Another recommendation from my Hanoi food tour guide from 2018 was the XO Foodie Tour. It’s an evening food tour by motorcycle that explores a lot more of Ho Chi Minh City than the typical tourist spots. The company is also woman-owned and most of their employees are women.

I booked the tour a few weeks before we left and paid by credit card so I did not have to bring so much cash with me. It was $82 per person, which includes unlimited food and drink, a driver/tour guide for each person and hotel pick-up and drop-off.

We were picked up at the Park Hyatt around 5:20pm. Our drivers were dressed in the traditional Vietnamese outfits known as ao dai. They gave us a quick tutorial of how to get on and off the motorcycle and ride safely. By the way, when I say motorcycle, I mean a Vespa/scooter type of motorcycle, not a Harley.

As we drove through the busy rush hour streets of Ho Chi Minh City, we got to know our guides a bit as they navigated to our first stop. Mine had another full-time job teaching English and wanted to travel to US at some point as her boyfriend lives in New York. It’s apparently very difficult for Vietnamese to get visas for the US as they often end up staying with family members or getting married and remaining in the US permanently so the government is wary of issuing visas. She actually managed to get a student visa for Germany to study English where she hoped to be able to visit her boyfriend after that.

We met up with the full group at a restaurant in Chinatown. Ho Chi Minh City has one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. We were one of the last ones in the group to arrive. There were about 20 people in our group, but there was another large group from the tour company also at the restaurant. As well as all of our drivers, there was a main group leader, Hong, and some assistants who provided the information about the location and food when we were seated. There were also some male employees of the tour company who provided security and logistical help for the group.

First up was a bowl of Bun Bo Hue, a beef noodle soup, which was very good.

After we left the restaurant, we walked through the nearby wet market. My wife bought some of her favorite fruit, mangosteens, which her driver stored for us for the rest of tour.

From Chinatown, we motored our way across a couple of bridges and ended up at a BBQ restaurant. We tried a bunch of different meats and veggies, much of which was cooked on hot coals right in front of us. We also were offered as much beer as we wanted.

After we ate, we played some silly games cheered on by the tour guides. While it was a big open-air restaurant, there were plenty of locals enjoying their evening as well.

From there, we headed to a newer part of town, known as Little Singapore, with lots of condos, high rises, and modern houses. It was basically a swamp ten years ago that was cleared and wealthy Vietnamese and foreigners now live and work in the area. it looked like many suburbs in the US with parks, lakes, schools and office buildings.

Hong, our tour leader, gave us a rundown on the cost of living in Vietnam and the cost of real estate in this area. It was obvious that only wealthy people or foreign investors could afford to live in that neighborhood.

Our final stop of the night was a seafood restaurant where we again tried many different dishes. The final savory dish was supposed to be balut, a duck embryo, but the guys brought out dessert to our table first so we didn’t get to try it. I was not disappointed.

There are too many dishes to name them all, but we were stuffed from all the food across four and a half hours. Our guides drove us back to the hotel across some more bridges and I was able to get a nice picture.

Just kidding! This picture was sent to me by the tour company, but it’s better than anything I took. The guides dropped us off, full and happy, around 10pm. We gave them each a tip of around 200,000 VND, around $8-9 each. Tips are not required, but we felt like they did a great job.

I highly recommend the XO Foodie Tour. While our Phnom Penh food tour probably had more interesting food, the combination of the food, the individual guides and the motorcycle made it so much fun. It felt very safe, even for kids (who could ride with their mom if they were young enough).

Up Next: Cu Chi Tunnels Tour by Boat

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