Day 5. Vietnam Diary – Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon

Death-defying road crossing, chihuahua in a t-shirt, failing to buy a stamp in a post office

Day 5. Wednesday 22 May 2024

I have a pen problem. I can’t stop myself buying them. This latest one (which is disappointingly unappreciateable [so not a word according to Word, but it is according to my handwritten version] when reading on a screen) is a satisfying aubergine colour, the ink as well as the pen. It’s really rather splendid, aubergine ink.

I’m in Om Eatery, another vegetarian and vegan restaurant. I’m still very much pork-averse, and indeed meat-averse in the wake of my pork overload. I’d got to the pink church – well, I’d just been in a phone accessory shop to buy straps for my phone and camera. The rain came. I’d seen it coming so was at least heading for, and nearly at, my accommodation. The pink church was a few doors along from the shop and I’d been intending to take some photos of the church in its glorious pinkness, but “pink church in torrential rain” did not work out, not even in a cool, atmospheric “pink church in torrential rain” kind of way. I was soaked, despite having swapped my sun umbrella for a rain one, so at least being equipped for rain. I only came to this restaurant because there was a menu on display under a shelter and, by looking at the menu so studiously, I felt committed.

I have now finished my meal. Oh my, it was extraordinary. I’m enjoying vegetarian/vegan Vietnamese food in a way I would never have expected. I wouldn’t even have had a vegetarian restaurant on my radar when looking for places to eat usually, but the anti-pork sentiment along with the shelter they had from the rain spoke to me. Honestly, unusually for me I didn’t even have my snooty, “Nice but it’d have been far better with a piece of meat/fish” mindset. It was spectacular food and a memorable meal. I ordered a salad with lots of fried mushrooms and an amazing salty lemon dressing. I also had some crisped rice “crackers” with a load of mushrooms as a kind of paste on top. But it really wasn’t just mushroom pate on crackers; it sounds underwhelming, I know, but the flavours were wonderful. I could have ordered so many things from the menu. It’s not at all cheap by Vietnamese standards but this would be, rightly, extremely expensive in the UK.

I definitely feel back on track today. It’s now 13:57. I caught a scooter to the river this morning at around 07:45. I had a great driver, who took enough risks to make progress but not enough to paralyse me with fear, though there is a fine line. It was rush hour. I suppose I could have taken a photo because at times we were mere centimetres away from clusters of other scooters, so either not moving or barely moving – but, hahahahahaha, like I’d have released my grip on the back grab-bar to take a photo. I’m mildly surprised that I like being tall enough to see over the rider’s head. I don’t like when I think about the lack of protection, including the weedy, wobbly helmets that serve merely as compliance with the law rather than actual head protection.

It’s so effortlessly cool here (and no element of that relates to the temperature). This district (where I’m staying) is great. Street after street, alley after alley of the kind of loveliness that in most hipster enclaves around the world we’d aspire to recreate, but here it’s just like that. The music in the coffee shop I’m now sitting in, Grandmum, is coming from a record player. An actual record player with actual vinyl. I’ve just moved outside, to a chair in their partially covered courtyard. Since the pre-lunch rain, it’s finally cooled down. Well, more accurately it’s ever so slightly less overwhelmingly hot.

I’m so glad I feel back to more normal levels of enthusiasm for everything. I’m sure it helped that I also had a good night’s sleep.

My genius idea this morning was to ride a scooter to the river near a tourist-focussed pedestrianised boulevard, Nguyễn Huệ. It was sunny and hot by the time I set off at 07:45. I mean really hot and sunny; a bit of cloud cover does help alleviate the feeling of scorching as opposed to just steam-room-hot. I will no doubt repeat how glad I am that I have a sun umbrella. I also have a lightweight hat but the umbrella is far more effective as a sun shelter and doesn’t make my head sweat like a hat does.

