Our second night in Saigon we went on a food tour that started at the Saigon Opera House in District 1. We arrived a bit early and walked around the most popular district for tourists, with fancy stores and cool Art Deco buildings.
We had a drink at a speakeasy that was hidden down an secluded alley.
While we were waiting for our tour guide, we bought tickets for an upcoming showing of the “AO Show” which is a dance performance akin to Cirque de Soliel we were told (More on this later).
We met our guide, a young man named Will, who spoke perfect English and self-proclaimed Gen Zer. We picked up an Australian sportswriter and his teenage son, and proceeded to our first stop, which was down a narrow alley. We sat on tiny plastic stools and ate steamed rice rolls and mung bean fritters made with love by the ladies in the below picture.
Will led us onward, through Districts 3 and 10, on foot. We tried a bunch of street food snacks at the local night market, crossed streets (as you know by now, never easy in Vietnam), ate soup better than pho, visited the flower market, and it was all so, so good. Jessica goes into further details on her blog here; I will share some of the pictures of our adventure below.
All told, we tried 10 different, distinct Vietnamese foods, and all were tasty and we were so full by the end. We ended with flan (which we usually have encountered in Latin America), and it was just as good as my grandmother used to make.
We did one other tour while in Saigon, a coffee making one. Vietnamese people are very, very fond and proud of their coffee; there are more cafes than any other type of business in Vietnam (if this isn’t true, it definitely feels that way). Iced coffee is usually how it is served, as it is so hot here. We were the last to arrive for our 15 person class and found it was a majority of Chinese tourists, which definitely surprised us a little bit. We were able to make four different coffees, and my favorite was Ca Phe Muoi, or Salt Coffee.
Jessica delves into more details on our coffee tasting tour here. We teamed with a group of students from China to make the different coffees, and had a blast.
I mentioned above we bought tickets to a show at the Saigon Opera House, and we arrived at 5pm, because they offer a quick, 7-minute tour inside (and it lasts exactly 7 minutes). They include a complementary drink and we had ours while on the second floor balconies, looking at the courtyards on either side of the Opera House.
Once inside, before the show started, we could take pictures of the stage.
They did not allow pictures during the show, so I took these from the web. Let me say, there is a lot more than this in the show, and a lot of colors and audience participation. It was a fun time, not something I would see again, but glad we went.
Afterwards, we walked around District 1, and saw the Opera House at night.
We went on to find a brewpub hidden down an alley, and ate German sausages while we sampled their beer offerings. We’ve had better beers, for sure, but it was a fun way to end a night at the Opera House.
We didn’t really see any Temples that were worth posting about in Saigon unfortunately (though we’ve seen so many Temples in SE Asia so far, so we weren’t too sad). We did see the outsides of some pink churches (as they usually aren’t, or haven’t been, open to visitors thus far). Vietnam does like their pink churches, and they do look cool from the outside.
There was also this massive white church, that we could see when we left our hotel. We walked past it a few times ( it was on the way to the massage place near us), and were gobsmacked by its size and ornateness.
We covered a lot in this post, and there’s still more to see. Next up: Art Museums of Saigon!
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