If you search the for HCM itinerary you'll probably be left with blog post dated early 2015 to late 2014 or if you're a foodie and have googled for HCM best food, you might come across https://migrationology.com/ blog which is really informative and pretty much where I went to satisfy the foodie in me.
In any case, here's one (more recent) itinerary to add to your traveling resource! Just a heads up though, there are no temples/ pagodas in the itinerary below so if you're planning to visit the before mentioned, you might wanna skip this.
Anyways, I was in HCM for 5 days 4 nights and I cursed myself for not doing much research before booking the ticket as HCM seemed to be a little too uninteresting for a 5D4N trip. However, on hindsight, the 5 days seemed just right for our short Labour Day vacation.
First up: Air tickets. We booked ours from Jetstar and paid almost SGD210+ for a return trip. In my opinion, it's a little on the high side as my ex colleague mentioned he would usually get his for SGD 110- SGD130. Oh wells, I attributed the increase in price to the higher demand due to the long weekend break.
Second in the list: Accommodation! My ex colleague is an avid traveller to HCM and he highly recommended THE LUXE HOTEL. Honestly, I'm pretty impress with the hotel. The location was really good as its a 5min walk away from Ben Thanh Market, the staff were friendly, the hotel is relatively new & clean, breakfast was adequate and it only cost SGD50 per night (for a 2 pax room)! In addition, we were there 3 hours before the allowed time for check-in but they actually allowed us early check in as the room was available! That's what I call- +++ service.
However, when it comes to accommodation, it really depends on what you would want to do. In any case, I think staying near Ben Thanh Market is a pretty safe option as it's relatively central and walking distance to most touristy areas. When I was there, I noticed a couple of hotels located nearer to Ben Thanh Market as well. LAVENDER HOTEL is just opposite Ben Thanh Market while NHAT HA 1 HOTEL is a few metres away. I have not stayed there but judging from Agoda, they all seem pretty good and inexpensive. You may like to do your own comparison here:
Ranked according to distance from Ben Thanh Market (starting with the shortest distance, right on top):
1. Lavender Hotel
2. Nhat Ha 1 Hotel
3. The Luxe Hotel
When you're arrive, you can just monkey-see-monkey-do and follow everyone else till you clear the immigration custom. After which, you do not exit! I repeat, DO NOT EXIT (aka get our of the building into the hot humid no zircon environment) Cos what's traveling without Mr. google??! For a sim card/ data plan, you should turn left and go to the 2nd last stall or the last stall. I went for Viettel which is slightly more expensive as the coverage is "supposedly" better in non city areas but I think Vinaphone is just as good at city areas so you might want to try that. In any case, the assistant at both stalls speak a little English hence there shouldn't be any problem. A 5GB data plan should not cost more than SGD6 - 7 so don't get conned :)
Once, you're telecommunicationally set up, you can exit the airport. You'll see many people waiting at the both end of the aisle, go down the aisle and turn left (you'll see popeyes) and that's where you take the cab. Opt for either the White taxi (Vinasun) or the green taxi (Mai Linh), both of which would go by meter and the starting fare is SGD 0.75. We took a Orange taxi while we were a little lost one of the nights and the starting fare was actually cheaper @ SGD 0.50 but in order to not get scammed, just take Vinasun or Mai Linh.
If it's your first time visiting HCM and you would like to visit those "Must-See"/ "Must-Do"/ "Visit before you die" kinda iconic sights then you should plan as such. Reason being, they are all near each other and you can maximize your effort/ time. Do note that these places close during lunch hour and you might need to plan accordingly.
Must See Tourist Attractions (in this order to maximize time)
- Reunification Palace (7.30 AM to 11.30AM, 1.00PM to 5.00 PM)- SGD 1.25
- War Remnants Museum (7.30 AM to 12.00pm, 1.30PM to 5.00 PM) SGD 1
It's an exhibition with loads of information on the Vietnam War and life size war gadgets.
- Saigon Central Post Office (8am - 5.30PM)- Free
Magnificent architecture and retro ambiance.
- Notre Dame Cathedral (08:00 AM to 10:30 AM & 03:00 PM to 04:00pm, you might not get in if they have some mass/ event)- Free
Architectural marvel. Really cool to see a cathedral in the midst of a busy downtown street.
There are also other miscellaneous places to visit: Saigon Opera House, City Hall of Saigon and the Saigon Zoo which we weren't that interested and so we gave it a miss.
Must Visit Shopping Sites
Centrally located market which sells everything! From clothes to bags, from fresh produce to cooked food. You might need to haggle though, rule of thumb: Prices should reduce by 50%.
