Author: Maren Hanetho

This is supposed to be the tailor capital of Vietnam, and its probably true – the streets are full of tailorshops. Lots and lots of leather, and tons of suits n shirts tailors. Also – silk is a big thing here, so thars for sale everywhere, at different qualities I’m sure.

I have an issue that needs to be taken care of…

My old trusted Motorhead shoulderbag, thats been with me for, 12 years I think? at least.. Its been trough hell, and its starting to show. It fell apart a couple of years back, and I had a tailor in norway do some fixing. (they just shook their heds, the fix was more costly that to buy a new one) – but it has other value than money 🙂

But still, I think it will need a rest – and just take part on easy missions to sweden rock festival. And carry some beers to a park in Oslo.

Of course, looking for bags the last year – nothing really has been worth buying, ’cause its just not right. But in Hoi An, they dont just make shoes and suits – they also do hand made bags to specs! oh yes!

I had a lengthy talk woth this woman about bags.. zippers.. double stiching and clips vs velcroe. I found a template bag, and mixed in the winning features of ol’ Motorhead bag. Added a side pocket a bit larger so I have room for a bit bigger phone. Moved the backside pocket to the frontside – under the flap. Removed all fancy smancy embroideries and shit.

Made it a bit wider and deeper, and extra long shoulder strap – lets see what No Ny comes up with, picking it up tomorrow noon-ish !

The shop on the right, Friendly shoe shop – that where Maren was fitted for custom shoes while I was talking bad with mrs No Ny

You can create whatever type of shoe you want, mixing leathers and colours. Knowing Maren, it will probably be some crazy banana stuff – she had a long and good talk to the shoenlady, and I think they agreed on something cool.

The shoe lady informed Maren that she had some issues standing still – I could have told her that from the start. But she managed the few minutes it took, 3-4 measures from different angels of the foot. I have heard talks about furry and colourfull shoes – we have to wait for tomorrow – at noonish, she will go in for a final fitting.

Yesterday we decided to book one of these food-tours that we see trough Tripadvisor all the time. We signed up for an 4 hour evening walking tour with Hoi An Food Tour, this tour includes lots of different experiences – together with a group of max 12 pax.

The trip is 35$ pr person, and includes everything. (food, drinks, other fees). We met at their main office in town, togheter with 6-7 kids (not kids, 20-30 year olds,. Its just me feeling old 🙂 ) and off we went, snirkling trough allyways and back roads of Hoi An old town, until we ended up at White Rose – our first stop of the day.

Here we got to see how they made dumplings, working 7 days a week for 250$ a month. The White Rose is special in Hoi An, because it pretty much them that provide the whole area with dumplings. If you eat a dumpling in any of the resturants, or street vendors, it comes from this place.

To sample the food here, fresh out of the steamer – and not reheated in one of the other places – is extra special. They also have a ‘open’ wonton, or a hoi an pizza as they call it – delicious!

After this we moved on to try the best Bahn Mi in town, or the world – now, this is something you hear a lot, everybody has the best, But I have to say that Bahn Mi Queen comes pretty close. The towns nr1 tourist spot is the Bahn Mi Phuong, once visited by Anthony Bourdaine – who proclaimed it the best in the world.

The bahn mi here was my fav, at least so far. The secret in the combination of meat and family recepie sauce. As our guide told us, they have understood that bahn mi has become a ‘thing’, but for them it is just a very usual breakfast option. But tourist are crazy for them, and it is available in more n more countries.

I have tested these in Oslo, and they are not even close. I think this comes down to the fact that we use regular french baguette. The bahn mi baguett of Vietnam is actually made of three types of flour, rice flour beeing one of them – this gives it the superfluffy inside ans supercrispy outside.

Onward! And time for the optional food stop – the balute egg. Our guide said that on average 40% would try this asian snack – originaly from the Philipines.

So the balut egg is a fertelized egg, duck. So its not a classic egg for eating anymore, but a 14 day old featus – that you eat directly from the egg. It is steamed for a long time and is hot. It dont look very appetizing at all, you can google it for pictures yourself – i didnt get any other pictures than this, because I was focusing on if I was actually able to eat it.

I was, and one of the canadians also, one egg each. I have to say it tasted pretty good – the eggwhite was hard and not to be eaten, the yoke was hard but tasty – the.. featus.. was.. is hard to explain. All in all – taste good – looks horrific. Smells .. interesting. Done that, probably never eating it again.

It came with some spices and a sauce, and was a ‘hit’ for the locals. There was one guy eating two of them while we where there – probably not wise to eat to many, they are highly nutrsoius. Also – none of the balut places are very advertised, no signs and no showing of what they sell. You have to ask for it and they bring it out of a box they have next to them.

Anyways – moving along.

Cao lau! A signature dish from Hoi An. To break it down its a pork broth with thick noodels – some greens and pork meat. Also for topping there are some crispy bits that many mistake for pork crackling, but it is actually fried noodels that has been dried out for a couple of days first. – lovely dish.

