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Noodles and lightning storms. Pulling in to rest on the Asian leg of the cycle, Jacob considers making Ho Chi Minh home for a while...
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A peculiar thing happens when you enter Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it’s often still referred to locally. You forget yourself. More specifically, you are immediately, brutally and in every sense of the word delightfully awoken to your surroundings and shaken from yourself. Fruits you don’t recognise crowd roadside markets, the grasping hands of friendly hawkers wave you over from every direction and the street breathes life with its thrumming, pulsating vibrancy. A loose and complicatedly choreographed ballet of moped engines, live entertainments and colour. There is nowhere else quite like it.
I had this experience of Ho Chi Minh, one recent evening in November, having pieced my bicycle back together in the airport and found myself swept up thereafter by a cavalry of scooters in the rain. This is a place where the East meets the West, a tropical marriage between Asian tradition and Western influence. But what to do once you’re there? So much to taste, to see, but only so little time…
Here’s a few words of guidance on making the most of your time in this, most unique, part of the world:
To Taste
The food in Saigon, like everywhere else in Vietnam, is best enjoyed on squat red plastic chairs astride steel tables on a corner; down an alley; or in somebody’s living room. Ideally, you’ll be waved over by an aproned woman with a steamy pot of something delicious straddled between her legs. There’ll be families alongside workmates, lone diners accompanied by love-struck couples, pining after one another over pots of ice tea or Bia Saigon.
Food in Saigon is an inherently democratic ordeal and - quite apart from its affordability - is also almost always a satisfying exercise in enjoying something new. After a diligent exploration of the city’s food scene, a culinary intersection roping French haute cuisine together with Chinese, Indian and Japanese accents on the local food language - I have a few thoughts on where your stomach might wish to take you…
You may, feeling that it is only right to try the national dish, find yourself in search of Pho. You’ll amble your way passed by-path open kitchens, navigating the lingering scents of lemongrass, lime and chilli, of charred meats and of wafting broths. You may, with any luck, come up against the bright lights of Phở Quỳnh on Pham Ngu Lão street. This understated corner side local eat, offers the best Pho I have had in Vietnam.
Pho is a quintessentially Vietnamese creation. It combines slow cooked broth - often meat - with protein, rice noodles and garnish. It is pure stomach-warming and mouth lighting flavour - tailorable to the preferences of the individual with an assortment of soya bean, chilli and garlic sauces table side.
Perhaps, what has drawn you to Vietnam is the French connection. No, not the 1971 neo-noir thriller, or indeed the fashion outlet, but the distinctly Francophile character left on the city by the country’s occupation until 1954. More so than the North of Vietnam, Saigon retains something of the French influence, manifest in culinary terms in restaurants like Ngon Restaurant. Parquet floors and wicker furnishings are housed in grand pink colonial bones, accented with dishes like Hen Xuc Banh Da (mussels with fried pancake) and Ngheu Hap Sa (steamed clams with lemongrass). If that’s not to your fancy, and at the last moment something more quotidian catches your appetite, there’s also a superb Bahn Mi (Vietnamese sandwich) street cart just outside.
To See
I shall say this once, for it does need saying: you will not be able to see it all. You could live in Saigon for a year and not claim to have seen half of the grand colonial architecture, stood before close to a quarter of the fine arts and statues, or been educated or inspired by a fraction of the museums and public buildings.
That being said, treating your visit as a reconnaissance for further expeditions East, there are some absolute musts. So, when you find yourself poised on the back of a moped taxi with an inquisitive driver asking “đi đâu?” (where to?), bear in mind the following options:
The most efficient immersion comes in the form of a nighttime stroll along Đ. Bùi Viện. You will be unlikely to have more than a handful of experiences, if you’re lucky, like it in your lifetime. A colonnade of dancers, fire breathers, barkeeps and street performers clash in some extraterrestrial expression of Vegas-esque nightlife as though all the world’s parties have migrated there for the evening. You will be called to, smiled at, sang to, touched. You won’t be able to hear the person next to you if there is one but neither of you will mind; you’ll be carried along by a river of diasporic music and laughter. Incredulity at how utterly bizarre everything is.
The following morning you may wish to tell people back home about this experience. Well, save your mobile data and send them a post card from the Saigon Central Post Office instead. Set in a Wes Anderson esque late 19th century behemoth, this is a must for history geeks and analogue explorers. It’s also conveniently situated close by to the War Remnants Museum and the famous Book Street.
Settling into the Everyday
You may, like me, find it immensely comfortable and easy to resign most of your hours to the insides of noodle bars or galleries. To coffee shops and street side markets. The capacity of Saigon to provide human theatre along every palm leafed passageway and on the Belle Epoch balconies of the city’s First and Second districts, is a seductive pull on your time in the area.
You wouldn’t be at fault for giving into these seductions, and indeed I would suggest wholeheartedly that you do. This guide by no means touches on a fraction of the possibilities this city proffers, but in order to experience the rest, you’ll have to see the place with your own eyes. Enjoy.
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