My Egg Noodles

After a few days chilling out in Hue, we got a flight down to Ho Chi Minh City. I have wanted to visit Saigon, as the locals call it, for a long time now. It’s exactly how I imagined it to be; A city filled with great bars, lot’s of restaurants and a mind boggling number of motorbikes!!

The agenda for today was just to explore the city by foot and get my bearings, stuff my cake-hole with great food and explore a few of the many wine bars the city has to offer.

After getting some email in nice and early, we headed out to get some breakie – which consisted of meat, fish and veggies from the road side. The food was excellent.

We then strolled around for a couple of hours, admiring the traffic, hustle and bustle of the city and the artitecture.

We then stumbled upon Annam Gourmet Market, a  great deli that stocks lot’s of imported foods, meats, cheese and wine.

We opted to get some lunch here, after having a flick through the impressive menu. The missus had the smoked salmon salad, while I went for the Black Forest Ham and Cheese sandwich which I washed down with a glass of white wine – Both were amazing. This is what I call a perfect lunch (and cost just a little more than a Mcshit value meal in England – Unbelievable!)

We then continued to explore more of the town and doing a little shopping before going back to the hotel for some much needed rest.

During the evening we ventured out to explore some wine bars. We started the night at the low-key Qing Bar where we sampled some impressive 94+ point wines and some Asian tapas.

We then went onto Zan Z Bar, opposite the Sheraton Hotel. This bar had a great vibe going on – a similar atmosphere you would find in London. The menu featuring wines by the glass was huge, the tapas was great, they had a good live band playing indie music and it felt like the whole bar was filled with movers and shakers.

When living in Bangkok, I always wanted a bar exactly like this that me and the missus could go to, relax, order some fine wines and food and mingle with like minded people. Although there is the Niu’s Jazz Blues Bar in Silom, it doesn’t have that lively after work vibe thing that, in my opinion, make a great bar.

During the evening we chatted to loads of expats living here, many of whom were drinking champagne like there was no tomorrow and great conversations flowed. A far cry from chatting to an English teacher ordering happy hour pints in an English pub in Bangkok!!!

So far, I’m really liking HCMC!