09 Jan 2023
My wife and I had the luxury of taking this tour to start of our honeymoon and it set a truly high bar for the rest of our stay in the city. This enchanting tour through Ho Chi Minh centered around the importance of the lotus flower to the nations heritage is a perfect blend of Vietnamese culture and delectable bites with the delight of walking among local areas and not the generic tourist tour that we were expecting.
Our tour guide An was phenomenal at giving us the history of the lotus flower and all of its integral importance to Vietnamese culture. (Request her if you can!) Along our four stops she was able to not only tell us of the history of the lotus flower, but gave us hands on experience of how the flower is cherished, transformed for decoration, and how tasty they are!
The tour is timed perfectly to show you how the flower is utilized from day to night. While at first I did not understand this idea, it became abundantly clear as we were using it as an offering to Buddha at a local temple as nightfall befell the city. At night we had a splendid vegetarian dinner centered around the lotus then were whisked away to our final stop at a local art gallery.
My wife and I are both designers and were truly impressed at the artistry of the gallery and the artist herself. While drinking lotus tea and snacking on desert we listened to entrancing historical tunes and found ourselves thoroughly amazed at how integral the lotus is to the past, present and future of Vietnam.
I would recommend this tour to anyone that wants to have an afternoon/night adventure that is less time consuming than many other tours, but enlivens you with a history of the lotus flower and its importance to the culture, but does not feel like a tourist trap. The rest of our tours I hope can meet this standard set by An and her team.