*Tip: If haggling aint your cup of tea/ you're too shag to bargain for a discount, try purchasing from the store attendants in uniform. Apparently, those stalls are regulated but the government and the prices are very reasonable. You may find these stalls at the outer edge of the market aka the "perimeter" of the market.
*Extra Tip: You should visit Ben Thanh Market at night! Every night at around 7-8pm, there will be a "Pasar Malam" at the west of Ben Thanh Market along Le Thanh Ton Street. Clothes sold there are even cheaper than Saigon Square. This Pasar Malam consist of more clothes/ luggages/ bags/ Cooked Food/ Toys etc. and not so much of snacks/ fresh produce
This is a wholesale market which sells pretty much the same stuff as what you'll find at Ben Thanh. Apparently, store owners buy their produce from Binh Tay, mark it way up and sell it at Ben Thanh. This market is a little more shabby and cluttered but prices are really 50% lower than Ben Thanh. You can try negotiating here as well but chances are, they won't barge.
I don't really understand why people call this a handicraft market as I see more clothes than handicraft. If I were to conclude, it is probably 70% clothes, 20% shoes/ bags/ accessories/ souvenir looking things and 10% nuts/ snacks/ sweets/ dried goods.
What I like about An Dong is that some of the store owners actually speak Chinese (as An Dong is situated near the Chinatown of HCM) hence communication is much easier.
A 3 mins walk away from An Dong Market, it is an air condition version of An Dong Market but minus the 10% nuts/snacks/sweets/dried goods. For those who are familiar with Platinum Mall at Bangkok, An Dong Plaza shares much resemblance to Platinum Mall. If you're looking for more girly gai gai looking clothes then An Dong Plaza would be great. However, do note that they are more of a wholesaler and might ignore you as you do not buy in bulk. If you do not like to be ignored, you can check out Ngyuen Trai Street
- 331-333 Nguyen Trai Street
This street is filled with clothing stores/ boutiques. As these are all individual stores, it's much easier to shop/ look through the clothing's, as compared to those whole sellers mentioned above.
If you're into Fabric and tailoring, check out this fabric market Soai Kinh Lam. It is basically an entire street filled with stores that are filled with tons of fabric. I almost died waiting for my mum to finish shopping as there were just too many for her to choose from.
A massive shopping area that sells loads of clothing's, be it kids clothes, exercising gear, fake branded items. You might want to negotiate the pricing as the store owners tend to mark it up by quite a bit. Thus far, the cheapest clothes I've bought is at Ben Thanh Night Market, Saigon Square's clothing are probably SGD2 - 5 more expensive.
Must Eats at HCM
I'm a huge huge fan of Bahn Mi, which is essentially the marriage of French & Vietnamese cuisine! I've read that Bahn Mi Huynh Hoa (BMHH) has been praised by both locals and tourist and I knew I had to check it out!
Those who reside in Singapore would be familiar with Nam Nam. That's where I get my Bahn Mi fix and it also served as a benchmark to whether BMHH is worth visiting. Well, all I can say is BMHH is different alright; different in a good way at least :) It contains 4 different types of processed meat and slathered with tons of pate I have no idea what pate that is I like how the bread is so über crispy and actually held its crisp for almost an hour! In short, its cheap and tasty! If you're a meat lover, especially a processed meat lover, this is the place for you! BMHH cost 33,000 dong per bun, which is equivalent to SGD 2.05.
Bahn Mi 37 was had raving reviews online and so we had to check it! The Bahn Mi 37 is a little different from the regular Bahn Mi as its filled with extremely flavorful barbecued pork patty, balanced with some sweet & sour pickled veggies. I'll spare you the list of dramatic adjectives which could be use to describe this flavorful sandwich. In a nutshell, its cheap (SGD 1.13 per bun), flavorful and extremely yummy. Its a little small hence you'll definitely need more than one.
*Tip: Be there early as there might be a queue. Also, the lady could understand english hence if you want it less spicy, do let her know.
My ex-colleague highly recommended this place and now I know why. Lang Nuong Nam Bo is a popular choice amongst both tourist and locals, it's massive space can easily house almost 1000 people (I think?) Seriously! Imagine the biggest Seafood restaurant in Singapore... now multiply that by 3 or 4. That's how big LNNB is!
Upon entering the restaurant, I thought to myself, "Wah! So many people ah, confirm must wait super long for our food to arrive :(" On the contrary, the food was brought out before we could soak in the entire ambience. We ordered the dishes recommended by the waiter and was rather pleased with the choices.
