I’ve written before about the travel phenomenon that Chad and I have dubbed “the Japan effect.” Basically, this occurs when you go from someplace that fits your preferences perfectly (Japan, Buenos Aires) to someplace with some challenges. After spending only a week in Japan prior to our arrival in Vietnam, our first days in Saigon were definitely textbook Japan effect. However, we slowly acclimated to the culture of Vietnam and ended up having a pretty good 12-day stay.

Arrival and First Impressions

Travel days are always hard (this seems to be a law of travel), especially when they involve a 6-hour flight, which is what we had from Japan. We got a little sleep on the plane, but not a ton. We arrived in the late afternoon and took a Grab (like Uber for Asia) from the airport and checked into our Airbnb apartment in a huge building next to the river, which was nice though on the small side as expected (review below). We spent too much time and effort trying to find a real supermarket, but wound up just using the WinMart+ and 7 Eleven that were both on the ground floor of the building for most of our shopping. The first day was frustrating but we adapted over time to making simple meals with mostly Asian flavors. Finding US and European items seems to be a bit harder in Vietnam than what we remembered from Thailand. 

Our Phenomenal Food Tour

We decided to book a private food tour through Airbnb Experiences (review below) for our first night out in Vietnam, which would be our third night in the country (we stayed home the first two nights, recovering from all our wonderful dining out in Japan). This proved to be a great idea because our guide taught us how to eat some of the more complicated street foods that I’m not sure we’d have discovered on our own and answered many of our general questions about Vietnam. 

The tour included tons of items: fish bun (noodle soup), “balloon” fried sweet potatoes, bánh tráng nướng (Vietnamese pizza), bò lụi sả (lemongrass beef skewers), snails stuffed with pork, sugar cane juice, local beer, banh mi (the classic Vietnamese sandwich on a baguette), bánh bao chiên (fried buns), bánh phồng nướng (grilled rice paper cake), bánh xèo (Vietnamese pancake that has become one of our favorite dishes), bò lá lốt (beef wrapped in betel leaf), flan in coffee, and sweet soup.

We had no idea there were so many special Vietnamese foods to try! The first location of the tour was a street food market next to a huge all-night flower market. Then he walked us to the next locations, which were a mix of stands, carts, and restaurants. It was a great experience and quite necessary introduction to the cuisine of Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh City Sights

Two days later, we went out on our own to see the main sights of Ho Chi Minh City in District 1. We were able to walk along the river down to Bến Nhà Rồng Park and then over the bridge to Nguyễn Huệ, the main tourist street. We enjoyed seeing the many decorations that were still up from Tet, the Vietnamese New Year celebration. It’s the year of the snake. We checked out the Opera House where we already had tickets for the AO Show a few nights later (more on that below), saw other examples of colonial architecture at the Saigon Post Office and Notre Dame Cathedral, and then moseyed up Book Street. 

We’d planned to tour the Reunification Palace (aka Independence Palace) but it was closed for a state visit from Cambodia. So we took in the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City instead, which was very good. One of the interesting parts was the exhibit on the Vietnamese currency. They experienced hyperinflation in the 1980s, so now the smallest bill is 1000 dong, worth about 4 cents (or in the reverse direction, $1 USD is about 25,000 dong).

A few days later, we retraced many of the same steps in the evening when we attended the AO Show performance. We booked our tickets online but had to pick them up from the box office, which we decided to do a little early to avoid any long lines and then go enjoy a cocktail at SolLuna Rooftop Bar nearby until the show began.

The AO Show was great, sort of a Vietnamese version of Cirque du Soleil. Afterwords, we enjoyed the lights of downtown HCMC.

We did finally make it to the Reunification Palace the following Thursday. There was another planned closure coming for the weekend, so we made a last-minute decision to take off work, go out to brunch, and hit up the palace, which was near the top of both our lists because it hasn’t been updated since the “fall of Saigon” in 1975. In addition to our entry tickets, I purchased an audio guide, and it was very interesting learning about the history of the palace and its role during the war. And the architecture and rooms were very cool.

Parks and Food and Parks and Food

Two of our favorite activities while traveling (or when we’re at home) are visiting cool parks and eating delicious food. Ho Chi Minh City has lots of both. The city itself is not very pleasant to walk in. We have learned that Vietnamese people don’t walk very much at all – they all have scooters that they drive everywhere; even people with cars have scooters for short trips. But once you get to a good park or riverside area set up for walking, it can be really nice. We had a great one in our neighborhood called Khanh Hoi Park where we enjoyed a nice picnic of amazing 60-cent egg banh mis from a food stand around the corner from our building. 

We also went up to the Vinhomes Central Park in a swanky neighborhood to the north, which is where we’d likely choose to stay if we come back to HCMC. There was an outpost of the Maison Marou chocolate shop featured on the Saigon episode of Somebody Feed Phil in the neighborhood and we enjoyed trying their rich iced chocolate drink.

Some of our favorite meals/food experiences were:

• a progressive dinner we fell into after not being able to find a general bar to just order a drink at, but a near-empty huge seafood restaurant welcomed us and gave us a table facing a rebroadcast of an EPL match (West Ham beating Arsenal). We thought the food looked so good that we ordered a lotus root and seafood salad to enjoy with our beer prior to the local pho dinner we’d already planned on.

• a progressive vegetarian dinner after the AO Show starting with vegetarian snacks at the Pasteur Street Brewery and then vegetarian broken rice and soup in a cafe

• the brunch of avocado toast and mango toast we enjoyed before the Reunification Palace, where Chad had his first egg coffee, strong coffee with a whipped sweet egg foam. Vietnam is famous for coffee and has three unique versions – coconut coffee (which uses coconut milk and always seems to be served iced), egg coffee, and salt coffee (which Chad tried in Hoi An – more on that in the next post). 

• our own street food tour we created for ourselves at the same street food market our guide had taken us too. This time we tried abalone, the balloon sweet potatoes with apricot salt, a bunch of items from one of the grills, “addictive” Cambodian beef, and Thai coconut ice cream. 

• coming back to the seafood restaurant, Quán Nhà Sàn, for a full meal our last night in HCMC

Summary

Whether you call it Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, the former South Vietnamese capital is a huge metropolitan city with a lot to offer. It also has horrible traffic and more motorbikes than anywhere else in the world, making it a challenge for people like us who prefer to get around by walking. But we found much to enjoy there and were glad we experienced it.

Airbnb Review – My husband and I had a very comfortable 12-day stay in Tony’s apartment. The apartment was clean and felt more spacious than it looked in the photos. The wifi worked well and the one time we had an issue, Tony was able to fix it for us right away. Communication was great throughout our stay and Tony replied quickly to any question. The kitchen had just enough cooking supplies and plates for easy meals for two people. It was so handy having three convenience stores on the bottom floor of the building and great small food carts and restaurants around the corner. 

Food Tour Review – My husband and I had a fantastic time on our tour with Den. All the foods he took us to try were delicious. He was very knowledgeable and willing to answer our questions about the food and Vietnam in general. Den was right on time picking us up and safely navigated us through the city. We felt the tour was perfectly paced and we enjoyed all the locations. We’d never have been able to figure out how to eat many of these foods on our own. I’m so glad we chose this tour.