Saigon Recap

Mark and I returned from our honeymoon in Vietnam just a few weeks ago. It was incredible! We visited Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), the Mekong Delta, Mui Ne, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, Sapa, and Ha Long Bay.

Ho Chi Minh City was the loudest, most crowded, most polluted city I have ever seen. 7 million peeps live in HCMC (or, as most people still call it, Saigon) and it seems like all 7 million of them are all on the streets at the same time, zipping around on motorbikes. The constant honking is almost unbearable. What is actually unbearable is the disgusting exhaust and grime that coats you as you walk about the streets. But the scenery and the food completely make up for it.

Crossing the street is a skill you must cultivate immediately. It's like Frogger on crack.


These are the rules:

1. Never hesitate. Just go.
   
2. Look both ways. Keep looking both ways. Never stop looking both ways.
   
3. A walk sign does not mean that the cars/motorbikes will stop. There will just be less of them to contend with.
   
4. When in doubt, wait for a Vietnamese person to cross the street and follow him/her.
   

Sometimes the motorbikes are carrying crazy items. Like 7 live piglets. Or maybe goldfish, like this gentleman:


Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after reunification in honor of Ho Chi Minh (obvs). Ho Chi Minh is called Uncle Ho. Sometimes, when people go to the toilet, they say they are "going to visit Uncle Ho." I wouldn't say this in front of any Communist Party officials but that's pretty funny right?


Saigon also has beautiful, well-maintained parks.



We also visited plenty of beautiful temples. We saw lots of young ladies worshiping the gods of fertility; Mark and I kept well away from those for now.



April is the hottest time of the year in Saigon. Of course this was the time we chose to go. We are from HOUSTON. We are used to and sometimes even revel in hot and humid. But Saigon slayed us. Saigon was so stinking hot and humid that we stopped at a cafe pretty much every 10 minutes to get a cold drink and/or snack.

Vietnam has an incredible array of beverages. My drink of choice was soda chanh, or lime soda. Simple and utterly refreshing: Lime juice, sugar syrup, and club soda. The best versions were more tart than sweet. A popular variation is made with salt instead of sugar. In theory, I get this, because you sweat a lot and need to replenish your sodium levels. In reality, salty limeade is not good.

This is me, chowing down on banh xeo (crispy turmeric coconut pancake with shrimp, pork, and herbs) and a soda chanh:


I also loved sinh to, or icy fruit smoothies sweetened with condensed milk. My fave was the mango (xoai) and Mark liked the soursop (mang cau xiem).

Mark's drink of choice was Vietnamese coffee, which we drink all the time in Houston, or Bia Saigon. Bia Saigon is light and very refreshing because it is normally served on ice. This makes it go down pretty easy.

And now on to the food! It seems like one of the most popular tourist activities is to wander around the marketplaces to check out all the food.

Ben Thanh market:

Cho Lon (mainly ethnic Chinese) market:


Everyone says Saigon food is better than anywhere else in Vietnam. Allegedly, the dirty South has all the best produce, seafood, and meats and the variety is superior to any other place.It was very delicious but we also had some amazing meals in other parts of the country. These are the main differences we noted:

• Saigon restaurants/street markets are a lot more generous with the herb plates. Everything comes with a beautiful tumble of herbs; some you recognize and some you don't. The herb plate is one of the hallmarks of Vietnamese food, so we really enjoyed trying all different types of greens they had to offer. Once you get north of Hue, the herbs are not as varied and bountiful.
  
• Food in the South seems to be sweeter than food in the North. As in, more sugar.
  
• You can find every kind of Vietnamese food you've ever heard of in Saigon, including Hanoi and Hue specialities. In Hue, it is much harder to find specialities from other regions.
  

Let me just say right now that we pretty much ignored all the warnings not to get ice, not to eat the fresh herbs, not to eat fruit we didn't peel ourselves, and not to eat street food. It would have been impossible to enjoy Vietnam's incredible cuisine without sampling street food and trying all the different raw vegetables, herb garnishes, and iced concoctions. I paid the price for my lack of caution and got sick briefly. Mark did not get sick at all, the lucky dog! His theory is that having at least 1 1/2 liters of alcohol a day will keep you healthy, if not wealthy or wise.

The center dish is banana blossom, shrimp, and chicken salad (goi bap choi tom) with freshly fried shrimp chips and roasted peanuts. Cold-sour-salty-sweet flavors, and tons of texture from the herbs and julienned veggies, and a nice crunch from the shrimp chips. Amazing! In the back you see sweet potato shrimp fritters, which were nice but not as exciting as the salad.


Here we have sugarcane shrimp (chao tom) wrapped in rice paper with star fruit, Thai basil, and cold rice noodles. We really enjoyed the way they served this. The shrimp paste is wrapped around sugarcane and lightly grilled. You pull the shrimp paste off the sugarcane and wrap it in the rice paper and add garnishes as you see fit. Then you gnaw on the sugarcane for a sweet ending to the dish.


This is lunch at Cha Ca Long Vong, the sister restaurant of a famous, 100 year-old institution in Hanoi. All they serve is fried fish (cha ca) so you know it's amazing. The fish is fried in saffron oil in a frying pan on a charcoal burner right in front of you. There are cold noodles, unsalted peanuts, chopped chili, chopped spring onion, herb plate (mainly mint and cilantro), purple shrimp paste (mam tom), and fish sauce (nuoc mam). The waiter tosses tons of fresh spring onion and dill into the frying pan with the fish and then leaves you to your own devices. The fish is tasty, greasy, and salty, and the fresh dill contrasts well with the peanuts and the noodles... so good.


For my last note on Saigon, I am going to talk about che. Che is a sweet drink, sometimes served for dessert or as an afternoon snack. Ingredients vary but can include legumes (kidney beans, black beans, mung beans, corn, taro), coconut (shredded, roasted, thickened milk), jelly rainbow colored zig zags, tapioca, lotus seeds... With ice scooped into it, che becomes a delicious way to relieve the tropical heat. When I was trying to decide what I wanted, our server pointed at this item and gave me a biiiiig smile. It is coconut milk, tapioca, jelly, coconut slices, and something green, with lots of ice. Mmm.


From Saigon, we left for the Mekong Delta... Get ready for floating markets, tropical fruits, villages on a series of winding canals, elephant ear fish, and vegetarian rats.