Saigon Kiss Scooters Food Tour In Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam

Saigon Kiss Scooters Food Tour In Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam

Hope you liked the previous article on Ho Chi Minh City which was the ‘appetizer’ for this one covering the main attraction for me in Vietnam which was the scooters food tour. Although I had eaten at many Vietnamese restaurants in Canada including having Vietnamese pho as a great way to warm back up after a cold water dive, I had actually never been to Vietnam. So I predicted that my first visit to Vietnam will feature Vietnamese cuisine at a totally different level than what I’ve been exposed to here in Canada.

I wanted to take a food tour while in Ho Chi Minh City and one of the unique attractions they have here is a food tour by scooters. Local guides actually take you around town to sample Vietnamese food on their scooters. Looking at the crazy Ho Chi Minh City traffic as shown on video in the last article, I was initially quite hesitant to ride on the back of one of these scooters fearing that I would either fall off or get hit.

Saigon Kiss Tours

Then a company called Saigon Kiss Tours came along and claimed that their all female scooter drivers wearing traditional Vietnamese dress tend to drive slower and are more careful than guys. Even though I was still a bit nervous, with this claim I decided to give a scooters food tour a try.

My guide and scooter driver Jesse picked me up at my hotel and off we went into the night streets of Ho Chi Minh City where there were still quite a bit of traffic out there. I was hanging onto bars behind me for dear life especially going over bumps. After awhile, I felt a bit more comfortable to hang on with one hand while holding my cellphone with the other to try and shoot some video without dropping my phone.

As you will see in the video below, we saw all sorts of wacky stuff happening on the roads including entire families with their kids on a single motorbike sometimes without helmets, motorbikes swerving all over the place cutting in and out of traffic including on the opposite lane and crazy intersections where nobody seemed to have the right of way in turning. We also saw motorbikes coming towards us in the wrong direction.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the motorbikes (both motorcycles and scooters) are the kings of the road outnumbering cars and trucks. Motorbikes are everywhere and drivers get quite close to each other as well as pedestrians. But throughout this chaos, nobody seems to complain and people do get through okay. Yes the road safety standards are different in Asia compared to North America. But that’s just the way they do things there. I felt myself feeling more comfortable as the night went on but I have to credit my driver Jesse for that too as she was very careful navigating through all the crazy traffic.

In fact to my surprise, I found the rides on the scooter in between food stops were quite fun. I got to be in the middle experiencing how Ho Chi Minh City residents get around the city. The night was beautiful and temperatures were comfortable resulting in a very enjoyable evening to hit the roads.

The Vietnamese Food

Of course we have to get to the Vietnamese food which is the main focus of this tour. Our first stop was for a seafood noodle soup which was delicious and definitely not one that can be found in any Vietnamese restaurant in Canada, ie., not your typical Vietnamese pho. This was off to a good start food wise.

The second stop featured Vietnamese pancakes with bean sprouts, pork and shrimp but instead of eating them like other pancakes with forks, they were cut into smaller pieces and then my guide used various lettuce-like leaves to wrap them up. Then after dipping into a sauce, we were to eat these wraps by hand which is certainly very different for a pancake. My guide did all the work in putting each wrap together for me = what amazing service!

After the pancake stop, we went to a local flower market area for a bit before going to our next food stop which was for seafood including clam soup, scallops with Vietnamese beer. From a cuisine point of view, the scallops were the big stars of this food tour. I’ve had scallops at seafood restaurants many times but these scallops cooked Vietnamese style with special additional ingredients put in made them the best scallops I’ve ever tasted anywhere in the world – even made this claim on video.

After the food samplings which were more than enough for a meal, the Saigon Kiss Tours guides drove our group to the riverfront for a nice evening stroll with the Ho Chi Minh City night skyline as the background. It was a perfect way to cap off a fun evening with not only delicious Vietnamese food that we likely will not find in Canada, but also good company and a unique experience zipping through the Ho Chi Minh City streets on scooters. To my big surprise, the road element of this food tour was actually an enjoyable part of the overall tour after I got over the initial nervousness of being on the back of a scooter in Ho Chi Minh City. Even though I enjoyed other aspects of Ho Chi Minh City like the Ben Tranh Market, this scooter food tour was definitely the highlight for my short first trip to Vietnam. I totally recommend taking this scooters food tour with Saigon Kiss Tours.

The above video used background music from two different songs, Rock’n Me and In Harmony by Unity Power Force. Check out their website for full song versions along with official music videos.