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| Coconut Salad: Tangy, crunchy and full of flavor |
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| 1/2 a Suckling Pig. According to Dad, this was one of the most tender suckling pig he has ever eaten. The steamed Man Tou were kinda hard though hence would recommend the fried one instead |
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| Deer Tenderloin with Sea Cucumber. I honestly thought deer tenderloin would be somewhat like its cousin- beef. However, it ended being a little crunchy which wasn't a bad thing as well. The dish was tasty but wasn't my favourite. |
When this dish was served, we were like "OMG what the hell did we order?!?" I don't know about you but that happens quite often to me :S Guess that's the price to pay for being adventurous.
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| Don't be taken aback by this hulk like looking fish! This fish was absolutely delicious! The meat was super soft and tender!!! Not too sure whether it had to do with the fact that it was wrapped within a melon. The melon didn't have any taste on its own but when eaten with the gravy it was not too bad. |
I've heard the Vietnamese are pretty good with the grill and do churn out some mean tasting sea food. Hence, after much googling, we ended up at Oc Oanh. According to http://vietnamcoracle.com/top-5-street-food-streets-in-saigon/, its the most famous seafood joint on the Vĩnh Khánh Street.
I must warn you though, these seafood street joints know zero English and I really mean ZERO. Oh ya and did I mention their menu did not contain any indication of price whatsoever. Hence, we had a tough time communicating with them as we wanted to know the price of each dish and was really skeptical and afraid that they might cheat us (remember that Newton Circus $500 seafood incident?).
Nonetheless, being Kiasu but savvy Singaporeans, we used the international language (sign language) to communicate our expected price. We essentially pointed onto the item we wanted and indicated 100,000 dong for that particular item. That actually worked! The entire bill amounted to almost 600,000 dong (SGD 37) which was more than decent for a delicious and satisfying seafood meal for 3.
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| We had grilled squid (100,000 dong-SGD 6.25) which was blardy damn good! I loved the green zesty sauce which was served with it. Grilled prawns were fresh and succulent too! SGD 6.25 for 6 pieces! The scallop looking shell fish were a little too rubbery for our liking but the seasoning on it was great! |
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| This was by far my favorite dish of the night! You should see my Dad's squirmed up face when the dish arrived LOL but looks can be deceiving and it sure is!! This snail looking shell fish was cooked in some coconuty broth which really compliments that seafood taste. It was both sweet and savory with a slight spicy kick! Super duper shiok! I think I ended up slurping almost 3/4 of it. |
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| This is what SGD6.25 worth of clams look like. According to my folks, it was fresh and really worth the price especially since most shells have "liao" in them. They were mentioning how the clams (back in Singapore restaurants)would come with empty shells most of the time but these were all filled and pack with tons of flavor! |
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| I think we were too stuffed to be able to objectively judge this dish, we felt that this dish was just ok and nothing much to shout about |
I actually stumbled upon this pizza joint when we were searching for a lunch place after our massage at MySpa. We were there at around 2.00pm and there was a queue of more than 10 people !! (yes this joint is THAT good). So we left our names and only came back at 3pm for lunch.
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| We had 2 pizzas in total with 4 different flavors (I love places which allow half & half!!). The Burrata Pizza with prosciutto was pretty good although I expected the Burrata to be creamier and cheesier. The Salmon Mentaiko Pizza was the best among the lot as its cheesy and creamy filling was complemented by fillets of baked salmon. I thought the Teriyaki Chicken was way too salty for me to be able to taste anything. Needless to say, the beef pizza was the star. It was well seasoned and really went well with the crusty pizza. What I liked about 4P's was the pizza crust, they managed to churn out crispy thin crust with just the right amount of chewiness and the outer edge! The Tiramisu was also worth a mention! It wasn't too sweet and had just the right ratio of Mascarpone cheese to sponge fingers. For affordable (all the above for slightly more than 50SGD) yet well executed pizza, head over to 4P's.
*Tip: you might want to ask your hotel to make a reservation for you or head there at more odd hours as the queue is pretty insane.
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There are many skybars in HCM but we were told that Bitexco was the one to head to. Bitexco is actually pretty near our hotel at SGD3 cab ride. The initial plan was to head over to the SkyDeck to see the city sky line of HCM however since the entrance fee was 200,000 dong per pax, we figured why not get ourselves a beer and admire the skyline from EON bar instead? In case you're wondering, a jug of tiger beer costs about 360,000 dong which in the end is still cheaper than a 3pax entrance fee :)
It was extremely crowded that day as it was HCM's Independence day! and we were lucky to have entered at around 7.30pm. The crowd started building at around 8pm as we were told there will be fireworks at 9pm. Now, I think we definitely had ourselves a pretty darn good deal! Gorgeous view + fireworks + beer for only 360,000 dong SGD 22.5.
