Ho Chi Minh City Day 1, A Foodie Tour

Hello to you all from Vietnam! I made it to my second new country and I already love it so far. Our first stop on our Vietnam journey is Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). When deciding which cities to visit while here, we knew that we had to include the capital as one of the stops and boy are we grateful that we did. 

My first day here, we flew in the morning and arrived at 9am. We had the day ahead of us. We were pretty tired from the early wake up calls so we took the first day quite slow. One thing that we discovered quickly was how affordable Vietnam is. Our 30 minute taxi ride from the airport to our hotel was $7. Our lunch, a classic Vietnamese sandwich, was less than $2. We decided with prices like these that our time in this city would be a foodie tour. One meal I wanted to try for sure while in Vietnam was a Banh Mi. It is a sandwich with your pick of meat and stuffed with veggies like cucumber, green onion, cilantro, chili on a crunchy sub-like bun. We ended up having it as our first meal and we got the taste for it and were excited to try more. Of course since it was our first day, we had to walk around to each destination, and to stay hydrated we stopped at Circle K (no longer the 7-11 supremacy like in Thailand). 

Our next stop was a cafe because we had some work we needed to get done, and we would soon learn that HCMC is the place for coffee lovers. We went to LaLa, a modern and gorgeous cafe that fueled our productivity. Time flied while we were there, and about the time we were ready to head out, the rainy season climate reared in its head. The wind was so powerful the workers at the cafe had to use a chair to keep the door shut and the rain poured down on the all glass structure of this cafe. We had to wait about an hour for it to fully pass, but once it did we were good for the night.

We took a cab to dinner, Bom Vegan, a lovely restaurant that stuffed us full and only cost $3 for an entree and bao appetizer. Izzy and I shared a vegan chicken and rice dish along with broken rice. We had the nicest server that came over to our table to show us how to eat the food because we definitely appeared to be very confused at not only what was on our plate but how to properly go about eating it. Some of the unique ingredients on our plate that we tried were fried mushrooms, banana flower, and algae. We were also instructed to pour the algae over the whole dish and give it a good stir. We enjoyed learning more about what we were eating as it was our first day and first time in Vietnam!

We had our foodie moment there and left feeling so satisfied. We headed back to our hotel, checked in, and chilled out for a hot minute as we were in need of some recovery time from all the go-go of our traveling days. We tried to turn on the TV and have a movie night, but not being able to navigate the settings to switch the language from Vietnamese to english was our downfall. We then decided to check out the pool knowing it had a cool view, to get up there and instead be captivated by music nearby. I heard “Can’t Hold Us” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and had to see where this glorious music was coming from. We went up the stairs to the rooftop bar our hotel had and were completely blown away by the view of the city skyline. And as a cherry on top, the DJ was one of the best I’ve ever heard. One thing I love about Izzy is that we have the exact same taste in music, and now we can say this DJ did as well. We were singing, bopping, and in heaven as each new song came on we proudly sang along. There weren’t many people at the bar, probably only 10 to be exact, but we sat down, marveled at the view, and sang to the songs selected by our new favorite DJ. When he finished his set, they put on some Vietnamese music and we knew that would be the close to our night and an awesome first day in a new city.