Running head: CHAO LONG IN PALAWEÑO CULTURE 1

University of the Philippines

MORE PALAWEÑO THAN VIETNAMESE: CHAO LONG AND ITS

A term paper

Submitted in partial fulfillment

by
Timbancaya, Gabriela Victoria A. | 2011-57215

to
Prof. Maria Luisa T. Camagay

on
October 4, 2013
CHAO LONG IN PALAWEÑO CULTURE 2

Abstract

The presence of Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War has left an indelible

mark on Palaweño culture. The most salient product of this interaction is the popularity of

chao long, or beef stew noodles (Vietnamese pho bo kho) among native Palaweños and tourists

alike. Chao long is frequently mentioned in blog posts and other tourist-geared features on

Palawan, but there is little documentation on perceptions and attitudes locals have towards it

and its role in everyday life. Through an online survey answered by Palaweños currently

staying outside the province for work or for college, it was revealed that people identify chao

long as part of Palaweño cuisine and identity, and that it has an established place in social

relationships and everyday life despite being a culinary import of relatively recent times.
CHAO LONG IN PALAWEÑO CULTURE 3

More Palaweño than Vietnamese: Chao long and its place in contemporary Palaweño culture

The presence of Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War has left an indelible

mark on Palaweño culture. Years after they have repatriated to other countries, their cuisine

enjoys a stable popularity among native Palaweños and tourists alike.

The extreme hardships people faced after the Fall of Saigon at the end of the

Vietnam War in 1975 gave rise to the exodus of Vietnamese nationals (as well as

Cambodians and Laos) escaping on boats to anywhere just to survive (Nguyen, n.d.). A

number of these boat people, as they were called, alighted on Philippine soil. Some of them

ended up in Palawan, where a refugee camp, the Philippine First Asylum Center (PFAC) was

established in Puerto Princesa City in 1979. It was built by the Philippine government

together with the Philippine Catholic Church and the United Nations High Commission for

Refugees (Taylor, 2012). The forced repatriation of Vietnamese refugees was attempted in

1995, but they were allowed by the national government to stay following a deal with the

Catholic Church called the Center of Assistance for Displaced Persons (CADP) (Lopez &

Arquiza, 1996) and its denouncement of forced repatriation (Doan, n.d.) in 1996.

In 1995, PFAC, also called VRC (for Vietnamese Refugee Camp) was closed down

and in the following year, the remaining asylum seekers were relocated to Viet Ville in Brgy.

Sta. Lourdes (Taylor, 2012). The population of Viet Ville has since declined after most of the

Vietnamese families there went back to Vietnam or moved elsewhere, like the United States

or Canada. Today, only 11 families remain in Viet Ville. The place is quiet, as it is far away

from the city proper, but it is kept alive by its restaurant which tourists and locals alike still

visit for its authentic Vietnamese cuisine.

Since then, there had inevitably been an exchange of culture between Filipinos and

the Vietnamese. In Palawan, this is most salient in the area of food, where a dish of
CHAO LONG IN PALAWEÑO CULTURE 4

Vietnamese origin has gained a steady and loyal following.

There are numerous Vietnamese restaurants in Palawan, and the menu usually

consists of beef stew noodles, buto-buto soup, French bread, spring rolls, and other

Vietnamese food. The most popular dishes are beef stew with noodles and French bread,

which are usually eaten together. Beef stew with noodles, which in Vietnamese is pho bo kho,

is what is popularly known as chao long.

Pho bo kho may have come about during the time the French ruled Indochina, as

they were the ones who were responsible for introducing beef into the diet of the

Vietnamese. Previously, cows were regarded mainly as working animals, and therefore too

valuable to consume (Warwicker & Taylor, 2013). Whatever its origin, it is as good as pure

Vietnamese as far as the Philippines is concerned.

In reality, the term chao long does not have an exact definition in Palaweño usage.

For some, it refers to Vietnamese cuisine as a whole. For others, it refers to the combination

of beef stew with noodles and French bread (banh mi). For the majority, chao long is simply

beef stew with noodles by another name, and this is the working definition of chao long

used in this paper. Interestingly, none of the definitions come close to what chao long is in

Vietnam. The real Vietnamese chao long is in fact rice porridge, what we Filipinos call lugaw.

According to Huynh Nguyen1, a cook in Viet Ville where the Vietnamese moved to

after the Vietnamese Refugee Camp was folded up, the rechristening of pho bo kho into

chao long started in VRC when outsiders would go into the camp to eat. One customer

pointed to beef stew with noodles and asked what it was called, and the vendor said it was

chao long. Whether the wrong answer was given in confusion or in irritation or some other

affect, we do not know. What is sure is that the name stuck. Viet Ville and other

1 Not her real name.

Vietnamese-run restaurants in Palawan still call their beef stew with noodles pho bo kho, but

everyone else refers to the dish as chao long.

Although it is extremely popular, Palaweños do not generally cook chao long.

Although it is a gastronomical favorite, it has yet to become a dish that the average Palaweño

person can readily prepare just like adobo, tinola, sinigang, and other Filipino dishes. In Viet

Ville, at least, chao long is prepared by first sautéing onions, lemongrass and ginger with salt

and sugar, and then adding beef chopped up into small chunks previously softened by

boiling with onions. Water is then poured onto the sautéed vegetables and beef, and some

banana ketchup is added to the broth. The mixture is then brought to a boil, and then it is

poured over thick, flat rice noodles which are cooked separately. A bowl of chao long is

usually served with a plate of crisp and fresh mung bean sprouts or togue, calamansi, and mint

leaves which one can choose to add to the soup.

