Today was another
Passion fruit, papaya, rambutan, and Longon 
Rice porridge with thousand-year egg, salty egg, chinese sausage, and dried shredded pork.
After finishing up the blog, we headed out to explore and grab lunch. We walked around District 1 and headed towards the Vincome mall because we heard it was huge with 256 stores. When we got there it was sadly disappointing. There weren’t many shops and part of the Vincome mall was renovating and the changed its name to Union Square.
We briefly walked through the mall and then went over to the walking street where the Ben Thanh Market is located. The Ben Thanh Market area was reminiscent of Bangkok. There were plenty of vendors lining the streets and a warehouse full of shops ranging from fake designer bags, jewelry, dried fruits and meats, street food, and much more. It was overwhelming how many shops and vendors there were. My favorite
We browsed through some of the shops and then went to street food Ben Thanh Market area to get some lunch. The food choices were plenty and the food looked authentically Vietnamese. I was excited to try it. Out of all the food options, I landed at a Banh Xeo place that has the crepes that I’m accustomed to. The crepes are filled with bean sprouts, shrimp, pork, and yellow bean. It was exactly as I remembered my mom making. It was so good. I haven’t had Vietnamese food in so long since I’ve been in SEA. Jason also thought it was a great dish. I also got a traditional sugar cane drink with kumquat. It was refreshing and just as I remember growing up. I was still hungry so I also got Banh Khot. It was good but the Banh Xeo took the prize.
Forgot this dish but it’s a rice paper with meat inside 
Banh Xeo 
Banh Khot
We walked back to the hotel to burn off some of the food. We were about 1 miles away and took about 15 minutes to get back. We avoided walking on the street where there were massage parlors because they looked sketchy. There were young women dressed in
I was pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel because of the heat and I didn’t drink much water. We grabbed some complementary espresso downstairs (member perks…gotta love them) and just hung out in the hotel until dinner time. We finished up the Gentlemen’s Dignity. I liked the show.
We went to dinner at a restaurant called Mam. It’s a higher end restaurant and had great reviews. The restaurant food wasn’t memorable. We ordered soft shell crab and grilled squid for appetizers and I had the duck Saigon style and Jason had the grilled Sea Bass. For dessert, we tried “banana and coconut ice cream” and a jello-like dessert. The crab tasted fishy. The grilled squid was the crowd favorite. My duck was good but nothing special. Jason’s Sea Bass seemed dry and I wasn’t fond of the flavor. The “banana and coconut ice cream” turned out to be just a frozen banana and some coconut sauce. It was funny that a high-end restaurant served a frozen banana with a coconut sauce that seemed like it came out of a can. I’ve also seen the jello-like dessert before and it looked exactly the same as the ones you buy on the street. The food was good but a disappointment for what we were expecting.
Our taxi ride over. 32,000 Dong. About 1.5 USD. 
Grilled squid 
Soft shell crab 
Alley to get to Mam Restaurant 
Seabass 
Duck Saigon Style 
“Banana Coconut Ice cream” and the jello-like dessert. 
1.5 million Vietnamese Dong! That’s about 63 USD.
Instead of taking a taxi back, we decided to walk. It was a 1.5 mile walk and it took about 25 minutes. During the night, HCMC seems to light up. It’s a very colorful city. You can see that the city is becoming more developed but it’s still finding itself. I don’t feel a high level of safety and tourist friendliness in HCMC as I did in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. I think HCMC is cool but I’m not thrilled about this place as much as I thought I would be. I think in 5-10 years it’ll be an exciting place but for now it still seems too much of a third world country.
Crossing the streets is pretty dangerous and it’s not a pedestrian friendly country. I thought Bangkok was bad but Vietnam seems much worse. It doesn’t seem like there are any rules here but it still seems to work, not efficiently of course, but in it’s own unique way locals make it work.
HCMC and Hanoi, I hear, are on the same level of development but what’s surprising to learn is that Da Nang (central Vietnam) is known as the most developed city and a tech hub of sorts. That’s one place I still want to visit.
We got back to the hotel and Jason knocked out while I went to the gym to get a quick leg work out in. I worked out and then went back to the room to shower and grab my computer bag to write this blog in the executive lounge. I thought it was open 24/7 but turns out it closes at 11:30 pm so I’m not currently in the lobby coffee area writing this blog.
We head out on another tour tomorrow to the Cu Chi Tunnels and Mekong River. It’ll start at 7:30 am and run until 8 pm. It’ll be a long day tomorrow. After that, we’ll have one more night before we head out to Hanoi in the evening time. I’m getting exhausted of traveling. It’s been two weeks since Jason came in and we’re both pretty beat. I’m going to enjoy the rest of the trip but I’m starting to really look forward to going back to the states. Until then!