I started the day out with pho bo for breakfast this time. Looks like every morning I’m eating pho at this hotel and I’m loving it! Also to accompany my breakfast every morning is Vietnamese black coffee with condensed milk (cafe sua da) .. Yummmm
Then I decided to eat a milk yogurt for dessert. It was good! I wish it were colder but it tastes exactly like how my mom makes it: light, soft, mildly tangy.
Then we walked to the Tan Dinh Church, Jade Emperor Pagoda and the Saigon Zoo. We noticed an umbrella in our hotel and decided to take it to give shade while walking in the sun. It was a game changer!!
Strolling around the Saigon Zoo was nice too! My mom says the zoo hasn’t changed but the animals have. It was a nice change of scenery.
Afterwards, we crossed the street to eat at Ocean Palace (yes, I planned it to be that geographically convenient).
My mom and I each got a small bowl shark fin soup with crab roe (550,000). It is around $22 per bowl. It was so good. It tastes just like how I remembered it to be. The soup was thick and gooey. There was a generous amount of shark fin. The crab was minimal but that’s okay. I loved the soup itself. I savored the bowl. I took my time and ate little by little, so slow that my mom asked why I wasn’t eating it. I said I wanted to savor each spoonful.
And then we shared half a Peking duck (450,000). To be honest, I ate more than half of it. Bravo to me! I am proud of myself. My mom was craving the duck more than me. It was juicy, savory. The skin was thin and crispy. The sweet thick dipping sauce that came with it was helpful to finish the last few bites because I was so full.
On our way back we decided to drop inside of Phuc Long to try their cafe sua da to compare to Trung Nguyen.
We each got the Phin Sua Da. It was very strong. I can feel the caffeine through my body and my head. It was also more bitter. In terms of taste, I didn’t enjoy the bitter notes as much compared to the sweetness of Trung Nguyen (even though it was an egg coffee).
How funny that while I was posting on Instagram, Anh DM’ed me and told me to try their banh flan. She said it is more coffee and less caramel and that she used to get it everyday when she was in Vietnam. It was good! I liked the eggy flan cake.
When we were very near the hotel, we went inside a farmers market where my mom got some dried mushrooms.
Then we stopped by K-Coffee so that I can get a juice drink to sip on while at the hotel and resting until dinner time.
The Yellow (orange, pineapple, passion fruit). It was sweet and tangy and refreshing. They freshly squeezed it. I love the little piece of passion fruit on top. Cute! And much cheaper than America. It was 55k VND, which is like $2.34 in US.
After relaxing for a few hours in our hotel room and getting hungry again, we walked a few blocks to Banh Canh Cua Ut Thao. It’s a place I found on YouTube while watching what to eat in Saigon. There are multiple locations but this was the closest to our hotel.
Banh Canh Cua (crab tapioca noodle soup). It’s just as good as it looks on picture and on YouTube! The broth was thick and gooey (but not too much). The tapioca noodles are chewy and soft. There were a few pieces of real crab in there. A great I’ll always appreciate is the pork’s blood cake. There were also mushrooms and fish cake and shrimp.
After we ordered, the lady brought a plate of sealed wet napkins and a plate of fried donuts. My mom said to not use or eat those because they’ll charge extra.
Our bowls were 79k per bowl. I think that is a good price!!! I am happy I got my banh canh cua for this trip! I think it is even better than in America because the crab is pre-shredded.