So, the river I had marked as my drop-off point. It is quite fast-moving with a lot of green leafy plants in clusters that float by. There is also, horribly, a lot of rubbish that flows past. At one point, an entertainment/bar boat was playing Mamma Mia, by Abba. Along with that soundtrack was the roar of traffic alongside the river path I was walking along. I convinced myself that for an area recently planted and regenerated, there would – SURELY – be an underpass. There wasn’t. There were plenty of zebra crossings, which were treated as part of the road surface; nothing and no one would have even slowed down for a zebra crossing. I was becoming increasingly apprehensive about crossing the road. I considered ordering a scooter to get me across the road, figuring that would be a different, more competently-navigated kind of scary. The redundant, decorative zebra crossings were all black and white, but I came to a red and white crossing that I naively convinced myself looked and felt more important and crossing which might diminish the likelihood of certain death. Like I said, naïve and misguided. I was by this point extremely apprehensive and actually scared. With hindsight, the red and white crossing I committed to using was possibly a less safe area to cross because, as you will see from the photo below, it was near the point where another wide road joined the already-wide road I was needing to cross. The red may actually have meant “FFS don’t even contemplate crossing here”.

It was fast-moving, about four lanes in each direction, albeit with a “safe” middle barrier. [The photo above does not look like it’s fast-moving but truly, it was; it was a constant flow with no traffic lights, nothing, to slow anyone down] I waited for ages by the edge of the road, I think just to get a semblance of a plan, or just to better choreograph my final steps on earth – there were no other pedestrians on my side of the road, or indeed waiting to cross anywhere, no locals I could try to latch on to in order to cross. See that traffic in the photo? I “just” had to step out in front of that and, quite frankly, hope for a small miracle. It amazes me that I somehow got across the first half without incident, though genuinely utterly terrifying (and don’t try to convince me it was exhilarating. It wasn’t. It was horrible.)

I now know that cars are actually better to cross in front of than scooters because only one car can fit in the width of a lane (as opposed to four scooters per lane) and car drivers actually slow down. A bit. Crossing the second half was slightly “easier” because I felt pumped/elated/relieved to have made it half way and I made the wise decision to walk out in front of two lanes of cars and two lanes of scooters rather than four lanes of scooters. I felt that applause would be forthcoming for my having made it across. Nobody seemed to have noticed my heroic, perilous crossing.

The woman sitting opposite me in this outdoor courtyard area has a tiny chihuahua wearing a bright yellow, pink and blue striped jacket.

God, I love Vietnamese coffee. This is my first hot coffee of the day.

Once I made it safely onto Nguyễn Huệ, a delightful “walking road” antidote to the traffic chaos I’d just traversed, I spent roughly forty-five minutes in a fabulous (and air conditioned) bookshop, Nhà sách Nguyễn Huệ, with a stationery shop on the first floor. I bought pens. And a few notebooks. And more pens. Pens have a calming effect on me; I needed that.

I hadn’t even realised that the non-descript entrance next to the flashy bookstore was actually the scooter-parking area to the cafe apartment tower I had gone to Nguyễn Huệ boulevard to find. When I did eventually find the café apartment building (which is ludicrously obvious if you’re standing across the boulevard from it), instead of paying for the lift, I walked up, which was interesting. I didn’t fancy a big breakfast so decided just to have coffee. However, I didn’t really like any of the places. I would have gone to % Arabica, a Japanese chain I’ve been to in quite a few countries, but they don’t serve Vietnamese coffee (or at least I couldn’t see it on the menu, which was their usual Spanish latte, etc, espresso-based list). I wanted to go into 21 Grams (was it 21? Anyway, a certain weight) but it was the only one not open before 10:00. I ended up in Oops, which I wouldn’t particularly recommend. The view was pleasant, there was air conditioning and the loo was OK-enough. For 59k vnd, I had my first iced coconut coffee. It will not be my last iced coconut coffee. It weighed a lot and was basically breakfast. It’s so the way forward, a mix of ice, coconut ice cream (sorbet?), coffee and toasted coconut. Amazing. It lasted longer than I wanted to stay there. There was an Instagrammable wall but the rest was knackered and dirty. But, please, try coffee with coconut in Vietnam if you get the chance, it’s delicious … I suppose if you like coffee and coconut.

I then did some touristing. I feel like I’m in a different city today. This side is more touristy and flash (well, I mean around the old post office, Independence Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral – completely pointless going there at the moment, it’s almost completely covered in scaffolding). There were also quite a few flashy designer shops and luxury hotels. I wouldn’t want to stay in that area. It was all good to see but I’m not even going to post any of the photos I took, they’re all just touristy snaps. I will add one of Notre Dame Cathedral to prove you can’t see it through the scaffolding.

