Ho Chi Minh City nightlife 🇻🇳 the incredible bars and restaurants of Saigon!

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 taking you on our eating and drinking journey through Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon in Vietnam. We have some absolutely amazing food at fantastic restaurants, we go to some really cool bars and we'll show you our absolutely disastrous first time experiencing a hot pot. So we've just left our hotel and we're going to get some Banh Mi. So Banh Mi is a traditional breakfast sandwich and it's like in a baguette. So it was brought over by the French when the French colonized Vietnam and the Vietnamese have made it their own and now it's a like a staple breakfast along with pho. They're the two main breakfasts that you get in Vietnam. So we're gonna go give it a try. So we've just and I mean just escaped the rain and we've gone for Banh Mi. It's supposed to be like the most highly rated Banh Mi in Ho Chi Minh and it smells delicious. We saw it was super busy, people just queuing up and everything and there's like a production line and they're just like literally just whapping them all out like just constantly. It's basically a baguette and there's different types of meats. Sometimes you can choose what meats you want, sometimes you can get veggie ones. We've gone for the traditional one and they've just slapped a load of different meats in there, pate, some spicy sauce and also give us some like veggies and everything. We've gone into this really cute cafe, I don't know what it was called, it's like a smoothie juice bar just to escape the rain and I got told as well that avocado smoothies are like again a really famous thing to have in Vietnam and so I thought I'd give it a try. I love avocado but I'm kind of like wondering what on earth this is gonna taste like. Seems a bit weird don't I? I like avocado but I'm not sure I'd want an avocado smoothie. Like it literally just looks like I've got like guacamole in a cup. I'm gonna have a quick go on this avocado smoothie. Looks very thick, you can't even get any of the straw. I can't even get any of it. Yeah, it tastes like sweet guacamole. Do you like it? I'm not sure. It's maybe not one to quench your thirst if you're really thirsty, which we are. Yeah, you've got to stick to water. That is so good, really meaty. It tastes like the pate and then the herbs and the cucumber, onions. It just tastes so, so good. So, what do you think so far of this sandwich, Graham? It might be the best sandwich I've ever had in my life. Here we go. Honestly, it is amazing. Like look at, oh it's a bit falling out there, look at all the different fillings inside there. Like there is so much going on but it somehow works. It is absolutely fantastic. You have to have one of these whilst you're in Saigon. Definitely go to this place that we've recommended, 100%. Brilliant. Next, we went to check out the food court underneath the Saigon Centre. There were so many different options from Thai, Vietnamese, Western, Japanese, Indian through to fast food as well as snacks and dessert stalls. So, I've got the blue diamond and what have you got, Graham? I've got an iced, I've got an iced caramel coffee topped with a creme caramel flan. I don't know if you guys can see the caramel flan there but it looks delicious. So, Grant's gonna do a taste test. Yeah. Just jiggling it. Very nice and caramelly. The best bit about this place is just how nice it looks. So, we're in Ru Nam in Saigon Centre and we thought it was just like a little cafe when we walked in and then actually when you get inside, when you get inside, it's just absolutely lovely. So, we're just sat in like this little pod floating above everyone else with all the greenery. So, the main section's down here but it's just been decorated really nicely. After checking out the mall, we headed back to our hotel to freshen up and headed to the crazy wee wee end, Walking Street. If you want a crazy night out, this would be the best place to go in Saigon. It has ridiculously loud music, food and cheap drinks. This is definitely the place to go if you want a mad night out. If Bui Bien Street is too loud for you, there's a really nice rooftop bar nearby called Banana Mama. It has amazing views of the skyline. We've had a pretty chill day today. We went out for a bit of an explore around the city and then we went to this fantastic dim sum place. So, we'll show you a couple of quick clips from there because we definitely recommend it. The food is really good. And now, once Jordan's out of the shower, we're going to go meet some friends. So, a bit of a coincidence, a couple of our friends, Rob and Emma, who we know from Leeds in England, they're traveling around the world and they happen to be in Ho Chi Minh City at the exact same time as us. So, we're going to go meet them, have some food, have some drinks, have a bit of a catch-up about our travels and yeah, it should be a good night. Ratcha Rooms is a tapas-style Vietnamese restaurant right in the center of Saigon. The food was incredible, so we would definitely recommend you guys checking this out if you're in Saigon. So, I'm not going to lie, this is incredibly intimidating in here. We've just been given a tablet with like 4,000 options, most of which seem to be giblets or innards or liver or kidneys. I'm not about that innards life, to be honest. So, we've basically just picked some stuff at random that sounds nice and I think we're going to get it in a big pot with some soup and it's all going to cook itself and we're going to stir it a bit and we don't know if it goes together. We don't know what we're supposed to do. We don't know how we know when it's finished. We're just going to like chuck it in, hope it's not horrible. I think it's the plan. I mean like, we're trying to be adventurous, so we'll see how it goes and if it's disgusting, there's like a pizza place right next We're so far out of our depth here, it's absolutely ridiculous. I'm hoping they're going to give us some cooking instructions because so far, they've just dropped off loads of ingredients at our table with no words spoken. So, God knows what I'm supposed to do with all this. So, I think they've finished dropping stuff off and we don't know what to do with any of it. We think this is chicken that's cooked, so we're going to have a go eating that and I think these are bums, so I can just eat them as they are. I think everything else, we just like whack them in the soup and boil them. This chicken is like freezing cold. I did google translate and said, can we eat any of this raw without cooking and she said, she pointed at the chicken, so hopefully it's fine. It looks, I just don't understand why it's so cold. The chicken's pretty odd, I'm not going to lie. It's like frozen chicken and I bit into it and it's hurting my teeth. My teeth are quite sensitive, it's like when you bite into an ice lolly and you're like, I'm just getting that feeling off the chicken, which is never something I thought I'd ever have, but it's also slightly worrying. Good? Yeah. We thought we were finally getting to grips with it and then we realised we've been using the same tongs to put the raw meat into the soup as we were using to get the cooked meat out of the soup and then eating it. So I think pro tip, if you're going to come here is don't use the same tongs for raw and cooked food. They don't tell you that, but they let you work it out yourself and we've finally got there. Yeah, so if any of you like hot pot experts are watching this and like cringing at all the mistakes that we're doing, please just pop down in the comments what we should be doing and what places are good for first timers because I don't know if this is like the best place for first timers. Like we've asked for instructions, they've not really known what we're on about. If you've enjoyed watching, please like and subscribe to see more videos and we'll see you in the next one.