Greetings from Vietnam! Yep, here I am in another People's Republic, soaking up the differences in Sapa. Though I've only been in the country less than 24 hours I've already eaten a fantasic snack, which I will write about soon no doubt. But before I do, I want to talk about the noodle dish you see above, which I ate in Kunming the other day.

As I was preparing to cross one border, this dish was crossing another. Served at a restaurant specialising in Tengchong cuisine, I could taste the the proximity of Burma's very different food in every mouthful - and, since I have almost no familiarity with that country's food, I am hard pressed to know how to describe this dish. The noodles were different to any I've had before, and it was served with all manner of mysterious sauces. I have no idea what was in it, but boy it was yummy.

Sichuan people like their Sichuan food. On Chengdu’s mean streets, Chuancai dominates, and it’s sometimes difficult to find any other Chinese cuisine. A few, though, are readily available, and so over the next few weeks I’ll be introducing you to some of my favourites in my neighborhood. First stop: Yunnan, and the famous ‘Crossing the Bridge Noodles’.

Legend has it that this dish was created during the Qing dynasty, by the wife of a hard-working scholar. The scholar liked to work on an island on a lake, and everyday his wife would bring him a bowl of rice noodles for lunch; but by the time she had walked from their home and crossed the bridge to the island, the noodles would be cold.

Eventually, however, the scholar’s wife hit upon a clever idea: a layer of oil on top of the broth. This little trick kept the heat from escaping, and ensured that the noodles arrived at her husband’s table still hot and delicious. Thus, the dish was named 过桥米线 (guo qiao mixian) – ‘Crossing the Bridge Noodles’.

Today, Crossing the Bridge Noodles are perhaps Yunnan’s most famous dish, and specialist restaurants can be found on almost every street in the capital, Kunming. They’re are also quite popular in Chengdu, and accordingly, my local Crossing the Bridge Noodles restaurant is run by a family who used to live in Yunnan. Here, the layer of oil isn’t very thick, but I don’t really care about that anyway, because what really make Crossing the Bridge Noodles fun are all the things you add to the broth: quail’s eggs, tofu skin, bean sprouts, spring onions, tomato, lettuce, a couple of different meats, and of course, the rice noodles.

First, a plate laid out with all these goodies arrives at your table, along with a generous bowl of rice noodles.

Next comes a huge claypot-ful of broth, to which the waitress adds all the other ingredients.

Finally, you mix it all together with your chopsticks, add any extra flavourings you may desire (such as vinegar or chili oil), and it’s ready – as seen, in all its glory, in the photo at the top of this post. Crossing the Bridge Noodles are perfect in cold weather, when the hot broth is wonderfully warming. It’s also particularly good when you’re feeling a bit unwell, for not only is it full of fresh, lightly cooked vegetables, but it also has many of the qualities of that universal cure-all, chicken soup.

Keep your eyes peeled for more in the Beyond Sichuan series, coming soon…

ps. I recently learnt that, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, you shouldn't eat chicken when you've got a cold - the complete opposite to Western medical wisdom! I wonder which one is right...

For me, half the fun of traveling is in eating new and unfamiliar foods. This philosophy can be seen pretty clearly in my photographs, which, surprise surprise! often feature food. Here are a few culinary/photographic highlights from my travels in China, Hong Kong and Laos over the last year and a half.

Snack vendor, Xi'an, January 2008. He was selling a glutinous rice sweet that was sadly rather average.

Durian fruit shop, Guangzhou, March 2008. When I took this photograph I'd never eaten durian before - I took it for a friend who adores them. Now, as a confirmed durian-lover myself, I look at this photograph and drool (not only over the durian but also the cheap prices).

Yunnan-style crisps pre-deep-frying, Lijiang, August 2008.

Some kind of savory melon, Xishuangbanna, January 2009.

Still life-esque eggs and spring onions, Laos, February 2009.

In January and February this year, myself and my friend Katy spent some time traveling in Xishuangbanna, Southern China and in Northern Laos. As well as being a feast for the senses in many other ways, the trip was particularly rich in culinary adventures.

We started these adventures first in Xishuangbanna, at the very southern tip of Yunnan. About as far away from Beijing as you can get in the People's Republic, Xishuangbanna is in many ways entirely different to the rest of China – with it's tropical climate, Dai minority people and exotic fruits, it has a very South-East Asian kind of vibe.

This was especially evident in the area's markets; at the huge airport hanger-style market in the regional capital Jinghong, I saw lots of foods that I've never seen elsewhere in China, including this mysterious green stuff.

I also saw for the first time many different varieties of foods I already knew – these neon chillies...

...and these scarlet pumpkins being just a couple of examples.

After such a tantalizing start, you can imagine that our expectations for Laos were pretty high, but sadly the food there turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. This was not, I don't think, due to any less an appreciation of food in Laos than in China, but rather due to Laos' relative poverty. The markets here were rather sad affairs compared to China's, where abundance is characteristic; in Laos' markets, the neatly arranged piles of vegetables were pitifully small, and there was not much in the way of variety either. Outside of the big towns, there also seemed to be less of a culture of eating out than in China – the restaurants we usually ate in were almost solely patronized by tourists, and the quality was accordingly pretty poor.

