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Saigon foodie tour

Saigon is a massive city split into 19 large districts. We stayed in district 1 in which most of the tourist sites are located as are a ton of hotel & dining options. The city is so big, it’s difficult to get out of district 1. For this reason, our unbridled enthusiasm for street food & perhaps the fact we’re hardheaded as we apparently didn’t learn from our Bangkok bike tour experience & are not scared off by the Saigon traffic, we opted to do a street food tour of various Siagon districts… All while traveling on the back of motorbikes driven by locals. I could not have been more excited. The motorbikes are driven by Vietnamese women aged 21-25 (approx) wearing local dress, who are English speakers, quite engaging & thoroughly adept at traversing Siagon traffic. I was paired with Quynh, a beautiful young girl recently graduated from university w degrees in English & restaurant management, who picked me up, w Amy’s driver, at our hotel on a busy street, strapped a helmet to me, & was off w a start, driving the wrong way through traffic before darting to the proper side at first opportunity. Amazing.
For the next 4 hours, we made stops for street food & sightseeing, all the while dodging traffic & exhaust pipes of other motorbikes. If I didn’t feel as if I was putting my life at risk, I would’ve loved to get a video. At times I felt as if we were in a race & Quynh generally won as she was heavy on the gas & a great maneuverer through traffic (but very safe mom). She did say there are very few accidents in Siagon as the traffic generally moves quite slow as it’s so backed up. The food was phenomenal, eaten in locations we’d never otherwise find & excluding commonplace items like pho & banh mis, the opportunity to see a lot more of Saigon was wonderful, & the time spent on the bike getting to know my driver was super special. Overall, easily one of the best tours I’ve taken in all of my travels & I’d certainly recommend it to all.

Stop 1 in District 1 for Bun Bo Hue – beef noodle soup from Hue; lemon grass flavoring; veggies (banana flowers, morning glory or water spinach, bean sprouts); sate (homemade chili w garlic)
Stop 2 is non-food stop in District 5 (Cholon or Chinatown) to see their crazy food market… Everything is alive
Stop 3 in District 8 for barbecue – tofu sauce served w goat & chili rock salt served w beef, prawn & frog (served w skin on & off… way more flavorful w skin on) with grilled okra on the side.
Stop 4 is non-food stop in District 7 (AKA Koreatown), a boring, polished expat spot w chain restos that I couldn’t leave fast enough
Stop 5 in District 4 (AKA Mafiatown). I had to take off my simple gold necklace so as not to draw attention. This was my fave stop. Extra lively place w people & street food restos lining both sides of the street. The place is known to have the best seafood in the city. Crab served w black pepper, chili powder & kumquat juice sauce; sweet sauce served w scallops on the shell; tamarind sauce served w quail. We also had mini veggie/shrimp pancakes wrapped in lettuce and soup w clams, steamed Thai way (like tom yum (sweet & sour)). The “special treat” was a local specialty… boiled duck embryo that you eat directly from the egg. Many were grossed out so few tried it but Amy & I both did; she didn’t care for it while I liked it but didn’t finish it (I kinda wanted to see its contents). Dessert was a coconut jello.

The girls dropped us back at our hotel w super full bellies & big hugs.

All ready to roll

 

Quynh would sit next to me at every stop to describe the food, the local customs, help prepare it & accompanying sauce & desribe how to eat it. At the first stop, I ate something delicious & exclaimed “yum” afterwards. Quynh, with a laugh, quickly told me I shouldn’t say “yum” in Vietnam as it means “horny”. Haha. We kept that in mind as it had been part of our regular vernacular.

 

Bun Bo Hue

 

Vietnamese food differs from other SE Asian foods as many are served w fresh greens & most are sauce heavy, which I love. While many Thai, Lao & Cambodian dishes are served inclusive of heat (& a lot of it), Vietnamese food is not but they serve you with chili salts, chili sauces, soys, limes, etc so you can mix your own sauce & ramp up the heat to whatever level you’re comfortable with (high for me). We are becoming professionals at this by now.

 

 

The whole crew… prob a group of 14 customers & their drivers.

 

 

The girls grilling for us

 

Grilled goat & beef

 

Grilled prawns

 

Grilled toad (the entire toad)

 

 

An inpromptu game pitting Amy & I against one another in a battle of chopstick skills by testing fastest to transfer bean from your driver & put in a bottle.

