mud permeating the air. And if you were a foodie with me on board, worse, a Singaporean foodie, then the floating market, the churches and temples, the quaint souvenir shops disguised as teahouses, the riverside farms and war relics won't mean much. Lunch, in this case, wasn't just a pleasant surprise, but the absolute highlight.

We pulled up by what looked like someone's house and fruit orchard by the banks that had a pretty little pavilion adjacent to the main building that overlooked the river. That, was our lunch venue. Even if they had just served us pho (Vietnamese beef noodles) or cha gio (spring rolls), it would have been beautiful eating it barefoot and seated on its wooded floor, as we were. But the heavens were kind, after the pho and cha gio, the piece-de-resistance arrived - the fried fish. It sat upright on the plate, fins skywards, garnished with curled spring onions and propped up by hidden chopsticks. It came with bang tranhg (rice paper skins), lettuce, mint leaves and a heavenly fish sauce dip. The host relieved us of our bewilderment -he peeled a bit off the smoking hot fried fish with some crispy skin and wrapped it in a leaf of lettuce with a small sprig of mint leaves. Then he gingerly wrapped it in a moistened bang tranhg, dipped it in the beckoning sauce and yanked it before my salivating mouth - smoke from fish still intact.

Say what you like, but after that lunch (we had two of that fish, by the way), everything was hunky-dory. The Mekong didn't smell, the churches were beautiful and the souvenirs were exotic. It was definitely the fish. It knew Philip and I were food fusspots from Singapore and decided to silence us with her scrumptious ways. It worked - so well that in my semi-conscious state of feeding frenzy, I forgot to take a picture of the rice skin fish roll!

Picture essay and words by kfseetoh