We spent three nights and two full days in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides our food tour and Cu Chi Tunnels tour (the next two posts will have full reviews of these), we explored a bit on our own.

We arrived in the evening and checked into the Park Hyatt (also a review of this to follow). We walked down to the Bui Vien Walking Street, which was supposed to have lots of interesting street food. Unfortunately, there was not much there that interested us. It was mostly backpacker and tourist type food, nothing really authentic.

From there, we took a Grab over to Than Dinh market as my wife had read that there was more authentic street food in that area. We saw a few places, but one was way more popular than the others. When we asked the workers what they were serving, we thought they said rice soup and pork, so we ordered some and they showed us to a plastic table on the sidewalk.

It turned out it was frog not pork! It was actually Chao ech Singapore, a Singaporean way of serving frog legs with rice porridge. It was pretty good once we figured out to mix the frog legs and sauce with the porridge.

A few blocks away, we had spied our favorite coffee place from the last time we were in Vietnam, Cong Caphe. We walked over afterwards and enjoyed their frozen coconut drink with green rice.

The next morning, after breakfast, we walked over to the War Remnants Museum. The subtitle should probably be “the museum of American war crimes.” It was a very interesting take on the war, obviously from a very biased perspective. I suppose it’s true that the winners get to write the history. If you get uncomfortable with graphic war photos, you can skip ahead a couple of paragraphs.

There were many US planes, helicopters and bombs on display outside the museum.

Inside, there were several different displays, including lots of newspaper displays showing all the protests against the war in the West. Upstairs, there was a photographic exhibit with many graphic and uncomfortable pictures, but it was worth seeing.

Outside the museum, there was also a recreation of prisoner of war facilities, including “tiger cages” where several POWs would be kept laying down outside and some prison cells.

The museum was really interesting and we spent about 90 minutes there. After that, we took a Grab to a craft market, but that turned out to be a dud. From there, we went to antique street, which is a nice street full of antique shops. My wife really enjoyed it and bought a few small Chinese antiques there. The stores were mostly full of Chinese antiques dating back hundreds of years. I saw very few customers and asked one of the few dealers who spoke English who his customers were. He said it was mostly Chinese people. So basically they were coming here to buy back their own antiques.

After stopping by a couple of other stores, we ended our morning out with another Cong Caphe stop. This time I got the frozen coffee with coconut.

That afternoon, we went back to the Park Hyatt for some rest and pool time. That evening we went on a food tour and the next morning we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels.

The following afternoon, we stopped by some pottery shops and the flower market (not my choices) before going to a shop named GU, where many of the clothing manufacturers sell their excess inventory. They had a decent selection of athletic wear, jackets, sweatshirts and even sneakers. We bought a few things and they were pennies on the dollar from what they would have cost back home in a clothing store.

That night, we had drinks at the Park Hyatt bar and then a very nice Michelin starred meal (which I will share in a later post). We left Ho Chi Minh City for Hue on a Vietnam Airlines flight the following morning after one last Park Hyatt breakfast.

We saw a lot of the city thanks to the tours we took and the Grabs to different areas. There are obviously more tourist attractions you can see there such as the Old Post Office, the Independence Palace and the cathedral (which is under construction), but the weather was very hot and we prioritized what we wanted to see and do.

Up Next: Ho Chi Minh City Food Tour

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