One of our favorite things to do while traveling is exploring the local cuisine. Since we had a limited time to explore Ho Chi Minh (Saigon), we decided to do a food tour and ran across Saigon Steet Eats, a local food tour company.
We opted to book the Pho Trail food tour. Here’s a short description of the tour from their website as well as pictures from our tour:
Start your day slurping a bowl of Vietnam’s unofficial national dish, pho.
We will take you out of the tourist area into the “real” Ho Chi Minh City, to a pho place that’s been serving noodle soup for more than 30 years. This place is one of Saigon’s best kept secrets … and it also serves great Vietnamese coffee.
After breakfast, we’ll wander around the backstreets, past bakeries, com tam (broken rice) restaurants and other intriguing local shops. As we walk we’ll start collecting snacks from local stalls and wandering vendors.
We’ll walk through a chaotic local wet market, past dried, pickled and fresh produce, live seafood and a noisy eating area. As we poke around, we’ll collect more snacks and some tropical fruit.
Then we’ll adjourn to the grounds of a nearby temple to eat the food we’ve collected. After our picnic we’ll explore the temple, which is dedicated to an Imperial military leader. You can get your fortune told at the temple using a strange system of numbered sticks.
And boy did the tour deliver! We even experienced riding behind motorcycles to get to some of our destinations for some added local flavor! Our guides were super knowledgeable and professional. It was nice to be able to interact with locals as they showcase their cities’ cuisine. For the price of $55 a person, this tour was definitely worth it and highly recommended!
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