Eating street food is one of the many pleasures of living in Asian cities like Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. After all, Ho Chi Minh City street food is often cheap, it’s readily available on nearly every street corner and it can be surprisingly delicious.
In Ho Chi Minh City, you will find an array of street food vendors selling banh mi sandwiches (a Vietnamese baguette filled with meat such as pork along with vegetables and condiments), pho (noodle soup), various snacks (sweet or otherwise), fruit, shakes and beverages – especially coffee. In fact, coffee from a street vendor can cost as little as a couple of thousand dong verses ten times that much at Highlands Coffee or other coffee shops frequented by tourists.
However and tourists beware: Street food vendors in Vietnam like to use their bare hands to prepare their food or drink and they will then use these same hands to collect your money and give you change. Moreover and unlike in other Asian cities such as Singapore or Bangkok, street food in Ho Chi Minh City is largely an unregulated affair (except perhaps when it comes to taxes and paying off the pesky police in order to stay in business!) and the level of quality and hygiene can vary considerably.
Case in point: An American friend of mine who lives in Phuket where he eats the street food all the time, was visiting Ho Chi Minh City and he drank a shake that he ordered from a street food vendor near the Ben Thanh Markets. Needless to say, he was up most of the night and all he could eat the next day was a plain Vietnamese baguette! (His comment to me the next day was: “Did she make that shake using tap water?!!!”)
In other words, its probably wise for most tourists to avoid ice and cold beverages ordered from street food stands in Ho Chi Minh City. Also and while the coffee from street food vendors is both fresh and cheap, its also probably wise for tourists to stick with plain hot black coffee or hot tea as I have often seen street food vendors use their bare hands to put the ice in an iced coffee. Moreover, you do not know for sure how long the condensed milk for a Café Sua may have been left open and sitting out in the sun for.
Otherwise, just remember the general rules of thumb for eating street food in Asia: Anything that is not cooked right in front of you or may have been left sitting out in the sun should be avoided. On-the-other-hand, if the person cooking and serving the street food looks clean and healthy, they aren’t using their bare hands to touch everything and there is a line of locals and foreign tourist alike at his or her stall, chances are that street food will be safe to eat or drink.
