JarJar Nixon's Blues Kitchen

Last week while in Nha Trang we took a fast motorboat south of NT to a series of small islands that have some of the most expensive food products in the world...bird's nest. We climbed over rocks and down into a crevice where a certain species of swallow makes her nest using only her own spit (yuck)...but people all over Asia crave the extract from the nest for medicine and health. The guy who discovered the bird's nests back in the 14th century was shipwrecked, got tired of eating fish, and tried the bird's nests one day. He found it restored him to health and after being rescued spread the word.

Nowadays the tiny islands have more than 150 guards (one kilo of bird's nest costs several thousand dollars), and it is pretty hard to get a chance to come down and visit them. We were lucky.