 

 

Winner & receivor of Champion button

 

We traded places for a bit… but just for a pic.

 

Fresh seafood at District 4 stop

 

Quail

 

Crab legs

 

Crab legs w great chili salt & lime juice sauce. Perhaps my fave.

 

Scallops

 

Ridiculous

Pancakes

 

Clams

 

Quynh cracking open thr duck embryo. She then poured out the liquid for me to take as a shot & prepared my first bite. We’ve been told locals eat this as a delicacy & an excellent source of protein in the morning.

 

A couple duck embryo videos

https://youtu.be/Prs7w52tJc4
https://youtu.be/utDpgp-5v40

The aftermath… & evidence of a smile so proof I enjoyed it. I’m a weirdo.

 

I didn’t originally include this picture but I got a lot of questions about the duck egg so here goes. It’s eating a fertilized duck egg (not an unfertilized one). So there’s so much protein bc it includes a tiny undeveloped duckling. You can see the contents on the lower half of the plate (little duckling on lower left). It’s all mixed together in the egg, as you can imagine, so I took 4 bites to try the local delicacy & then we opened the egg to see the contents left (bc I was curious too). Sorry for grossing you out but I’ll try anything and we eat actual duck so I didn’t really have a problem with it. Judge away.

 

Coconut jello

 

14 thoughts on “Saigon foodie tour”

  1. Oh wow. What fun! Food looks amazing. You must have the best travel books to find such need ideas. So at the food stops in district 1, 5, &8, were those all sit-down restaurants or were some of those foods mentioned street food? I love the idea of someone to tell you what you’re eating & how to eat it! If your driver had a college degree, are jobs hard to come by so she has to do tours or is the money pretty good doing this?

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    2. She has a full time job working for a wedding coordinator during the day & then does this 6 of 7 nights a week to continue to work on her English & interacting w foreign travels. I have found the Vietnamese to be very hard workers. They work all of the time, multiple jobs, w very few days off a year. And Quynh comes from a pretty well off family as both mom & dad have good jobs. She said “it’s just what you do”.

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  3. Scallops look amazing!

    Was the frog crunchy? Like bones removed? Was there much meat in it? The boys and I were just talking about eating frogs and these questions all came up. Great that you now can answer.

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    1. The frog tasted like chicken w a little more kick (which I know doesn’t really help you). Better w the skin on as it was more flavorful & a bit crunchy. Bones were not removed. Nothing was removed so bad to work way around internal organs; spine, etc. I ate the lungs. I think Amy ate the heart. Whatever, it’s all grilled up & delicious. There was more meat than I thought but not a ton, as you can imagine, bc it’s so small.

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  4. How about the toad? Any difference between frog & toad? And the duck egg: did you just eat the ‘white’ & not the yolk? How did the yolk get cooked but not the white?

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      1. Thanks. Now I get it. Good explanation though I don’t think I would have tried it. But I’m a wuss.

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  5. Love your adventurousness with the cuisine! Not sure we’ve had anything like that on any of our tasting menus to date! Love your tour guides as well. It’s impressive to see how hard working most young people are in that region of the world – especially as compared to a lot of entitlement in the millennials over here. Not surprising we continue to fall behind.

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    1. We were just commenting last night, for the umpteenth time, how hard working everyone is over here. In Europe & even Turkey/Middle East, I feel as if people worked to live & fully enjoyed their downtime vs Americans who’ve always been the ones who work too much as they live to work. Now SE Asia, and Vietnam especially, tops the list. Everyone seems to work all day. Up at 5am, schools start at 7am, business open from 6am to 11pm or later. People work 2 jobs & then study languages in their down time. The young people we’ve met, when I’ve asked them what they do for fun, they kinda awkwardly laugh bc they don’t really have down time as they work all day/night, then study til bedtime. One explained that “it’s just what you do”. I’ve never seen such a hard working culture and yet people are so freaking happy doing it unlike bitter entitled Americans. So many people have their homes above their shop/resto so as Deon as they wake til they go to bed, they’re working. And their kids of all ages are happily there to pitch in. Little 3yo toddlers know not to bother mom when she’s working. Kids are tough. Much tougher than in the US. It’s been real eye opening & disgusted me even more w the millennial generation. I’m real disappointed that Obama can’t get his mandatory one year of service between high school & college passed bc I think that could go a long way to opening the eyes of those entitled millennials & their helicopter parents.

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