Is Saigon worth it in 2025- First Impression of Vietnam's Biggest City! - Ho Chi Minh!

Okay so we're here at the cafe apartment and we're gonna go up nine flight of stairs to get to the cafe that we want to go to. Okay so for there is an elevator which you do have to pay 15,000 to 20,000 I'm sorry 20,000 to access it is it per person? Per person. Per person so yeah that would have been like 16,000 which is not bad but we're taking the stairs instead. So I guess like each floor has different businesses. Come on Liam. We're here at Good Day. Yeah it is. I like it. It's like a little treehouse like playhouse. So we came here to the Good Day cafe here in the apartment your cafe apartments and we found this nice little cozy room. Basically have it all to ourselves. We're able to sit here on these little bean bags and it's kind of sitting on the floor almost like a Japanese style thing. It's a cool little room. I'm surprised nobody yeah I'm surprised nobody is up here. And for Good Day it looks like they have like different businesses in like the upper floors as well and maybe more focused on food and this one is more focused on coffees and teas. But looking at the menu they do have like snacks, they have smoothies, they have matcha. They always say when you're in Saigon to try the cafe suada which is like an iced coffee with condensed milk. Most of their coffees instead of like regular milk they use condensed milk. But I don't know if I feel like drinking cold coffee right now. What's that? Is that just a pink panther? I think. What is it? It's a bear. It's a bear. Oh it's a bear. Mommy bear. Okay just like me. Okay mama bear of course. Nice and then what else? What else is there? I got it. Oh that's a llama. Yeah that's a cute llama. Like me. Okay. Okay so we ordered one hot latte, one hot mocha, and one pineapple smoothie for Liam. It was 200,000 VND. So a little pricey but it's really the experience that you're paying for. That's not the straw right there. Is it yummy? I think it's so good. It's so good? It's pineapple. It's pineapple yeah. Do I have a mustache? I don't know. So I think this is the first time that we actually get a hot coffee because before we've gotten like warm coffees but not actually hot. That's true. I almost feel like my tongue is kind of like getting burned. You want a like a mcdonald's gonna burn you? No but not like almost cold either. And then like they don't use mugs. They use like the glass. It's like cute but I miss a mug. Your fingertips are burning. Yeah let's see. Hold it. I'm trying to see if it does look like me. Yeah I think I think you would be a llama. A cute llama? That's a cute llama. We're just gonna name the llama Chelly. I'm here with Aracely and we just came to this cafe. Say say hi to mommy. Hi mommy. This is Chelly Travels YouTube show. Kiss it kiss it. Like like and subscribe. The cafe apartment is a nine-story old apartment complex that with time it became more like a coffee shop area as well as like boutique shops and restaurants. We're here at Ichibanya. So this is a ramen Japanese restaurant in Japantown. So it's a little area where it has a lot of Japanese shops, restaurants and the Japanese culture. You can see it all over the the streets. It's unfortunate we're not able to show you much of the outside or how we walked here because it's raining and it just it bumps us out because we're not able to record a lot because we can't get the camera wet. But we're trying to make the most out of it so right now we're gonna eat and then try to reassess what we're gonna be doing. So the broth is like boiling. Is it the meat right? Yeah that's the pork. There's no sauce. It kind of tastes like the one that we had in Tokyo. You want me to say it? That's what she said. So I just finished my ramen. It was pretty good and this is the part where I just sit here and wait for Araceli to get full so I can eat the rest of her food. Okay so we are back at the cafe apartments. We decided to come to this walking street. It's like a night thing where they shut down the street and it turns out yeah the Gwen Hsu Square that's what it's called and it turns out it's the same street where the cafe apartment is which was lucky for us because when we got back to the Airbnb we realized that we left Liam's hat at the cafe so I just mounted nine floors of stairs to go get it back so we got it. We got it. We came here because we thought it was gonna be like a you know like a street vendor food cart kind of thing but it looks like it's just a bunch of restaurants and stuff. It's super nice super pretty. Yeah. So we're just gonna try to find some food and get Liam some juice because he really wants some juice. So this area it looks like they close the streets down in in the evening so like it feels free for people to walk and there's no cars so it's really nice and it has like a Times Square kind of vibe with all the buildings and the green. It's nice. Oh they got crickets. Hello. Hello. Here you want to hold the umbrella? Yeah. How much for the barbecue? Huh? 40. 40? Yeah. What do you think? It's like two bucks. It's pretty pricey. How much? 35. 35? Is it only chicken or do you have beef? Pork. Which one? Pork. That's pork? Pork. They have pork. Yeah. Okay. Can I get one pork, no vegetable, no sauce. No. No. No. No vegetable, no sauce. No. No. Nothing. Only pork. Only pork. Pork only. Yes. That's for Liam. We gotta get him one without anything. Yeah. No sauce. And you're gonna want vegetables in yours right? It's uh yeah cucumber. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No. Okay so we got a couple banh mis. We eat these like twice a week at least. Yeah. We actually ate some last night at the airport. But uh they're really good and they're generally cheap. Not the airport but generally. So I got a pork one with uh no vegetables only sauce. She got some vegetables on hers and Liam got only pork nothing else. So in case you don't know banh mi is it's a vietnamese torta. Yeah vietnamese torta. Uh it's like. It's a baguette. It's a baguette with meat. With meat inside. It's like marinated meat or like they use sauces. It's good. Yeah. But for like reference for hispanic people it's like a torta. What a good touch. Yeah I was considering the cilantro. So because Vietnam was because Vietnam was colonized by um. France. France for some time. They're very big on like baguettes, croissants, um a lot of french bread items. So you'll find a lot of that here. And they mix it into their their dishes. They use a lot of like cucumber with their dishes. And on the banh mi I really like it. I don't. Like the little crunch. The pork is not. Is it pork? Because I feel like it's chunks. It was skewered. It's like skewered. It was like like on a skewer and then she takes it off the skewer and then puts it in the banh mi. I didn't see that. So these were. Oh no there's a big cockroach right there. Right there on the counter where I'm putting the thing. I don't like cockroaches. Me neither. You said that you are huge right? Yeah. So um these were 35,000 VND each. Which is like a dollar fifty almost. Um this is like uh double the price of what we actually paid for ours back in Da Nang. Yeah. Uh ours in Da Nang cost 15,000 VND. Mine's like 20,000. Yeah it depends on where we get them from. Yeah. The one that I like is 15k. The one that she likes is 20k. Um which 15k is like less than a dollar. Yeah it's like I think it's like 60 cents which is crazy. The street food experience right here. Just standing in a corner. Yeah literally there's the street and there's the food. And there's the corner. So what do you think about Ho Chi Minh so far? I really do like it. I love the whole big city vibe. It's one of, it's Vietnam's largest city. And the architecture is so amazing. It's incredible. As they're building up and then it still has that kind of like preserving the French architecture that they're using there. Yeah and uh I mean we were like halfway through the day we were already contemplating just moving to Ho Chi Minh City and just breaking our lease in Da Nang. Like let's just come here. But it is it's definitely a little uh pricier. It is pricier here. It is. Um which you know typical in big bigger cities. I honestly thought it would be uh more expensive in Da Nang because there's a lot of expats there and it's a beachfront city. But I guess because we stay in the outskirts the city side it's it's a bit cheaper. Yeah. And and to be fair you know we have been going to all the touristy spots here so far. So that that's definitely going to explain why it's been a little bit pricier here. If we find somewhere local and travel a little bit outside of the you know District 1 and District 3 areas we're probably going to find better prices. But we're tourists right now so. That's what I was going to say. It just depends like what your purpose or your reason for coming is. If it's like a tour like visiting like vacation then yeah it's going to be a little bit more pricier because of all the touristy things that you want to do while you're here. But if you're looking for a long term you just have to find out like what your budget is and like what you're willing to spend like in the living situation. Like if you want to be in the center or if you want to be more on the outskirts that's probably like going to be a little bit cheaper. Which is like what happened to us in Da Nang. Yeah. But Da Nang is definitely like super budget friendly. Okay and for our last stop of the night we're here at Ben Ne Street Food Market and we're gonna explore around see what we can eat. Hopefully we find something. I was gonna do the the banana mango but I said I was gonna try the avocado one next time. So when in Saigon. I don't know. A smoothie? Avocado goes on food for me. Of course I know but like it's a thing here. I know I know. Let's have avocado coffee. Really? Yeah let's go look for smoothies. Three smoothies total. Two blueberry and one avocado coconut smoothie which I'm the one that's gonna try. Christian is allergic to avocado so he can't eat this or drink it. But I'm nervous. I've never had an avocado smoothie before. For me avocado just goes in food so hopefully I like it. It's weirdly good. What is this? Bitter, sweet. Sweet. Sweet. With the hint of avocado so it's good. I like it. It's weird because it's like um it has a texture of the smoothie but also with that little hint of avocado it's like a guacamole like a salsa. Guacamole salsa. Really? Yeah I don't know it's weird. So I got a blueberry smoothie for me. Blueberry is one of like my favorite fruits. It's really good however the ones in Da Nang they mixed it with yogurt and I thought it was gonna be the same here so I was expecting the yogurt which I wanted and this one doesn't have the yogurt so I'm kind of like bummed but it is really good and you can taste the blueberry a lot. I'm not a super huge fan of blueberry. Yeah well this is what she does. She'll order something that I'm allergic to so that way I can't try it and then she'll try mine and then not I don't get to try hers. Hey it's not my fault you're allergic to most fruits. So this place is pretty chill um we got some good music but the prices are a little up there and you know it's not like it's not like twenty dollars a plate. No. You know we're we're yeah we're complaining that the prices are a little high but it's because we come from Da Nang it's like when you're like paying half of it it's like whoa like a big difference but it's not really a lot like yeah like the meals are probably like five six dollars each tops and we're used to paying like a dollar fifty two dollars so when I say the prices are a little expensive I don't mean like it's U.S. I just mean compared to Da Nang they're a little bit more expensive and that's probably because we're like in a touristy area. Okay so we went ahead and got a little bit of food to share this is Banh Hoi Vat Ga which is hoi an crispy dumplings in English it's basically uh I believe it's a rice uh paper wrapped uh chicken wrapped in a rice rice uh paper and then fried deep fried and I assume some sort of vegetable oil and then some sauce here so we're gonna go ahead and give this a try. Yeah it does taste like an egg roll right yeah but honestly like a lot better. Well you don't like egg rolls. I don't like egg rolls. I like egg rolls. Yeah so usually egg rolls is more like vegetables. Vegetables and egg. Yeah. This is really good. I like it. Yeah I had asked the guy which one's better this one or the spring rolls and he said the spring rolls. Oh yeah? And I'm glad I went with this one because this is actually like I like this better than the dumplings we ate earlier at the ramen shop. Well but they're a lot crispier. But there's also a lot of flavor. I don't know what that is. I thought it was just gonna be chicken but there's like something in here. I don't know. I see carrots and I see this little brown thing. I don't know what it is. It looks like beans but it's not beans and it's whatever it is. This is delicious. This one caught my eye because it looked like empanadas and um I'm happy we got it. Yeah. So that's a wrap here at the food market. Good night. Good night. Like and subscribe.