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8A/6D2 Thai Van Lung Street, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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of people enjoy staying here
3 Opinions
Bien Hoa
Nice big roads inside and outside the city
War Remnants Museum
Saigon International Airport
Hello!
I would like to know what it costs to eat an ordinary meal at a local restaurant, for example chicken?
Is also interested in where to eat well on New Year's Eve.
Thank you for your help.
You can eat very well for 10 USD per person in a decent place, 3 course!
Travelwoman, what a question, are you kidding us? A chicken meal can be had in HCMC for as little as one buck, or for 50 if you want it posh.
I wish you a nice chick on New Year's day (a day almost like any other in HCMC);-D
What do you mean by an ordinary chicken dinner? Oridinary is relative to our own standards. A VN chicken dinner is not the same as an American chicken dinner.
If you mean a standard Vietnamese chicken and rice dinner with some vegetables you can find that for $2 or $3 USD. Price mostly depends on a restaurant's hygienic condition. But you can eat at a Com Tam Cali restaurant downtown behind the Ben Thanh Market for about $5 with a juice drink. Looks more like a clean Western resaurant than most average VN street restaurants. If you like chicken curry you can eat at the Pho 2000 restaurant adjacent to Ben Thanh Market. I can't take much hot chili but Pho 2000's is at my upper limit of endurance. Most other places use excessive chili. These are just some ideas. What kind of chicken dinner are you seeking?
New Year's Eve is definitely not like any other day in Saigon. City Center is shoulder to shoulder with revelers, every bar is packed, music is blaring everywhere, and foreigners are mixing with locals cheering and hugging each other. I could hardly take any photos with all the bumping and bouncing. New Year's Eve dinners are marked up fairly high at most 4 and 5 start hotels. If you're in town for a few days before New Year's you can search around for the place to fit your budget.
The same goes for the two nights before Christmas. Holiday lights and Santa suits are everywhere, but it is more of a family night. Quite festive attitudes. In fact, Christmas and New Year's Eve are my favorite times to be downtown. No vehicle traffic or taxis allowed in the immediate downtown vacinity. It is so crowded we must walk maybe two kilometers before having a chance to find a taxi home.
Will you be staying right downtown or in the backpack area?
I hope I didn't sound flippant in the first sentence of my reply above. I was trying to get to the point quickly and you may think I was being sarcastic. Didn't mean to be. Let us know if we can help you further.
Try Quan an Ngon - the best restaurant we visited in Vietnam. They were packed out every night, so do make a reservation.
The poor chaps at Sinh Cafe must be well miffed about the number, and it's a huge number, of people using their name. So for once and for all this is the contacts for the REAL Sinh Cafe:
Sinh Cafe
246-248 De Tham, D1, HCMC. Tel: 836 7338,
http://www.sinhcafevn.com
The weather in the southern part of Vietnam is tropical. It is monsoonal in the north, bringing a hot, rainy season from mid-May to mid-September and a warm, dry season from mid-October to mid-March. Occasional typhoons from May to January bring extensive flooding to the middle regions of Vietnam.
On several tours that I did in Vietnam, I was shown a demonstration of how Rice paper was made.
It was quite interesting to watch, looked like hot work, and an art to it as it is paper thin, and every one turned out perfect, wouldn't if I was doing it!
Edible rice paper is used for making spring rolls and other Vietnamese food. It is usually sold dried in thin, crisp, translucent round sheets that are wrapped in cellophane.
Want to make some.......
The ingredients of the food rice paper include white rice flour, tapioca flour, salt, and water. The tapioca powder makes the rice paper glutinous and smooth.
Perhaps this is what you should pack before you leave Saigon. Just around the tourist area, there are 4 or 5 shops mainly selling immitation paintings of famous painters like, Van Gogh, Monet, Dali, Picasso and etc. What they do is, hiring a local cheap painter and let him copy whatever he can and sell it as a piece painting but hey! That's their culture anyway. So pack it with you.
Ho Chi Minh is indeed a fabulous walking city! I've managed to walk almost every District Saigon has to offer with the exception of District 4 only because friends tell me that it is unsafe and advised me not to do so. Armed with my bottle of water and trusty all-purpose map, I head out without having a particular place to go taking in the life of an everyday local having no worries for if I got lost, I hailed a taxi!
I've spent a great amount of time in and around the touristy areas such as District 1, Pham Ngu Lao, and Chinatown but I also have hands on experience of lesser known Districts such as 11, 7, Phu Nhuan, Go Vap, Tan Binh, etc where it was almost unheard of to see a Westerner. IMO, one can really mingle and get the real feel of Vietnamese life should they tackle the possiblity of aimless wondering!
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Q: Vanilla pods "May I know where I can buy vanilla pods in Ho Chi Minh City?"
A: "I would try Benh Tanh markets: they seem to have just about everything else there. The fresh produce section is at the back."
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