A place that serves chao long is called a chaolongan. It is usually very simply furnished

without air conditioning. Each table has condiments such as fish sauce or patis, chili sauce,

soy sauce or toyo, salt, and pepper. There is no single way of eating chao long. Some people

add chili sauce to it, while others might use patis. Some use the togue, calamansi, and the

mint leaves served with the chao long, while others use only the calamansi only, or nothing

at all. Mint leaves are a particularly Vietnamese feature of chao long, but only a few people

add them into their stew.

The usual companion to chao long is French bread, or banh mi. It can be eaten

plain, but more often than not, people order banh mi with palaman. There is garlic French

bread, which is sliced through the middle and spread with butter and topped with garlic.

There is also a variant with pork or chicken wedged in the sliced bread together with

cucumber, carrots, tomatoes, and some atsara. The “special” variation of this kind of banh
CHAO LONG IN PALAWEÑO CULTURE 6

mi has liver spread in it. As for beverages, a cold bottle of soft drink is a popular choice to

go with the chao-long-banh-mi combo.

Putting aside the linguistic inconsistency, the chao long in Palawan is still different

from the pho bo kho of Vietnam. Although the cook in Viet Ville swears that their beef stew

is exactly the same as in Vietnam, Palaweños who have gone to Vietnam insist that there is

no beef stew there that is like the chao long in Palawan.

Vietnamese cuisine is not completely unknown to the Philippines outside Palawan.

Pho Bac, a restaurant with branches in Quezon City, Taguig, Makati, and Manila, serves

Hanoi-style Vietnamese food. Pho 24 is a Vietnamese fast food chain that has found its way

into several other countries aside from the Philippines, such as Macau and Hong Kong.

These restaurants, however, are both relatively expensive and centered in Metro Manila,

greatly limiting the average Filipino’s exposure to Vietnamese food.

It must be noted that it is only in Palawan where Vietnamese cuisine really hit it off

in the country. Some Vietnamese boat people took refuge in Bataan, and although their

cuisine left its mark in Morong in the form of a few snack houses that serve French bread

and noodles (Orejas, 2011), Vietnamese food never became as popular there as it did in

Palawan. Hunyh Nguyen related that before coming to Palawan, she and her Filipino

husband had a stall in the food court in SM Makati. It did not click, and the restaurant was

forced to close. The two moved to Palawan in 1978 and lived in Viet Ville when it opened.

Hunyh Nguyen has since been cooking chao long for more than 30 years.

It cannot be denied that chao long is an integral part of contemporary Palaweño

culture. Chao long is so popular that when one asks homesick Palaweños what they miss in

Palawan, it is highly likely that chao long will be on their list. In fact, the inspiration to this

paper was the significant number of tweets in the author’s news feed by out-of-province
CHAO LONG IN PALAWEÑO CULTURE 7

Palaweños craving for chao long in the middle of the semester. Out of 16 respondents2, nine

answered that they miss eating chao long. Asked what food they would recommend to

tourists, 10 out of 16 respondents mentioned chao long. Most of the respondents said that

chao long is part of the identity of Palawan, with no one stating the contrary3.

Note that the two questions about what food they miss when they are homesick and

what food they would recommend to tourists were asked in the first page of the survey,

before chao long was mentioned. The questionnaire was presented simply as a survey about

Palaweño cuisine, and only explicitly mentioned chao long in the second page. The fact that

so many participants thought of chao long even when there were no external cues presented

to them to do so is in itself significant. It only shows how popular chao long is so that it is

readily mentioned when locals are asked about Palaweño food.

Chao long is an integral part of contemporary Palaweño culture, but the converse

works as well. Palawan, it seems, is an integral part of chao long. Given a scale of 1 to 5,

where 1 is exclusively Vietnamese and 5 is exclusively Palaweño, nine respondents put chao

long in the middle ground at 3. No one rated it as a 1 or 2. Averaging the ratings given by

the respondents, chao long garnered a 3.625 on the given scale, making it a combination of

Vietnamese and Palaweño cuisine but leaning towards the Palaweño side. In explaining their

answers, several respondents said that although it is of Vietnamese origin, over the years

chao long has adapted to the taste of Palaweños. One person even said that chao long seems

like native Palaweño food already. A respondent who had tasted beef stew in “legit

Vietnamese restaurants” outside Palawan attested to the difference in taste between original

2 The data reflects the answers of Palaweño respondents outside Palawan. The author intended to get the
perspective of Palaweños currently living in the province as well, but only 2 answered the survey and since
there were so few of them, nothing much could be concluded from their responses.
3 The data was numerical, with respondents given a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being “Malayo sa katotohanan” and 5

being “Napakaangkop sa aking karanasan” to rate statements about chao long.

Vietnamese pho bo kho and Palaweño chao long.

Chao long can be had all over the city proper, and one can have a good bowl of it for

approximately P55. It is fairly inexpensive, making it a student-friendly option for lunch. In

fact, a lot of chaolongan establishments can be found near schools. Eating chao long is a

group affair, with all respondents stating that they always eat there with family or friends.

Some specified that they eat there with high school friends when they come back home

during school breaks. Not only is it perceived as an important part of Palaweño cuisine, but

it also has a function in the rekindling and maintenance of social relationships.

In the years since it was first introduced to Palaweños at the Vietnamese Refugee

Camp, chao long has made a steady fan base of locals and tourists alike. In the process of

making its way into Palaweño culture, it has become Palaweño itself. By the looks of it, chao

long has become more Palaweño than Vietnamese, and it is definitely here to stay.
CHAO LONG IN PALAWEÑO CULTURE 9

References

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Nguyen, Q. (n.d.). Vietnamese Immigrants In Anaheim. The Institute for Signifying Scriptures.

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Orejas, Tonette. (2011). Bread, soup and memories left by Indochina refugees in Bataan.

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BBC Food. Retrieved September 25, 2013, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/0/24288422.