As our belated honeymoon, we decided to travel around south east Asia. The first stop on this trip was Vietnam’s most populated city – Ho Chi Minh – or as the locals continue to call it, Saigon.
After a long flight via Doha, we landed in Saigon and wearily booked a taxi to our hotel. After a hair raising journey through the bustling streets, we turned up at the Huong Trinh hotel which was accessible by wandering down a pretty grubby looking alleyway.
Walking in, it became quickly apparent that this was more of a guesthouse than a hotel, complete with the patron’s family living in the back room. It got worse when we handed over our booking documents and were told that they had no record of our reservation. At this point, feeling stressed by the situation we agreed to pay $25 for the first night and contact our tour operator (STA travel). This proved easier said than done however as even their ’emergency number’ was not contactable.
Not a great start, but we decided that that we should head straight out and experience the city in the limited time we had.
The first challenge proved to be crossing the road to get anywhere! With throngs of mopeds and cars jostling for position on the roads, as well as pavements filled by street sellers, room for pedestrians is at a premium. Only after we had been there for a few hours did we realise you have to simply pick your way through the traffic and the vehicles will eventually stop or avoid you!
Anyway, after a brief wander through the market opposite our hotel, we stopped for a quick beer and portion of fries in Allez Boo. It was reasonably priced (certainly by western standards) and the food was fine. Although the visit here was more out of necessity than looking for a great culinary experience.
Time was moving on and so did we, after a wander around the Ben Thanh market we stumbled upon the street food market just up Thu Khoa Huan road. With a vast range of local cuisine to choose from, including a number of vegan options on several stalls, we would definitely recommend a visit while you are in the city. We both opted for rice noodle based dishes which were delicious, despite our struggle with the chopsticks!
The next day we decided to make a swift exit from our hotel as we had found a much nicer place just down the street. After checking in to the new digs (The Asian Ruby Hotel) we headed for breakfast in the Cai Gi Do cafe thanks to a Happycow.net recommendation. There was a range of western and local dishes available as well as home made shakes and fruit juices. Rhian enjoyed her veggie baguette and fruit smoothie. The price was pretty reasonable too.
We spent the morning visiting the main sights such as Independence Palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the People’s Committee Hall. We also walked over to the Pagoda of the Jade Emperor which we both agreed was probably not worth the effort as it was fairly run down and the architecture was not as impressive as some of the larger temples.
We were getting hungry by this time, so we picked up some more food in the street market before heading back to our hotel. We decided to spend that evening in the famous backpacker street of Bui Vien, lured by the promise of good food and cheap beer.
We went for food in a restaurant called Miss Saigon (Rhian was drawn here as she loves the musical). You could pretty much pick cuisine from any country, so I went for a pizza whilst Rhian had veggie fajitas (although there were a number of other choices available if you were willing to alter the order slightly, the staff spoke good English which helped). The food was reasonable (but not spectacular) and the prices were decent. We probably wouldn’t rush back there soon.
Afterwards we called into a small bar simply named ‘102 Bui Vien’ due to its address. This sold its own bia hoi for 10,000 VND a glass (that’s around 36p at the time of writing). Bia hoi is effectively Vietnamese craft brewing and is well worth a try if you’re in Saigon or Hanoi (where it was made famous).
After a few too many drinks we headed to bed. The next morning, we had just enough time to send some postcards home before heading to our next destination – Siem Reap.
Our thoughts on Saigon? To be honest it was a bit of a culture shock when we first arrived. However, once we got into the swing of things we really started to love the city. With such a vibrant atmosphere at all times of the day and night you couldn’t fail to enjoy this wonderful place. We found that there were a number of places that would cater for vegans and most of these will have this advertised on their shop front or stall. Our main recommendation would be to visit the street food market for great food and some authentic Vietnamese cooking. As we were short on time we didn’t have the chance to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels so a return trip is definitely on our agenda in the next few years!
