“Do you want pho or bun bo,” my friend asked. These were the difficult decisions I had to make during my trip to Vietnam.
I went to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), the most populated city in Vietnam, to visit my friend from my time at language school in Taiwan. She grew up in a town close to the Cambodia border, but she attended university in HCMC and has worked there for several years.
I have visited Vietnam before but never to see a friend actually born and raised in the country. She very generously took me around on her motorbike to her favorite restaurants and neighborhoods she thought were good for people watching.
An ideal vacation for me.
There were a few spots like a late-night food market and a bookstore street that we went to that catered to tourists. They were easy to find after an online search but my friend knew places that had cheaper and better food and souvenirs.
I completely understand the pull of tourist centered areas and activities. It can be daunting to go to a local neighborhood at random and know what to do or see.
My cousin was also in the city visiting a local professor friend at the same time and all four us went for a meal twice. I kept telling my cousin how lucky we were to know kind people willing to share their most precious commodity: the knowledge of the best restaurants.
I a certainly no expert on Vietnamese culture after spending a week there, but a few things stood out to me.
After traveling to several corners of the city, I only saw a few McDonald’s. Apparently there are only about 25 locations in HCMC, a city of over 10 million people. Chicago has about 100 and the population is a lot less than HCMC.
My friend told me a lot of Vietnamese people don’t think a McDonald’s meal is worth the price. They can get better and fresher food at other restaurants for cheaper so what is the point?
We drove around district 2, a posh and shiny recently built neighborhood with skyscrapers and condos. Many expats live in the neighborhood, and we saw many Korean and Japanese restaurants but not many pizza or hamburger places.
My friend said younger Vietnamese professionals like going out for ramen or Korean barbecue if they want international food.
Poor McDonald’s never stood a chance.
If you ever watch a video of motorbike traffic in HCMC, you will probably forget to breathe. Oddly enough, the traffic looked more chaotic than it felt. There was not a lot of honking or cutting people off and people drove at a smooth pace.
We went to two coffee shops for exploration’s sake since neither of us are big coffee drinkers. One was an early communist era themed place.
I don’t know how the communist leaders of Vietnam’s past would feel about the patrons taking selfies with their coffee for Instagram.
The other was a cafe made with delivery drivers in mind. Instead of driving all the way back to where they live during breaks between deliveries, they can come to this place to order a coffee, tea, or juice and chill out on a lawn chair or in a hammock. We both ordered a juice and played on our phones while many people around us napped.
HCMC has countless sidewalk stalls where you can buy fresh fruit juices, something that costs me an arm and a leg in Japan. I tried fruits I had never heard of like a sapodilla and dragon plum.
My friend also thought it was funny when I was amazed at the size of what I thought were huge avocados. Her response: oh we can find much bigger avocados than these.
My favorite part of the trip was watching people go about their day in my friend’s neighborhood. I feel like I got a glimpse of what daily life is like in this corner of Vietnam. I can’t wait to return the favor and show my friend around Japan and the U.S. one day.
Where To Next? 