Today was all about the more local and less tourist experience. Our day started with a visit to a bird club cafe to taste Vietnamese coffee. The cafe is the home of a bird club in which members bring their own birds in cages and hang them in the cafe while they have their morning coffee.
It was a short walk through the bussling city streets to our breakfast stop.
Breakfast was at a tradition Veitnamese soup called Pho. We had the beef which was delicious and made in front of us from fresh local ingredients. The pho base is cooked for 12 hours to develop the flavour naturally without the use of powder stock. The restaurant was full of locals not tourists which is always a great sign.
Full of soup we headed to a Pagoda which was again bright and colourful with many locals dressed up and having photos taken as well as others in prayer inside the room full of colour and incense.
Next we headed to Cho Lon known as China town to a local market. The markets went for blocks and are separated into items. All the plastics together, all the silk together, all the bags etc.
It was crowded and hot and there were so many products. We were definitely the only non-local people in there. You could buy everything from handbags to dried shrimp.
After the markets we headed to the park where the Chinese New Year festival was set up. The festival will run until the new year in a couple of weeks. Lots of yellow and red everywhere. There’s stalls of food and drinks.
Next stop was lunch at the Secret Garden rooftop cafe. It was worth the 8 flights of stairs to enjoy the amazing local dishes.
After lunch we made our way to a tea house on the 8th floor of a converted apartment block, thank goodness we could catch the lift up most of the way to this place although you have to pay to use the lift and we had to walk down the 8 floors at the end. Here we tasted iced jasmine and green tea as well as hot crysthanthemum tea. My favourite was the iced green tea and the delicious cookies.
After a full morning and afternoon of eating Vu and I had a walk around a few of the art galleries and a checked out a local convenience store before heading back to our hotel for the evening.
I opted for a bath and some room service and a quiet night in to rest up ready for the next day’s adventure.