 I'm Luke Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Australian chef in a very beautiful but remote part of Vietnam. I'm here to meet the local people, try their delicious food and learn how they cook it. I'm really looking forward to seeing a very small part of what Australia has been doing to support the Vietnamese people and improve their livelihoods. I'm on my way to a small village for Tong Khao, which is home to the Thai ethnic minority group. This is the home of Ms Lin and her husband, Mr Phuong. Participants in an Australian government project aimed at strengthening the voice of ethnic minority women, improving their livelihoods and reducing gender inequality, implemented by Care International. Like most people in his province, they are a farming family. They showed me their chickens, ducks and pigs that they raised behind their house. I love how the work is distributed. Ms Lin feeds the chickens and ducks, Phuong feeds the pigs. It's a real husband and wife job. Ms Lin has told me about a very special event that's happening at their house. All the village women have come, I'm really looking forward to seeing what it's all about. Because Ms Lin's house is quite large, it sometimes doubles up as a meeting place. But what's special about this community meeting is that all the participants are women. I feel very fortunate and lucky to be able to be here in the northern mountains in this ethnic village to experience this. Ms Lin is part of a women's savings and loans group, supported by the Australian government. For people who don't earn much cash or have many material possessions, it can be quite difficult to save money, let alone take out a loan. Here, each woman makes a contribution to a savings fund for use if someone is sick or injured and a credit fund which women can borrow money from. Everyone decides together as a group who gets that loan and that loan is used to buy crops, it's used for farming or even starting new business. I'm really glad I got to experience that. I was really impressed in how organized it was, how professional it was as well. And now I'm really interested to see how much the ladies can borrow and what they use that money for. 5 million? Wow, that's a lot. How much do we need to use that money for? We need to make sure that we have enough money to buy crops. We need to make sure that we have enough money to buy crops. Can we go and see? Now, I'm off to the fields with Jilin. She's going to show me all the different types of crops. In the past, I used to live in a house, but now I have a house in Chong Khoi. Jilin, how much money do you borrow from these trees? On a 2,000m wall, I borrow 2 million from Chong Khoi. I buy a single piece of wood for 1 piece of wood. On a 2,000m wall, I can earn 12 million. Rice and sweet potato. I think it's fantastic and sustainable. Now this is my biggest inspiration coming to remote areas like this in the northern mountains of Vietnam and seeing what they're cooking, what produce they're using and learning so much from the local people. Now it seems like they love all of their roots and all their aromats. There's lots of galangal there, lots of lemongrass and fresh herbs. So I thought I'm going to make a dish for them because they're cooking such an amazing menu there. You're going to help me, yeah? I'm using all the fresh herbs, right? Vietnamese cuisine is all about freshness, isn't it? Fresh rau rhum, I've got some lemon leaves, I've got dill, I've got coriander, lemongrass. Anything that's been inspired from what I've seen today. Can you help me with this one? Can you just please pound the turmeric, the galangal, the lemongrass and the garlic all together? I want to make a really nice paste, okay? Hello. I'm going to throw in some spring onion. This is a strange dish. This is a dish that I like to fish. I crush the lemongrass, garlic, lemongrass and a lot of spices. I roll the banana leaves and chop them. Sure, of course. I'm going to put three little incisions in there just so it evenly cooks on both sides. I'm going to do the same but I'm not going to slice, I'm just going to throw it in there. Thank you very much for your help. Now, if you look at this, look at this paste, right? Look at the colour. Beautiful colour. Okay, the fish with all this goodness. Roll, wrap. Okay, be a manhapnya. That goes in. Perfect fit. Now, all you need with this one is probably around 12 to 14 minutes because it's around 800 grams. There's a whole fish. I've wrapped it in banana leaves. I want to cook it perfectly. Okay. Angnya. Little angnya. Don't be stunning. The people are extremely friendly. And I'm the local Thai ladies here. I mean, their empowerment has been absolutely fascinating. I've tried incredible food made by all the gorgeous fresh produce of the land here. Everything's grown locally. Now, my next stop is Laokai, another province in the northern mountains of it. Now, where I'm going to visit another project that's supported by the Australian Government. I'm making such an awesome time.