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| Fireworks to celebrate HCM's independence day! |
Vietnamese love their sweets and they sure have a wide variety of desserts! Che My 2 is one of the more well known places to have them. The down side of dining at local haunts? Language barrier :/
I just took a leap of faith and ordered a Che My (which should be good since the restaurant name is Che My right??) Che My is basically a vietnamese version of our Ice Kachang but way better! It contains many different types of chewy jelly + Jackfruit + Durian and a whole lot of coconut milk!
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| We also got ourselves some dessert with a whole load of random beans and a flan. I thought both were alright and nothing great to shout out. Do head over and order the Che My instead! :) Oh do
bear in mind that its really really sweet so try your best to ask
for less sugar or ít đường (Thank God for Google
translate!)
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Other things which I've tried but wouldn't classify under "must eats" are...
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| A solid bowl of Wanton Mee at Ngyuen Trai street. The Wantons were filled with juicy succulent prawns and the noodles were done pretty well |
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| Green Bean w Sea Weed Drink |
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| If you're staying at The Luxe Hotel, do check out Tan Lap Restaurant which serves pretty good tae char style food. Do check out their coffee yoghurt! It's really weirdly delicious! |
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| Had Coffee at Trung Ngyugen Coffee Joint which is widely available available across HCM. I couldn't really differentiate the coffee but I can safely say I'm in love with Vietnamese coffee :) |
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| This Cafe was highly raved by the online community and so I dragged my folks over to have a look. It's concept is very much like PS cafe/ Assembly Cafe which essentially involves a retail cum cafe business model. This cafe exude more of an atas vibe than a hippie one. The coffee was good but not mind-blowing kinda good. I thought the food there was a little pricey too (pricey here refers to: same as Singapore Cafe kinda price) |
This was the place we had our first meal. It's called Pho Hung which has several outlets in HCM. I thought the pho was ok, nothing super fantastic. Decent and not too ex, though I think it would have been cheaper if we ate at Ben Thanh market or smth.
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| My Beef Stew was pretty flavorful albeit noodles were a little mushy and soft |
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| This small little hong kong style cafe was a metres from The Luxe Hotel, just around the bend. The beef noodles (bottom left) was exceptionately good whilst the rest were okok. |
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| Our "Chendol" in Bahn Thanh Market: Sweet and yummy! |
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| Was surprised to find coconut ice cream in HCM so I gave it a try. It was retailing at the push cart next to Oc Oanh restaurant. The ice cream was a little towards the icy side and hence I would advise you to leave your calorie count for other desserts instead |
Day Tour:
If you're keen on some day tours, you may check out the one next to the money exchanger mentioned above (or next to Blessings hotel). I'm sorry I didn't take notice of the name. We booked a Mekong River Tour (8am to 3pm- although they stated 5pm in the leaflet). There were 2 pricing: 24 USD or 28 USD, we opted for the latter as we were told its with a smaller group and with a full course lunch. The tour was alright, it included: River Cruise + Carriage Ride + Bee Farm (more like just tasting of honey) + some tropical fruits tasting (complimentary woman singing) + a visit to the coconut candy manufacturing center + Pagoda visit.
If you're keen on some day tours, you may check out the one next to the money exchanger mentioned above (or next to Blessings hotel). I'm sorry I didn't take notice of the name. We booked a Mekong River Tour (8am to 3pm- although they stated 5pm in the leaflet). There were 2 pricing: 24 USD or 28 USD, we opted for the latter as we were told its with a smaller group and with a full course lunch. The tour was alright, it included: River Cruise + Carriage Ride + Bee Farm (more like just tasting of honey) + some tropical fruits tasting (complimentary woman singing) + a visit to the coconut candy manufacturing center + Pagoda visit.
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| Boat to the Island along Mekong River |
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| River Cruise |
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| I felt a little guilty riding on that skinny pony |
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| So called "Bee Farm Visit" but was essentially a Bee Product Sales Pitch |
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| Witness the making of Coconut Candy |
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| Say Cheese to happiness :) |
I thought the tour was pretty ok for 24 SGD but 28 USD is kinda meh... It's not bad per se just thought we could have covered more substantial things as most of the activities were a the touch & go sort of activity; it may also be due to the lack of time as well as it takes about 1 hour to reach the river.
You may also check out half day tour to Cu Chi Tunnel for USD 15/ USD 18 bucks!
Hope the above might serve as a more up to date travelogue and help some plan out their Ho Chi Minh Itinerary. Do comment below should you have any enquiries :)
You may also check out half day tour to Cu Chi Tunnel for USD 15/ USD 18 bucks!
Hope the above might serve as a more up to date travelogue and help some plan out their Ho Chi Minh Itinerary. Do comment below should you have any enquiries :)
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