It wasn't all bad though! (she hastily types). We lapped up the delicious Laos coffee like there was no tomorrow...

...and in a little town called Nong Khiaw ate a fantastic snack called 'river weed' on the menu. Wandering along the river, you would frequently see people knee-deep in the water collecting the grass, and then bashing the water out of it on a flat, slanting slab of stone. Here are a couple of photos of the river weed drying out in the sun, sprinkled with sesame seeds, garlic and tomatoes; when we ate it had been deep-fried, and was totally moreish.

Lastly, a mention should most definitely be made of what has been called Laos' national dish, foe. These rice noodles are usually served in a pretty boring clear soup, but are saved from banality by one's adding of a whole range of condiments and seasonings to taste, including freshly-squeezed lime juice, fish sauce, dried chillies, fresh mint and lettuce leaves and a whole load of others. Foe stalls, usually very basic places, are found in every town, village and market, and are often the cheapest meal in town. I ate a bowl of foe almost every day while I was in Laos, and the picture below is of one of the best, at the market in Udomxai.

Earlier this year, Cam and I were in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, and craving to get out of the city. Having talked for ages about jumping on a random bus and seeing where it took us, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to actually do it. From the town centre we boarded the number 2 in high spirits; yet 45 minutes later, instead of ending up in some pastoral idyll, the last stop turned out to be just another grim suburb.

With our time in Kunming rapidly slipping away from us, we realised we needed some local expertise, and so called our friend Joe, a Norweigan who is currently living in the city. Trying not to sound too desperate, I explained our predicament, and asked Joe if he could recommend anywhere we could go.

“Yes!” he said straight away, “you should go to Hao Bao!” And so it was that a couple of hours later we were in a mini-van, on a road snaking through thickly-wooded hills, to a destination more perfect than we could have imagined.

Kunming Hao Bao Qing Organic farm 昆明好宝箐生态农业园, 35 km north-west of the city, is, we were told, the oldest organic farm in China, established in 2002 and receiving organic status in 2005. The 110-mu (96 hectare) farm, nestled in a peaceful narrow valley, employs around forty people, growing vegetables and raising pigs, ducks, sheep, rabbit, turkeys and chickens – all to organic standards that are inspected every year. In addition, the farm also runs a restaurant and a small hotel, whose rooms are spilt between the main building and several cave-like rooms set into a hillside.

We arrived in the late afternoon, and before dinner I was given a quick tour of the main greenhouse by farm manager Li Gang. Everything at Hao Bao, Li Gang explained, takes much longer to grow than on a conventional farm, where fertilisers and pesticides are used to speed up the growing process; the pigs at Hao Bao, for example, are slaughtered at eight months old, as opposed to the normal four. Some of these are kept in a pen next to the restaurant, and munched away nosily on their dinner as we spoke.

It was soon time to eat our own dinner, the ordering of which turned out to be one of the highlights of our stay. The ordering of one's dinner at Hao Bao is perhaps the most lovely way of ordering food I've ever experienced. Instead of any sort of menu, we were led around the greenhouse, between beds thick with countless varieties of vegetables. Next, we decided what took our fancy, and pointed it out to a member of staff. As we returned to our table, our choices were dug up and cooked not ten metres away from where they were grown; five minutes later, the vegetables we'd chosen had been transformed into a simple but mouth-watering meal: fried egg and tomato, a cabbage soup, stir-fried fennel and stir-fried cauliflower. I'm not sure if I've ever eaten such fresh food, nor eaten a meal that was so delicious.

The next day after breakfast, farmhand Zhao Zhongming treated us to a full tour of the farm. In the smiting cold, we saw the main animal sheds, more greenhouses, and countless fields planted with spring onions, radishes, red cabbages and many more. Zhao Zhongming echoed Li Gang's emphasis on the slowness of their methods, and explained that vegetables, like the pigs, are only ready to eat after twice as long as those grown using fertilisers and pesticides.

With this approach in mind, and the comparative expensiveness of their products, I found it slightly hard to imagine how commercially successful projects such as Hao Bao can be; yet it seems that the awareness and popularity of organic food in China is growing. Hao Bao's vegetables are now being distributed through Green Kunming, a veg-box scheme, and it is now common to find an organic section in most major supermarkets. Furthermore, the widespread public outrage in response to last year's baby milk fiasco (and many other recent food safety scandals), seem to point towards an increasing realisation of the problems inherent in the current food industry.

Though I often revel in the cheapness of food in China, I also know that that cheapness must surely come at a price. While more natural methods of farming, like those at Hao Bao, are undoubtedly more expensive for the consumer, it is clear to me that these methods make the cost to both the environment and our health considerably less. As such, I sincerely hope that organic food will continue to spread in popularity in China, and that farms like Hao Bao continue to prosper.

(Additional information gathered from www.gokunming.com)