Travel Like Bourdain
Vietnam
You will be overwhelmed the moment you land. Follow your nose. That is the whole plan.
The Forgotten Atlas — Field Report
You will be overwhelmed the moment you land. Follow your nose. That is the whole plan.
Saigon does not ease you in. The heat hits you at the airport. By the time you reach the street the motorbikes are everywhere — a river of them flowing around pedestrians and tuk-tuks and the occasional ox cart with a logic that looks like chaos and turns out to be something else. The smell of something extraordinary cooking somewhere just out of sight pulls you in a direction you cannot name. Follow it. That is genuinely the entire plan for your first day.
Saigon is one of my favourite cities in the world. The energy, the food, the people. There is nowhere else quite like it.
Anthony Bourdain
Southern Vietnamese food is different from northern Vietnamese food in ways that matter. Sweeter, more Chinese-influenced, more herb-heavy. The bún bò Huế here is extraordinary. The bánh mì is different again from Hanoi — airier bread, more elaborate fillings. The hủ tiếu, the cơm tấm with grilled pork and broken rice, the phở served with a plate of herbs and bean sprouts so large it could be a salad — every meal is an event.
Go. It is not comfortable. It is not supposed to be. The War Remnants Museum presents the American War — as the Vietnamese call it — from a perspective that most Western visitors have never encountered. The photography floors are among the most powerful things you will see in any museum anywhere. Understanding Saigon requires understanding what happened here. The museum gives you a foundation.
Stay in District 1 to be central. Eat in District 4 in the evenings. Cross the river to District 7 for a completely different version of the city. Drink bia hơi on the street. Sleep when you run out of energy.
The French Quarter, the backpacker streets of Phạm Ngũ Lão, the Ben Thành Market. Start here and use it as your base.
Quieter, more residential, excellent for wandering and finding the kind of local restaurants that do not appear on any list.
Cross the bridge from District 1. This is where serious late-night eating happens. Seafood, hủ tiếu, and street food at every corner.
Broken rice with grilled pork, a fried egg, and pickled vegetables. The definitive Saigon breakfast. Queue for it.
The Cambodian-influenced noodle soup that Saigon made its own. Find a street stall serving it at 7am and order two bowls.
A courtyard restaurant in a colonial villa where vendors from across Vietnam set up stalls. A useful introduction to the full range of Vietnamese cuisine.
A rooftop restaurant hidden on the fifth floor of a building in District 1 accessible through a narrow staircase. Worth finding.
The most loaded bánh mì in the city. A queue at all hours. Costs almost nothing. Non-negotiable.
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