After much research last night, I decided I needed to step up my coffee game today. I broke my fast early this morning with a Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk. The coffee tasted strong and rich with a nice bit of sweetness to level it out. It was like a better version of those canned milk coffees. I could drink these all day if they didn't contain caffeine.
For my next cup, I spotted a pleasant looking cafe across the park on Google Maps. This place specializes in egg coffee, which is made by beating egg yolks with sugar and condensed milk. This type of coffee originated in Hanoi. This was more of a dessert coffee. It tasted almost like an egg and coffee-flavored s'mores marshmallow. The coffee was so thick that I needed a spoon to consume it before reaching the espresso-like coffee at the bottom. I'll have to see how Hanoi's compares to this one. At the same cafe, I had an excellent lunch of scrambled eggs and peanut butter banana toast on whole wheat, while I watched the Saigon traffic go by from the second floor balcony. I'm not a whole wheat type of guy, but this bread was actually really tasty.
Following lunch, I did a speed run through the popular tourist attractions in the local area. This included several French-built buildings like the Central Post Office, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Opera House. Many tourists were sending postcards back home inside the Central Post Office, but I didn't feel a strong urge to take the time. Unfortunately, Notre Dame was under renovation, so I didn't get to see the inside.
In the evening, I had to cancel my Crossfit appointment, as I was still experiencing GI issues, and the drive was a bit long. That's probably one of my only complaints about HCMC. It's the traffic and the lack of walkability in certain areas that starts to irritate me. You become reliant on Grabs, and these Grabs start to add up quickly. Instead of Crossfit, I found a local gym over the river. Although this bodybuilder-style gym wasn't the most spacious or modern, it had just enough equipment and weights for a decent workout.
For dinner, I went again for pho, but this time I ventured farther out from the touristy area I'm staying near. I'm pretty sure I was the only foreigner there, but they made me feel welcome, even showing me how to concoct a sauce for dipping the meat from the pho into. This pho was much better than last night's. The piping hot broth had plenty of fat globules circulating around, and there was more meat and meatballs in this dish than most you find over here. This was one of the best bowls of pho I've ever had.
Other notes:
Apparently, some Vietnamese here (at least in Southern Vietnam), like my Grab driver, still prefer to call the city Saigon instead of the more recent Ho Chi Minh, since the latter name refers to the communist revolutionary and founder of the Communist Party of Vietnam.