I then went, surprise, surprise, for coffee. I headed to one of only a few branches of Tonkin to sample my first egg coffee. Yes, really. Apparently, it’s quite the thing in Saigon. Tonkin Speciality Coffee (91 Lý Tự Trọng, Phường Bến Thành, Quận 1) was on the second floor. It was charming but full of tourists. I enjoyed taking photographs in the stairwell leading up to the café more than in the actual cafe itself.

I surprised myself by chatting to a fellow visitor, a friendly lawyer staying here to work for three months from Kenya. The egg coffee, to my enormous surprise, was wonderful. My friend Lindsay, who was in Vietnam a year ago, said she had hotly anticipated an egg coffee but hadn’t liked it at all. I was horrified by the idea but loved it. I’d never have known it was egg. I had it as a breakfast combo with a plain croissant (which was served with a small pot of the sweet egg cream for dipping – a bit like condensed milk, which is what I had first thought it was). The coffee was a hot shot in a small jug, which I poured onto a foaming creamy cup of – well, the egg white, I assume, is whisked to a raw pre-meringue with, I assume, condensed milk. [In a café in Hanoi, I watched someone making an egg coffee; they whisked up whole eggs, not just the white, but this one looks too white to have the yolk too]

It was only just sippable – a spoon was provided and more effective than a very slow pour into my mouth by drinking it in a conventional manner. As only the small amount of coffee was hot, the drink was warm. The croissant was amazing; hot and flaky with just the right amount of buttery loveliness. Who knew dipping a croissant into a raw egg/condensed milk mixture could be both a thing and a bloody marvellous thing at that?! So all in all, a sweet two-stage breakfast, and I wholeheartedly recommend an iced coconut coffee with an egg coffee and croissant chaser.

I continued my touristing. Really ****ing hot, but I could see that rain was coming (as soon as I saw the dark clouds ahead, I started the roughly two-mile walk back toward the pink church near my accommodation). I went into the post office, which was well worth walking into. I bought a postcard, but failed to buy stamps. I think it was a lunch break but failing to buy stamps in a cavernous post office felt a bit like failing to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

I got hotter and hotter as I walked along to the pink church, so decided to eat somewhere with A/C. I saw lots of lovely-looking places but did that non-committal thing of thinking there’d be somewhere more appealing further on. But that’s how I ended up at the fabulous Om Eatery.

I’ve looked at “restaurants” a lot on Google Maps here. Totally pointless. They’re everywhere and most are not on Google Maps.

I think it’s going to rain again so this might be a good time to consider returning to my apartment. But it is good to be sitting outdoors with a breeze and a fan directed at me (the barista pointed the fan at me, I was doing that red-faced, sweaty tourist thing when I first arrived at Grandmum).

I feel comfortable sitting here surrounded by locals – well, three – who are comfortably chatting and smoking cigars. The music is chilled and, ah, yes, even I’m feeling chilled.

It turns out that this much handwriting makes my hand hurt. God that makes me feel old. The woman with the chihuahua has just put the dog on the ground. It’s tiny. This is unlikely to be at all interesting to read.

My hot-country holiday sandals are lacking style. I’ve gone all-out on the colours today though and this is now my best Vietnam outfit. I have a pair of MC Hammer harem trousers from India. They’re red and bright pink and a bit kind of taupe/putty (but they look better, I think, than they sound). My top is white with bright coloured flowers. My sandals are horrid. They’re imitation Teva, two shades of blue. They would be tolerable if they didn’t look so badly made. And if my toes were neater (a pedicure would help but it feels too hot for foot care). And if I didn’t have a plaster on each foot from day one’s rubbing, foamy, bouncy, bright yellow not-Crocs. The not-Crocs are more like platform banana boats. This may sound like a questionable fashion comment but I actually think they have more street cred than the crap not-Tevas. Oh dear, there’s a theme of poor imitation footwear …

I think I’ve had enough cigar inhalation so I’ll pay my bill, try to take a photo of the trendy-t-shirt-wearing chihuahua and have a short wander back to my apartment via a nearby market. I’ll also ask about laundry at my hotel. I’ll need to do some between now and Hanoi. I have now booked an AirBnB in Hanoi for my last seven nights. I really hope it’s as lovely as it looks – it seems too good to be true, and suspiciously cheap. It’s new to AirBnB, I think hence the low price, and it looks like it’s in the area I’d want to be in. Fingers crossed.