This resturant does not exist on either google maps or tripadvisor. And it have a very genuine local feel – only serving this one single dish.

Now, there are a few ‘rules’ here, regarding this dish. Lets see if I can remember them all 🙂

1. Water must come from the ancient well in town
2. The ashes (yes, the ashes) used for soaking the noodels. Have to come from the nearby island Cham
3. The organic vegetables have to come from the local village (Que village)

It tastes wonderfull, and again – with the guide telling us of the story behind, it do add a extra touch.

Before the dinner at a private home we did stop for some excelent coffee. No pictures, I forgot – but the Vietnam coffee is delicious. So drink coffee here as much as you can, the iced one is best.

We where taken to a private home where to lovely ladys (wearing superman aprons, they where super cooks!) served us a magnificent meal. Starting with fried springrolls as shown on the picture above. Supernice.

This was followed by some very nice pancakes with small egg’s on top m, and the a rich sweet soup with banana.. and some stuff Im not sure what is. People around the table talked about some likness to bubble tea – not sure what that is either.

We also got the chance to make our own fresh spring rolls – they turned out nice enough. It is also a nice thing to put in some activities – nice icebreaker to get people talking when everybody does something they are not good at.

It was very cool being at someones home getting to try fresh made local food. And it didt feel imposing or weird or anything – it was just very nice. And excelent food! But needless to say, a lot of us now really started to get filled up to the max!

Next – Bingo

This was an 15 minut type of easy gambling/game. You bought a paddle with three different words on it.

And then there was a lady singing popular vietnameese songs, and they where refering to one of these words – so when the word was revealed in the song – a guy would hold up a board with the word. If this was one of your words – wave had, get a tellow flag. Abd the ut was all about being the first to get three flags, and win a pretty decent price.

Well, hard to explain – you kinda need to had bern there. But it was fun 🙂

I ended up with that one flag – Maren to. Im planning to go back tomorrow for a second try!

After the bingo, we got a 40 minute boatride on the river. It was pretty packed with boats – and lots of people all setting small lantern afloat and making wishes. Nice views and some much needed fresh air 🙂

Great 4 hours spent – met some new people. Tried lots of good food, Its probably a reason that this food tour is top rated on tripadvisor 🙂

We left HCMC yesterday by AirAsia, 1 hour and 15 minutes flight into Da Nang. Thats the closest airport to Hoi An, the taxi drive is just under 500.000 vnd – 30-40 minutes.

The domestic terminal in Saigon is nice, 4-5 resturants and lots of shops. We got delayed just over an hour, so we had enough time to browse.

We thought it would be a bit ‘colder’ here. Colder is probably not the correct word – 28c when we landed. So still a nice summer heat, 68% humidity. But still a bit more fresh air, probably due to the proximity to the ocean.

We have booked 5 nights in a semi lux hotell, The Historic Hoi An hotel. So we knew it would be a pool there – no time to waiste, we got there 1 hour before it closed.

Tomorrow its out to explore Hoi An

Now this was a thing we decided to do without doing much reaserch beforehand. And it was amazing, with live music and an old vietnamese tale from the 11th century. The theatre was called the Golden Dragon, there are a few more in Ho Chi Min. This place had a very easy ticket service, you could buy your tickets online, and get a recipt to your phone, which you could show a the ticket booth at the theatre to get your paper ticket . Easy peasy. The performance was in vietnamese, but since it was made for children it was possible for us to understand most of what happened on stage. The people pulling the puppetstrings were behind the green curtain, and they did an brilliant job. There had to be some magic involved, because at times I had no idea how the managed to get the puppets to do what they did. The music was a treat, with really cool instruments.

Great place for a few cold beers and a snack after browsing the huge Ben Tranh market next door.

So much beer, so little time.

There are quite a few microbreweries in Saigon, but due to timing issues – we had to pick two of them. Since it is pretty usual for the craft brew bars to allways have a few ‘guests’ on tap, we where pretty comfortable that it would cover a lot of the local stuff.

First up was Pasteur brewing co, they actually have two sites pretty close to eachother – we went up the stairs for the original taproom.

They had pretty much everything as promised on tap, except the wit – to bad but, as long as all the others where there.

I could write about prices n stuff.. yeah its a bit more expensive than your regular local beer. But its still so cheap that it dont really matter.

We did a taster with a pretty nice selection, I think they had 10 on tap in total (including a cider). The stout was a world champ nr 1 beer in some international contest. It was pretty awsome I have to agree, the red one was a goese, but wastn realløy sour or salty.. the pils and Ipa was the best.

Not to many people here, and thos who just left was tourists/expats. But the place had nice music, decent AC and the guts n girls working there had lots of knowledge of the beer thy where serving.

I tried all 10 – most of them tasters, and a few of them pints.. Traffic was difficult when leaving ! Great spot – lots and lots of nice beer, easily spend a couple of hours here tasting all the different stuff.

And as mentioned, they have wone a few prices, so there are some decent veers here. But do go for the chocolate stout, best one I have ever had!

