World Nomads Travel Scholaship Entry: HELP!

Meat or Soup. Vietnam or Argentina. Please help me decide which one to enter. The topic is :  Understanding a Culture through food.  Apparently they are looking for essays that show:

- great descriptive ability
- strong eye for detail
- ability to uncover and tell a compelling story
- excellent spelling and grammar and a knack for avoiding clichés

Please make your choice and either comment below or on facebook. And email me or fb message me any additional comments, corrections or improvements. GRACIAS!

Option 1: Street Eating

My rear-end tingled with pinned and needled numbness as I crouched on the teeny tiny red plastic stool. Later that week I would be introduced to the man allegedly responsible for the introduction of this ubiquitous seating to Hanoi, but for now, my attention was being monopolised by the steaming bowl of soup before me. I followed my father's lead, plunging the tooth-chewed communal chopsticks into the mystery broth and holding them beneath the surface. 

“The soup's just off the boil so I figure this will kill off any germs,” Dad explained.
The steam delivered the fermented sweet and sour smell of the country's notorious fish sauce to my nostrils where it intermingled with the head-tickling exoticness of anise and coriander. The soup's fragrant contents layered upon the already established street odours, creating a kind of evocative olfactory decoupage.
 

It was time to eat.
 

After a brief moment contemplating the identity of the meat, I commenced with a hearty slurp of broth and sucked down a few slippery white noodles for good measure. Oh yes. It was good.
 

I was 17. It was my first time eating street food in a foreign country. And I was hooked.
 

Since losing my street-eating virginity way back then, upon arriving in any given destination I will immediately head to the streets, gesture convincingly at whatever mysterious concoction excites my curiosity, plonk myself down next to some unsuspecting local and plug into the community in a way not possible on a guided tour.
 

While eating the cheapest, and arguably, the best food available, you are also served a tantalising slice of local reality; pretension-free exchanges and simple but important rituals. It helps that my adventurous approach to food is accompanied by guts of steel and a (touch-wood) never-get-sick confidence. I guess one day my reckless hubris will render me powerless and clutching at a porcelain bowl. But until then, and, in all likelihood, afterwards as well, the call of the street resounds.

Option 2: Pleased to meat you.

“Bravo!” I chorused over the building applause, appreciatively eyeing the meaty towers that crowded the table. The Asador (the evening's appointed barbeque buff) accepted the traditional thanks with a gracious bow before stabbing his fork into a chubby little chorizo and loading up the first plate. Soon afterwards, myself and 15 other carnivores were unleashing our inner caveman on pile of sausage, steak and innards that would stop Fred Flinstone in his tracks.

Welcome to the Argentinian asado. In a country where the eating of meat has been elevated beyond quintessential pastime, to something closely resembling a national sport (I've been told Argies consume 100kg of beef a year per capita), the barbeque is taken very seriously indeed.

I'd been invited to arrive at 9pm. “Oh! But you can't arrive before 9.30pm”, I was cautioned by my Porteña friend, “It would be rude! They won't be ready!” Ahh.. Argentine-time.

Fireside, the coals turned ember-red, while we downed that potent Listerine-like concoction of Fernet and Coke and stuck the boot into political leaders and football players. My inner-Aussie comfortably embraced this familiar ritual as the asador expertly created his collage de carne on the grill, arranging the various cuts according to cooking time and usual eating order. Grilled nibbles to begin; teeth-blackening morcilla (blood sausage), tender sweetbreads, best-you-don't-know-what-they-are chinchulines; all offal-ly good (ba boom ching etc). Then the main event of strip, flank, ribs and belly.

Is there anything that arouses salivary glands more than the smell of flame-licked beef?

The grass-fed, happy-cow goodness of Argentinian beef is so staggeringly flavoursome, my knees feel weak at even its memory. Salt-seasoned (anything else would detract) and cooked in the open air with the tendrils of smoke from the woodchips still teasing your nostrils, I defy you to find better. 

And if you do, please invite me.