TacoCat’s Travels #182 (Vietnam 2.0): Old-School Cafe Hopping Tour! ☕

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last few posts, we're currently recounting our trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, from back in July 2019! It was the last trip before Sean was scheduled to start his full-time job so we decided to go on a short getaway to Vietnam to visit a friend! We'd also be traveling with a mutual friend of ours and his family!

Last week, we started our second day in Ho Chi Minh City with a nice hotel breakfast before hanging out with our friends and gaming until past peak lunch hour (and also peak noon time when the sun is blazing hot). After which we went out for a nice lunch at this trendy pizzeria called Pizza 4P's!

Anyway, there's still a lot more to this day so let's-a-go!

21 July 2019. Sunday.

Our local friend Teddy was going to show us around the city today so we didn't really have much of a plan other than following him around. Since Vietnam is known for their coffee (that they even have their own world-famous Trung Nguyen coffee), Teddy thought it'd be cool to bring us on a coffee tour!

We were all really stuffed from lunch though and decided to walk it off for a bit while Teddy decided where to bring us first.

It was still pretty warm out but thankfully the sun was setting soon so it wasn't as blazing hot as it was at 2pm or so.

We didn't walk too far though since Teddy decided on a place for us to go first and we wound up booking a car to drive us there since it was a ways away.

Since there was 5 of us we had to book a bigger car and thankfully there were many such vehicles available so we didn't have to wait long.

We drove for about 20 minutes or so with some mild traffic and ended up in this alleyway. Apologies for the pictures here it was kinda difficult and scary to take photos in the middle of the road with motorbikes driving on either side of me.

The first place Teddy brought us to was this little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop that served the most traditional coffee in the city!

Teddy told us this was the go-to place for the most authentic and traditional Vietnamese coffee in the city! I think he said they were one of the oldest places still running to this day and used the traditional method of the coffee sock!

I'm not sure if that's the technical name for it but it refers to the long coffee filter they use to strain the coffee. It's not uniquely Vietnamese though since I've definitely seen it in Singapore before, and my family did in fact own a coffee sock just like that too!

Source: johorkaki

Anyway, this coffee shop is called Cafe Vợt, and is a multi-storey open-air coffeeshop with very traditional seating; low plastic chairs on the ground.

I think this guy known as Uncle Con is the founder of the shop and he started the business since the 1950s! His son is the one we met at that day.

Source: Saigoneer

When Teddy explained that he was a local showing his tourist friends around he was more than happy to share the history of the shop.

I didn't want to be disrespectful and be taking photos while we were chatting but he explained that their coffee is really simple; just coffee grounds strained with the sock and mixed with condensed milk. You can order it hot or cold with ice, and despite the rising prices in condensed milk they have never changed their prices much over the many decades of running the store. 

We ordered a couple of iced coffees since it was soo warm and sat on the lower level of the cafe while sipping them.

It really felt like we traveled back in time just sitting on those plastic chairs drinking iced coffee but it was really nice! The coffee itself was also good, it wasn't too bitter thankfully since there was condensed milk in it so it was just the right amount of sweetness for me. Neither Sean nor I are big coffee drinkers since they're quite unhealthy and bitter but this one tasted like iced mocha which I kinda liked.

Source: hongsaigon

The next cafe that we went to was called Cộng Cà Phê (Cong Cafe) and is probably one of the most interesting cafes I've ever been to. I was actually so astounded by everything I forgot to take pictures there.. unfortunately. I think my phone had some memory storage problems and I lost some photos from this trip, sadly.

Anyway, thanks to Google I can retrace our steps there and show you what the cafe looks like too!

The whole

Source: vietnam tours from india

The theme of Cộng Cà Phê is very intriguing; not only does it feature a general retro aesthetic reminiscent of 80s Vietnam, the overall ambiance is an homage to the Việt Cộng (aka the National Liberation Front; a mass political organization in South Vietnam) during the Vietnam-American War.

The baristas and servers wear green army-esque uniforms and they have a small gift shop area with war-themed memorabilia. In fact, you could even get a fake "passport" to commemorate your visit there!

And that's exactly what we did! Our friend Teddy treated us to some souvenirs and got each of us "passports" as a reminder of our visit to to Cộng Cà Phê!

They have a much more diverse menu here than Cafe Vợt, but since we're not coffee drinkers we decided to get just the basic ice coffee so we could compare.

I think it was more flavourful than the previous ice coffee, but it might've been less strong in terms of caffeine, which was good for us since it was in the evening already. We took the time to just relax and chat, while soaking in the atmosphere of retro (albeit wartorn) Vietnam. There was air conditioning here too so it was really comfortable to hide away from the heat.

After some time, we all decided to meet up with more of Teddy and Dean's Vietnamese friends from college at this bar called anan! They had all met overseas at a Finland college of all places so it was like a joyful homecoming reunion that a lot of them were here in Vietnam! Some of their local Finland/European friends came to Asia for holiday too!

We got to meet some of them but we didn't really know them that well other than being brief classmates since we were only there on exchange program. But we got to enjoy the bar and view from the rooftop which was nice I guess.

I forgot what we drank but I believe it was some juice with light alcohol. It tasted alright. After a while it was getting crowded and hot so we went back indoors. It was tough to take pictures since the bar itself was dark and cramped with more of their friends coming in.

We stayed there for a while before calling it a night while Dean and Teddy stayed to hang out with their friends. It got a little dull while we were just sitting there but it was too late for us to go out anywhere. Overall we still had fun though so it was all good.

Tune in next week where we visit another cool cafe! Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #181 (Vietnam 2.0): Sharing 4P's Pizza with 4 Peeps! 🍕

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