Just came back from my 6 days trip in Vietnam! Was there from15-21 December :) This trip was lots of eating, shopping and cafe-hopping! :) I probably gained some weight from this trip :O
I'm glad to have travelled with Akira and Selica on this trip! They are amazing travel buddies and we had lots of fun eating and eating and exploring new places LOL. I wished the trip was longer and we perhaps could have seen much more if we had more time!
When we first arrived in Ho Chi Minh, we took the bus 152 from the airport which dropped us off right at Phạm Ngũ Lão Street, which is also known as the backpacker's district. The bus is really a convenient way to get from the airport to the Phạm Ngũ Lão and Bến Thành Market area! Best part of it - it only costs 10,000 dong per person! :) That's less than 1SGD. The bus operates from 6am to 6pm and the frequency is every 15 mins.
After we checked into our hostel (New Saigon Hostel), which by the way, is super amazing, we decided to go grab some food! (lots of food actually!)
We first headed to Newdays Japanese Matcha & Coffee and I got a matcha latte while Akira got matcha yoghurt. I loved it!!! Super into Matcha nowadays hahaha! :)
Our attempt in taking an artistic shot but my arm looks super awkward in this photo.
We decided to walk around the area, and we spotted this road side stall selling noodles. Gosh, they were super freaking amazing!!! It was one of the best we had throughout our entire trip!
We then headed to look for this stall Bánh Mì Huỳnh Hoa at 26 Lê Thị Riêng, Bến Thành, 1, Hồ Chí Minh. Super duper amazing Banh Mi!!! Ended up buying from this stall twice! It costs 32,000 dong which is considered to be the most expensive banh mi around. But it's super worth it! Look at all the meatttttt!
We then went to Quan An Ngon 138 at 160 Pasteur Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Went there because it was recommended by DanielFoodDiary!
Bun Bo Hue - beef noodle soup Hue style from Central Vietnam
After eating, we just continued walking around and exploring Ho Chi Minh.
Decided to catch a water puppet show at The Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theater at 55B Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, Ben Thanh Ward, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. The ticket admission cost 180,000 dong and it's NOT WORTH THE MONEY. We were kinda falling asleep during the show... And... You can probably find water puppet shows with much better price tags at other places! Would never recommend anyone to come here. It's too expensive!!! (and boring!)
After the water puppet show, we went out for more food (OMG). Headed to Sushi Ko at phường 10 Quận 4, 122/42 Vĩnh Khánh, phường 10, Hồ Chí Minh. The sushi was niceeeee! The only thing was that, we were really super full! It would have been better if we didn't eat so much on the first day! Haha
On the 2nd day of our trip, we did the Cu Chi Tunnels & Cao Dai temple tour. Booked the tour from our hostel at 180,000 dong which was overpriced as compared to The Sinh Tourist which was around 120,000 dong. We were just kinda lazy to look around for other tour agencies so we booked via our hostel. I wouldn't recommend that though. There are so many other better options out there. Our tour was with Delta Tours.
First stop of the tour was at the Handicapped Handicrafts Workshop.
Next was the Cao Đài Temple which we didn't really appreciate much.
Lunch was at this restaurant which was super over-priced and the food was TERRIBLE. Haha, a lot of people in our tour group didn't bother finishing their food.
Last stop of the tour was the Cu Chi Tunnels. We enjoyed this segment of the tour!
Advice to anyone going Ho Chi Minh: Just book the Cu Chi Tunnels tour instead of doing the Cu Chi + Cao Dai tour. The Cao Dai Temple isn't really worth going...
On the bus back to Ho Chi Minh, 2 Australians recommended us to try Pho 2000... Hence, we decided to try that for dinner! It wasn't impressive though... It's only famous because Bill Clinton ate there once!
Freaking huge bowl of pho!
As it was rather late at night, all we could do was to walk around and eat and shop!!!
Coffee at Phúc Long... It was really sweet with all the condensed milk. I prefer Vietnamese coffee without the milk.
Went over to Saigon Square, but most of the shops were closed. We decided to go back to Saigon Square the next morning to check out the stalls. Read online that the prices at Saigon Square is much more reasonable than those at Ben Thanh Market... However, our experience says otherwise... The prices that we got quoted at Saigon Square were much much higher and unreasonable!
The next day, we decided to search out for more good food in Ho Chi Minh.
Bánh Mì Hồng Hoa - 17,000 vnd. Akira's favourite banh mi.
Trung Nguyen Coffee - tried the Weasel Coffee and No.8 Coffee! Most expensive cup of coffee I've ever drank. The No.8 was good!
We wanted to pay 15k dong per person for a 1km ride. But the motorbike uncles didn't want to accept it because they felt that it's too low. The 2 uncles refused our offer so we decided to just walk the 1km. However, after about 100m, one of the guy rode his bike up and told us that he can send both of us there. We ended up sitting on his motorbike (3 of us on the bike) and we paid him 30k! Haha, this guy is smart man. We both achieved our objectives (paying 15k per person) and him getting 30k. LOL. It felt quite dangerous having 3 of us on 1 bike though. It was Akira's first time on a motorbike! Haha, quite funny lol.
Our destination was this food place which was recommended to us by someone on Instagram. Hi Ushi - Bò Né Xíu Mại. It was alright, not super amazing.
After lunch, we packed our bags and went to take a long-distance Phuong Trang Bus down to Vinh Long. The bus ride only cost 110,000 dong and it's the same price from Ho Chi Minh to Can Tho. We got off at Vinh Long and took a motorbike to the jetty where we took a ferry over to An Binh Island.
This is where we stayed for the night! :) It's a really nice place to stay at. Got around the island with our bicycle! My bicycle broke down halfway and had to push it back to the hostel to get another bicycle lol.