A Sunny Look at Saigon

My 2nd full day in Saigon was going to be a bit different as I was meeting up with Sunny – a Filipino friend of mine from my Madrid days.


We met up at the local equivalent of a Starbucks – Highland Coffee Company – which does the whole Seattle spawned coffee shop very well, complete with free wi-fi and most importantly, fully-cranked A/C.

Heading out, it was refreshing to let Sunny take the lead. Normally, I tend to be the organizer for most trips, but since Sunny is a frequent visitor to Saigon, it was fun to just let him take the lead.

He's got an interesting style of travelling. In military terms, he starts out with a dawn reconnaissance run, by, well, running in a random direction. Whenever he passes through a neighborhood that looks good, that becomes the destination for the day.

And, it works surprisingly well. It saw us well off the backpacker circuit, and having the fun of being the only tourists around. A quick lunch stop and a fish/noodle stew, and then we rolled into a cafe/gallery that actually didn't really have any art.

But wow, they had some good dorian ice cream, and I had to give a salted lemon drink (lemonade but with salt instead of sugar) a try. And one try it will remain – yuck, that was NOT my favorite.

We kept exploring and returned to one of Sunny's hole in wall favorites...


It was a make your own meal... wrapping rice paper around lettuce, BBQ pork, and a bunch of other veggies and spices, with a Bia Bia Bia (333) beer to wash it down, all for about $3 each. Unreal.



Afternoon, it was a bus ride to the local Chinatown, where if you dig mangosteens, you'd be in heaven, with a kilo for about $.75. Sunny stocked up and showed me how to eat 'em – bit messy, but in flavor, they're like a very flavorful nectarine.

Ahem... exhausted from our culinary explorations of the back alleys of Saigon, we “retired” to the local backpacker pub for some G&T's, while watching the world go by.


...fueling us up for one more trip – a walk around the corner for, essentially, spring roll tapas. These weren't the standard bland rolls you get with your Chinese takeway – nope, the Vietnamese really take pride in theirs, and have everything from crab to pork to mushrooms in a variety of wraps. Delicious.

And, just in case I haven't made this super clear... Saigon is the land of scooters, outnumbering cars by 20 to 1, with every intersection full of semi-crazed drivers itching to punch the gas. In fact, they look something like this: