The BEST tour in Vietnam! 🇻🇳 XO Tours: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) food tour

Hi, we're Jordana and Grant from Shot in the Dark Travel. Come join us on our epic adventures around Southeast Asia. This time we're collaborating with XO Food Tours and going on a fantastic motorbike food tour in Ho Chi Minh City. We'll see loads of different districts of the city that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. We have loads of fun and we get to eat heaps of different amazing foods. Watch this video to find out why we think this is the best tour we've ever been on. Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. What is your name? My name is Thao. My name is Nhu. So how are you doing guys? We're really good, really excited. We've loved all the food so far but we haven't, I think there's so much more we haven't tried yet so we're really excited to try some new things. So actually tonight we're going to take you to all local places and we're going to try all the local dishes and more than that we're going to try some like special dishes for local as well. Amazing. Yeah, sounds good. How are you feeling Jordana? First ever ride on a motorbike? I'm not doing it very laid back. I don't know how I feel so far. You're good? Yeah. Good? I think so. Definitely the right dress for riding a bike. How are you finding it so far? First time on a motorbike? It's good. Scariest times but good. Yeah. I feel like we've got good drivers. I feel very safe in their hands. Good. Our first stop of the tour we went to a Bun Bo Hue restaurant for some traditional beef noodle soup. One thing that was super interesting and helpful, the girls always gave lots of fascinating facts about each of the dishes background history and ingredients. And we think this one is much much better than Pho and many people outside of Vietnam don't really know about so we really love you to try it. Yeah. Enjoy your meal. So we've got some green tea here. Have you tried some? Yeah. I don't usually like green tea but this is quite refreshing. It's like it's not a really strong flavour. You can tell it's quite easy drinking in it. And even though you're on the bike because it's quite warm, like I am like hot. But I'm still looking forward to this nice hot food. This looks so delicious. It smells really really good. That is gorgeous. Very good. So this is a crab sausage. It's really good. That's really nice. I like that. I'm going to try some of the bean. That's really good. Like really soft. You can tell. You're not usually like a big like beefy person It's been in Vietnam. I've had quite a lot of pork and beef which I don't normally do. But this has been all the like meat I've had of it has been really good. Like white thing is apparently the pork and the pork sausage which is a bit strange because it's white. I've never seen a white pork sausage before but Yeah which is your favourite part? I think it's between the pork sausage and the crab sausage. Interesting wearing a white t-shirt when we're doing a food tour. Grant the tourist always drops food down himself. I like to play dangerous. Nice. I've eaten really good yeah. What do you think about the difference between this and pho? I don't really have pho often so I'm not really sure. I don't think I'm qualified to opine on that one. What do you think? I think it is a lot different. Like it doesn't taste the same at all. Which do you prefer? I think this. Yeah. So Grant what have you just done? So there's some hot sauce here and they're not kidding when they call it hot sauce. So maybe I should have put a bit less in. I've had literally one one chopstick full since I've put this hot sauce in and my mouth's on fire already. They literally say put a little bit in at a time because it is very hot. Grant listen and puts a fair bit in. I thought oh no I'm doing I'll make a mistake. Absolutely nothing. Next stop Chinatown. Here we come. So right now we are standing in district 5 which is a part of Chinatown the oldest part of Saigon. So if you want to see the really real way how Vietnamese people live and work this is the place where you go. District 1 which is cleaner for tourists. So goat breast with fermented tofu sauce and coca-cola. So do you want to just explain what we've got here? So we have beef marinated with chili oil and with beef you dip into the chili rock salt. Yeah. And we also have the goat with some okra and eggplant we use it marinated with some tofu sauce. And you dip it into the fermented tofu sauce here. Okay sounds good. What are you thinking of the barbecue? Really delicious like all of it's really really tasty. Like every time I have a bite like it always just tastes different than what I expect. Yeah I think I think the fermented tofu I wasn't too keen on but I didn't think I'd like it but I did it was the the name put me off but it was actually quite nice. I think whenever you hear the the word fermented you instantly think no that's gonna be horrible but that's really good it kind of it doesn't taste like it but it kind of looks like hummus and it just needs a bit creamy with like um like a bit of chili in it it's really good. Which is your favorite girl so do you prefer the goat breast or the beef? Always goat. Always goat. You know what the Vietnamese believe that you are what you eat so we love the goat breast. It's always the top priority dish when we go to a restaurant. So I'm going for a bit of beef in the chili salt this is absolutely amazing honestly it's like really good steak the chili salt I don't know why I've never had it before with steak is it? So what have we got in here there's some squid there's some egg tofu what else is in it? Shrimp and different kinds of mushrooms. Different mushrooms. So Jordana has got one of the egg tofu. Kind of tastes like and this sounds really weird but like um an egg a savory egg custard is that weird but I don't know like even when you look at it does that not remind you of like an egg custard so yeah it's really nice. It doesn't really taste like tofu does it? It's really nice. Right so this game is going to test your chopstick using skills right? Yeah. Okay ready I make out one two three go. Where's Faith? Oh where's the six? Oh my goodness. You dropped one it's there. You missed. So Jordana's going for a bit of custard apple. Is it good? It's really good. I don't understand how a fruit can taste of custard but apparently it does. I'll give it a go. It's really good I don't think it tastes of custard but it's really good. I can't put my finger on what it is. It's still tasting a bit of apple. That's really nice. Definitely having this again. So what are you eating? So I've got some longan here I've got very high hopes because after the custard apple was absolutely spectacular. Maybe the nicest fruit I've ever had and this is supposed to be even sweeter. You say that about everything. I know I'm a bit over the top but honestly it was spectacular so longan it's even sweeter. It's good. It's not apple custard. Oh you like custard apple. Custard apple is unbeatable. It's good though I like this. As well as all the stops for food there were also a couple of other stops at local landmarks where the girls explained important parts of Saigon's geography and culture. Should we do it together? Yeah go ahead. That is amazing. That is so good. That is so nice. So Jordana we've just finished all our seafood. Which was your favourite bit? I loved all of it. It was all really good. I think the clams are my favourite. Yeah for me it's either the clams or the crab claws. Yeah they are as well. Yeah they were really nice. Yeah we next tried a balut egg which is a fermented duck embryo egg. So what just literally drink it like that? One shot. I'll save you some. That's actually nice. That's good. It tastes like egg yolk even though it's not the yolk. That's good. I don't know how I feel about it. I can like see it inside. On a scale of 0 to 10 how excited are you about the duck embryo egg? Zero. Zero. Yeah it just tastes very eggy. It's all right though isn't it? Yeah it's all right. Interesting. Take a spoon of it. So is this literally the duck embryo? Yes. Okay. Oh god yay. It tastes very ducky. It's nice. All right do you want to get some for her? It's very small. Okay very small one. Do you want the head? Normally I just want a small bit. A bit more, a bit more. No no no that's fine. Do you want the heads there? Do you want the head? Interesting. Do you want that? No. I'll finish it then. Okay we go with the tamarind sauce here. So what's this one? Tamarind sauce. But with tamarind sauce. Yes. It looks more. Is this one hard-boiled and that one's not hard-boiled? No it is the same. Oh it's the same but it's got tamarind sauce? Yeah. Well that's the big bit for you friend. I feel like the sauce is so strong you can just taste the sauce this one's fine. It tastes nice though. Uh try the white part. Oh wow. I'd have been less enthusiastic if I'd have known I was getting a second portion. It's nice honestly. Do you want to try it? What? A very small small bit. Which part? Like the white part or yellow? Okay the easy one. Yeah yeah the easy one. Well that's a very big bit that. I'll do the white. No just on the yolk. I feel like it's because it's staring at me lastly. Um that was it was it was strange. I think it's more that you're thinking about it rather than. Yeah. I think it's what I know what it is. It's weird because like I'd eat a duck. If there was a duck here I'd tuck into it but knowing it's like a baby duck makes it a bit weirder. Just eating a baby duck with a spoon it's like a bit hard to get past that mental point. It was genuinely nice. I just don't think I'll order it again. I won't be fighting it tomorrow but it was nice. Glad I did it. Yeah glad I did it. Thank you so much. We've had an absolutely amazing trip. We've loved every minute of it. When we were planning our trip to Ho Chi Minh City we saw that the XO Food Tours has absolutely incredible Trip Advisor reviews. Like better than anything I've ever seen. And also we saw that it was in the top nine rated food tours in the whole world according to Forbes magazine. So as soon as we saw all that we were like we've got to do this trip. And yeah we were so so glad we booked it. We had such a fun time. The girls were so fun. It was really really nice. They were so so lovely. They made us feel super safe and all the food was really really really tasty. And yeah like all the information and of the history behind everything was super interesting. It was just amazing. Another thing that I really loved about XO Food Tours is all the tour guides are women. And the company itself are doing a massive push to help women have more opportunities in the tour industry. Which I think that is a really really cool thing to do. One thing that XO Tours does in case anyone's wondering is they cater the food tours to any allergies or dietary requirements or even just how adventurous you are. So if you are vegetarian you want a vegetarian food tour they'll sort that out. If you don't want to eat a fermented duck embryo they will skip that part and instead you'll have some other tasty food instead. So it's all catered to exactly what you want. Before the tour me and Jordana were slightly nervous about going on motorbikes. We'd never done it before. I'm like super safe and doctor sensible here. Yeah so I was a little bit nervous but it was so incredibly safe there was absolutely nothing to worry about. And yeah so you've got helmets they drove really carefully and also they take out accident insurance for every passenger just in case anything happens. So it's super super safe. Just to let you guys know as well there's so much food. So if you are a foodie and you can eat a lot I would not worry about the amount of food you're going to receive because if you're still hungry or there's maybe one dish that you prefer than the others and you want more they will just order you more. The food will just keep coming and you don't have to worry about it. Same with soft drinks and beer. And one thing that really was like weird for us is we saw the amount of food that was coming out we were like where's all this food going? Like we were a bit worried like is this just going to get thrown in the bin like afterwards? And they assured us that they give it to the homeless. Yeah definitely that's just another thing that the tour does that we really really like. And if you are wanting to book this exact tour that we've done with XO Food Tours which we would 100% recommend you do you will not regret it then you can book direct on the website we'll put the link down in the description and it's $78 per person for the normal group tour. If you want a private tour with no other passengers except you and your friends or family then it's $108 per person which we think was absolutely fantastic value for money. So yeah guys that's our rundown of XO Food Tours we hope you've enjoyed watching. Again we definitely recommend that you should book this family-friendly trip and you won't regret it. If you like this video please like and subscribe and we'll see you in the next one.