As a tourist from the outside looking in and planning your trip, you’ll be busying yourself searching for all things Ho Chi Minh. When you turn up though, the locals will refer to the city as Saigon and let’s be honest, it’s way easier to spell. We turned up in this hectic, crazy, mental city and found lots to keep us entertained. Here’s what we’d recommend if you’ve got a couple or three or four days and not so much into war museums.
Shop at Ben Thanh Market
Ben Thanh is a large market in central Saigon. It’s right in the hub of things in the city centre and well worth putting a couple of hours aside to explore. Anything you can imagine can probably be bought here, whether you’re after clothing, coffee, chopsticks, handbags, freshly cooked food or sea cucumbers. You’ll be hassled by eager saleswoman and pulled into bartering wars, for things you may not have even known you wanted. If this doesn’t sound like fun and you’re a little conflict-adverse, head to the outer ring of the market for the fixed price goods. You’ll find cheap chopsticks here, we did.
Đường Lê Lợi, Bến Thành, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Eat at Ben Thanh Street Food Market
Spend your morning shopping and then just down the road, you’ll find the best destination for food in Saigon. It’s a hip indoor street food hang-out, where all the best food can be found and bought for pretty good prices. We ate scrumptious fresh spring rolls, tasty good Pho from Viet Ph Star and succulent 5 spiced pork belly steamed buns for just VN60,000 from ‘Got Bun?’. Would totally recommend all these things…and to coming back for dinner.
26-28-30 Thủ Khoa Huân, Hồ Chí Minh 700000, Vietnam
Cross the street safely
Whaaaat you crazy?! Nah, but the traffic is. We were warned about the hectic streets before arriving by some American friends, who told us that they’d resorted to catching a cab from one side of a round-about to another. At the time, we thought they were exaggerating, but upon arriving in Saigon, we soon realised that footpaths are no longer footpaths, but an extra lane for scooters. The trick to mastering the street crossing is to step out, walk in a straight line at a steady pace. Proceed at your own risk.
Visit Cu Chi tunnels
We headed to Cu Chi tunnels through a pre-booked day trip with An Travel, a travel agency conveniently located just around the corner from where we were staying (not far from the famed backpackers area). There’s lots of travel agents around the city that would do similar tours, I’m glad we didn’t bother booking online before we got to Saigon. The day trip was an awesomely cheap VN99,000 each, which included a bus ride to the tunnels, an info packed tour with a group and guide and the privilege of crawling round the tunnels. It’s not the most fun day ever and the roads are jammed pack getting out of the city, but it’s a must-do and you’ll get stuff out of it, including figuring you know not nearly enough about world history, and that you have life way too good sometimes.
165 Phạm Ngũ Lão – P.Phạm Ngũ Lão – Q.1 – TP.HC
Day trip to Mekong Delta
When we were booking the day trip to the tunnels, we also booked in a day trip to the Mekong Delta. It had been on the bucket list, and well I kinda felt that we had made it to Vietnam and the trip wasn’t finished until we’d been to the Delta. It’s a full day adventure, leaving early morning (before breakfast) and returning towards dusk. Much of the time is spent driving, but once you arrive, you swap mode of transport and jump on a wooden boat with your tour group to visit ‘a floating market’, which is just one staged boat selling fruit to tourists, pay some woman to steer a smaller boat with you along a tiny shallow canal and watch some local singers perform for the most awkward 10 mins of your life. While I probably don’t paint a favourable picture, I think you have to still do it. My advice would be to book the day trip and not the overnight.
Eat some more food
There’s lots of awesome places to eat in this huge city. Here’s a list of some of the places we grabbed a bite or a slurp and would go back too.
- The Luke’s Café – they do a good iced-Vietnamese coffee https://www.facebook.com/lukescafevn/
- Baozi – it’s a hipster joint for steamed buns WWW.BAOZIHCM.COM
- Bun Bo Hue Nam Giao – decent and cheap for dinner www.facebook.com/Namgiaobuivien/
- The Morning Café – if you want a little peace and quiet and coffee – www.themorningcafe.com.vn
- Bahn Mi Huynh Hoa – for tasty Bahn Mi that the locals queue up for.
- Ph Quynh – Just go there and eat all the Pho. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pho-Quynh/249018631776526?fref=ts
…And photograph people asleep in the most bizarre places
Something that you’ll notice in Vietnam is that it’s ok to sleep pretty much anywhere other than your bed. In your market stall, on the back of utes, on top of motorbikes, basically anywhere that can hold your dead weight. I turned it into a bit of a game, trying to take sneaky photos. I think you’ll probably enjoy it too.
