SAIGON, VIETNAM: Cafe Apartment at Nguyễn Huệ Walking Street

After spending some time in the 14 Ton That Dam Cafe Apartment, we decided to check out the more famous Cafe Apartment found along Nguyen Hue Walking Street. It's another building filled with coffee shops and boutiques once again, although now it's pretty out there for everyone to see.

Nguyen Hue street is a long stretch of road where people can simply walk around, and where most of the historic landmarks are within reach. Left and right you'll be able to see restaurants and establishments, however what really caught our attention was the Cafe Apartment.

I like how all the cafes have balconies. It allows customers to do People Watching. I'd like to think that People Watching is a legitimate activity (and one that I enjoy immensely), hence the capitalizations. Sadly though we weren't able to get a seat facing the outside world because there were people who were already seated when we arrived.

I won't dive into what specific shop you can find in each floor, but we did do exactly that; we explored all 9 floors to choose where we would eventually spend the rest of the afternoon. For a complete comprehensive guide, you can read this article which was how I found out about this place!

Cute tea shop. You know I'll always have a penchant for greenery. 🌿🍃

The things you see as you go up the stairs

I'm amazed with the creativity of young artists and entrepreneurs, with how they're able to come up with all these quirky ideas in preserving an old building.

At first I thought the store was called "Posh", but then it's actually "Dosh". They sell a lot of sweet stuff here, lots of donuts..which I'm craving for at the moment as I type this

Do you sometimes stop and think if we're making enough memories? This is one thing I'm determined to make more of this year.

Why do I marvel so much at the cafe culture in this trip? I'm not a big fan of coffee, but hole in the wall coffee shops are my favorite places to be, and I loved how I saw so much of it in Saigon.

We decided to stay at the Thinker & Dreamer coffee shop. I'm biased because of John Lennon and I'm a fan of The Beatles.

I like this scene. I like sitting down, watching people, people watching me, openly talking about anything and everything with a kindred soul, indie music playing in the background, time moving slower than it should be, fairy lights twinkling from up above; it's perfect.

And then eventually we met up with my high school friend. I was delighted to find out that she would be there as well on the same day we were going around the city, so of course I had to meet her. It's funny because we never really meet back in Manila due to our tight schedules. But it was a wonderful time of catching up nonetheless, and hearing each other's experiences in Saigon so far.

Then there was also this boutique called The Maker Workshop filled with nice clothes and accessories! I didn't buy anything, but I loved their style so much!!