Celia @ Cookbook Archaeology - When I first arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, I was nervous about calling it Saigon; I was afraid that name, though shorter and simpler, carried negative colonial connotations. It turns out, however, that many Vietnamese still refer to the former capital of South Vietnam by that name; it technically describes to the inner urban districts of the larger HCMH, but is used in a manner similar to that in which “New York” can be used on place of Manhattan.  Anyway, we started our visit to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon at Ben Thanh Market, which was only 2 blocks from our hotel.

We approached it crawl-style, grazing first on bun…

…and then on Vietnamese pancakes called banh xeo.

I had to ask the waitress how to eat these; turns out you take the mung beans and lettuce they serve you, wrap it in the fried pancake, and dip the whole thing in sauce.

After, we wandered over to Reunification Palace – the former capitol of South Vietnam, renamed along with the city when the North took over.  We stopped outside for technicolor ice cream.

The palace was built in the 1960s, and was filled with cool Asian modernist architectural details.  The thing that really caught my eye, however, was all the way down in the basement.