One of the things we love about living overseas is all the great people we’ve met along the way. Our good friends Patrick & Cassie, with whom we worked in Bogota, now live in Ho Chi Minh City. For our Eid break this year we decided to meet up with them and check out Saigon for a couple of days before exploring Phong Nha. We started out our weekend with them by taking a scooter tour of Saigon’s street food scene. Before the tour, we had a chance to explore a little, and we took in the Chu Van Phat temple.
This temple is kind of hidden away in a corner of the 5th district, and is located on multiple floors of an older building. It is known for having 10,000 buddha statues. When you look at the details of the main altar and realize how many tiny buddha statues there are within the lotus leaves of the main structure, it does seem possible there are that many of them. This was a nice, quiet spot to start out our exploration of Saigon.
Our friends recommended the scooter tour of the street food scene, and it didn’t disappoint. We got to try so many yummy dishes, and had the ease of riding through Ho Chi Minh City’s traffic on the back of scooters driven by locals. It was a great way to get introduced to the city!
The first stop on the food tour was banh xeo, a type of crepe or pancake made with eggs that is wrapped around fresh herbs and dipped in a fish-sauce based dipping sauce. One of the things we love about Vietnamese food is all the fresh herbs, and banh xeo delivered. After banh xeo we headed out to a flower market part of town where we enjoyed another type of pancake, this time one with a rice paper backing. We also stopped somewhere for delicious coconut ice cream, and ended the tour at an amazing seafood place. The seafood restaurant was started by a notorious former gangster. Now, instead of a life of crime, he hangs out at his restaurant wearing piles of bling and taking photos with tourists. Of course, we got the obligatory photo op in after enjoying snails, shrimp, and scallops hot off the charcoal grill.
Ho Chi Minh City has fun nightlife, including a few speakeasies. We ended our night checking out a couple of them that are located in an old apartment building near where the street food tour ended. Similar to in Indonesia, there’s a lot of social media posting happening everywhere you go, so we enjoyed hanging out and watching the photo shoots while sipping a craft cocktail from the bar.
On Sunday, we thought we’d see the former Presidential Palace from the era the Vietnamese call the American war (as opposed to the war against the French). The palace is preserved in all its 60s-era splendor, and the furnishings really take you back. It also has the bunker in the basement that was used during the war as an operations center.
All in all, it was a fun weekend in Saigon! We’re so glad we could visit Patrick and Cassie and catch up with them, and Ho Chi Minh City has so much to offer in good food and interesting history!