The other place we went for was the winking seal, set up by a few forfein guys some years back. The guy operating there now was from south africa and a all around nice guy. He defended his stout as best he could – I didnt have it in me to tell him that it probably was the worst stout I have ever tasted 🙂

They had a few guests on tap to, I had a pint of the lime leaf wheat, and that was pretty decent. But I have to say that all in all it was not a great collection of beer they had here, the dragonfruit on was fine and the Kosmonaut IPA.. otherwise they where OK to say the most.

Thats the horrific stout on the left there.. lord allmighty.

Great bar, great selection.. The people serving there didnt speak a lot of english, and I do not think they have tasted the beer.. any beer talk was out of the question 🙂

Maren did the apple and ginger cider, that was pretty good. And they also boast they have the best burger in town, I didnt try it – but the fries with bacon was awsome.

Besides the two craftbeer pubs, there is a few local beers for sale around town, at the food market we found a few that was very nice – this one, Heart of Darkness, is my fav so far.

It is still a business in startup, the crafbeer is a bit more expensive, and therefir a lot of the locals stay away. This is also why you usually see these places packed with tourists and expats. But it is picking up speed..

Anyways. Pasteur – go there. Great place to try some different beers.

As with the Apartment Cafe’s, there are several places that has set up yheir budiness as a’secret’ place, of course its not that hard time to find if you really wat to.

It is probably a bit higher threshold for people going into allyways, and then up three flight of stairs – to get to a resturant.So you have a lot of these places, not to well signed and a bit more tricky than your regular spot. We had dinner at one of these places, food and ambience was perfect.

Secret Garden has a excelent rating on tripadvisor, and well worth the visit. I recomend the porkbelly and egg dish ! top notch

The are also quite a few bars and pubs, that are way harder to find. I had the Nuffbox marked, but we ran out of time – next time Saigon!

Is it Saigon or Ho Chi Minh? Well, the locals use Saigon – and thats also the historical name of the city. It is ofcourse related to the Vietnam war – or as it is called here – The American war.

The Vietnam war as ‘we’ know it was between the communists of rhe north and the americans of the south vietnam. Yeah, a few more was involved, but all in all that was the base of it.

As everybody know (?), the north won, the americans lost – and so the winning guys of the communist side changed the name to Ho Chi Minh for obvious reasons. As dar as I inderstand, there is no political ‘thing’ using eithernof the names, it just has two – Ho Chi being the official one. (or HCMC for short)

We have checked into our pretty nice AirBnB apartment in the Toa nah Ben Thanh tower, and just outside its loaded with resturants and bars. We had decided early on that today we where going for the local pho. Pho is pretty much a tastefull broth with loads of greens and a selection of meats. It tasted awsome, and this will probably be our go-to breakfast every day in Vietnam.. supertasty! (ca 20 NOK a bowl, and that was a ‘large’)

We stopped by Saigon Kitsh, which is a fancy souvenir shop. Mentioned in tripadvisor – so we put it in the route, its nice to have a few points of interests when out walking.. Nice enough shop, great if you actually want to pick up something differet than whats in all the other stalls.

We difnt have to many plans fo today, just walking the streets and se whats what. I had made a note to stop by the Apartment Cafe’s. This is a large apartment building that has been converted into lots and lots of cafe’s and a few resturants. So a bit differet, kinda cool.

Right under the DOSH sign in the picture, there was a ‘local beer’ sign – so, nothing more to think about. – the sun and humidity is hard, so better stay hydrated.

Some pics from the Apartment Cafe, entrance area is on the left hand side of the building – the massive bookstore on the ground floor being kn the center.

You know, its fine – I get it. Its kinda cool entering a building that looks trashed. Walking up dirty steps, finding a door to a cafe/bar and then, when entering – its supernice and clean. But the thing is that its like that everywhere, it feels like a way to justify that you throw rotten fish and diapers out the side of your house. If you stop and look at all the shit – you end up with a feeling that there is no feel for community and neighborhood.. they keep it nice and tidy inside theire box, and then just dont give a flyin fuck when they go outside.

So the Apartment Cafe building m, nah, I dont know. The cafe’s inside are cool enough, I would recomend a visit. And you will probably think that its cool entering a door and going ‘into an oasis’ – but all the shit outsidd is not setup as decor, its the actual product of garbage beeing dumped anywhere.

But anyways, stop by – the different shops inside are nice. And they all have a different feel. We had a couple of beers and juices, very nice – and a great place to hang around plannkng youre next move.

After a few drinks we stopped by a bahn mi place, this is essential vietnam eat – and we are going to try a lot of these. They do sell these back home to, but back home they use a regular baguette and not the super crispy fluffy bread they use here. We will do a bahn mi special when we havw tasted a few mire. These where supertasty!

Saigon is a very lively town, there is things going on everywhere. And there is TONS of coffee spots, Vietnamese are crazy for coffee 🙂

We walked about a bit and just looked at stuff.. tons of strange fruit.. I specially look forward to taste dorian – the stinky fruit that is supposed to tase excelent. Picture of it beliw, the one with all the spikes.

A few more pics from our walk