Day 6. Vietnam Diary – Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon

Bespoke coffee, French bull dog guards, pedestrian/train travel/cash anxiety

Day 6. Thursday 23 May 2024

I’m in what in the UK would be a very busy, very Instagrammy café, Cà Phê X, with more than a suggestion of pretension. I knew a bit about the concept before I came to this particular café so I was prepared. There are tens of cafes, all of which I would consider hip and trendy. I was in a faffy mood today so scrolled through loads on Google Maps before deciding on this one. The concept is personalised coffee and it somehow doesn’t feel as pretentious as it would in the UK –

Change of plan. I’m going to go, the temple nearby shuts for a long time in an hour.

Nope, scrub that, I’m not leaving yet as I’ve asked for a bag of “my” beans and the barista is making up a fresh bag. As I’d thought, beans used in Vietnam are by default Vietnamese and the mountainous areas are good for Robusta in particular, which we in the UK generally turn our noses up at, though they also grow a smaller amount of Arabica. My personalised coffee comprised 50/50 Robusta/Arabica. She said Robusta is sour. I had selected “dim” for bitter, “medium” for sour and “strong” for aroma and that I wasn’t “coffee drunk”, ie that I am confident I can handle my caffeine. I was fine, usually am, but this one did feel stronger than some of the others I’ve had. I do appear to be writing faster than normal?!

As well as choosing my coffee preferences, the beans are then weighed and tipped into the granite/marble(?) trough, in the photo above, and herby alcohol is poured in before being set alight. The beans, as is happening in the photo, are moved around continuously until the flame dies out. The beans are then ground and the coffee made. It’s out of this world, amazing coffee. I now follow Cà Phê X on Instagram and I can see that I was there at a quiet time.

Today, I caught a scooter here instead of a 26-minute walk. I’m in district 9 here. I wasn’t feeling the love for crossing busy roads this morning, which sounds pathetic but, honestly, it’s exhausting. I haven’t had breakfast yet either.

It’s now 11:43 and I’m in an untouristy restaurant, though with an English menu. I feel a bit unsettled. This is a common travel feeling for me, though it’s been a while since I’ve explored less familiar places on my own (since Covid I’ve only been to UAE on my own, and with only a short amount of time off from work, but I’m very familiar with Dubai so it’s easy).

I don’t think anyone had particularly wanted to take my order in this restaurant, but I have now ordered a 55k vnd “beef and rice” and an oolong tea with chrysanthemum, I think and hope a cold drink.

It’s arrived, my drink, and seeing it reminded me it also has chia seeds. It’s lovely and cold and sweet and so much more refreshing and tasty than the coke I’d usually have ordered on a day when I felt this hot.

I’m now in Café Slow, an oasis of hipster vibes. Again, known by the locals for Google Maps sending people down dead-end alleyways. One man came out of the house I’d just stopped at to turn around. He gave directions. Then an elderly man on a bicycle pointed me in the right direction.

It’s a strange thing here, I feel aware that older people experienced the war. I find that sad and horrifying. But they have a lovely country and, I hope, a good life now. I feel I should say something more profound and meaningful, but it’s not forthcoming.

My restaurant stop – I think it was 88k vnd – was really positive in the end. I realised it was my breakfast. I had very simple, tasty beef (but not too much, ie no risk of beef overload on top of pork overload) on rice with a few strips of vegetables and lettuce and a very nicely muddy-tasting soup with meat, I think beef but maybe pork too, and some very green-tasting greens. I had three refills of the tea. They then brought out two large slices of fruit or vegetable unknown. It came with some brown crumbles with chilli. It looked like palm sugar, but it wasn’t sweet. I suppose it was very salty but I’m not at all sure what it was; it had a lot going on taste-wise. I only had a small amount, but it did bring more life to the mysterious fruit-veg, which was crispy and refreshing but not juicy. [I believe it’s some kind of savoury, spicy, crunchy seasoning and I think the fruit-veg might be winter melon (as per the soup I had with cơm tấm)]

Since I got up and started thinking about going out, I’ve had cash anxiety. I didn’t have much left, at least in part because I hadn’t expected to have to pay 3.3 million vnd (just over £100) in cash for this accommodation, which is quite expensive for one person here. But it’s a two-double-bed flat so would be cheaper for a one-bed flat. Anyway, I’d wanted somewhere in the vicinity of the pink church and where I could leave my bag between check-out and tomorrow’s train.

Ha, on the theme of anxiety, I obviously have train travel anxiety too.

I’m all sorted with cash now though. I searched on Google Maps for an ATM and found a lot close to where I had breakfast. So I have cash from an ATM and can postpone trying to exchange cash. Apparently gold and silver jewellery stores offer the best rates and reliability for currency conversion, though I believe limited to a small number of the most common currencies.

This café is lovely, Beatles music currently playing, lots of people with laptops. There are two resident French bull dogs, one white, one almost black. They must have been getting in the way downstairs. The barista who took my order came upstairs, moved two tall stools near the top of the stairs and picked each dog up and onto a stool. They are currently sitting obediently on the stools, guardians of the first floor.

It’s raining. I’m mildly confident that I can be here long enough that it will stop.

Between today’s coffees, I visited two different kinds of Buddhist temples, almost across the (very dirty) river from each other. The first, Chùa Pháp Hoa, was large and majestic. Looking on Google Maps, it was a canal rather than a river. It’s a temple known for its colourful lanterns (most definitely apparent, and more so because of yesterday’s big Buddhist festival day) and ornate tiered pagoda. It was peaceful and I felt welcome and comfortable walking around. Only a few people were there, one in lotus position looking the epitome of serene.

I walked back across and slightly along the canal to Wat Chantaransay, a Khmer Buddhist temple. [The link is an unofficial blog about the temple, which is interesting] I liked this temple more than the bigger, grander one across the water. It was a lot smaller, with areas and details of interest. Well, that’s not quite accurate as Chua Phap Hoa had a lot of detail too. It was less bling than Chua Phap Hoa. Google Maps highlights embossed animal statues and interior paintings. The paintings were amazing and no one else was in the painted temple while I was there.

I would highly recommend going to Cà Phê X for personalised, high drama coffee and both temples – all within half a mile or so. Temples seem to – all? – be free and welcoming but they shut for quite a large chunk between approximately 11:30 and 17:00. The gates might be open to wander around but that might just have been the case with the big Vietnamese temple I walked around on Monday, the Vietnamese National Buddhist Temple (Việt Nam Quốc Tự). [I’m sure some temples in Saigon have an entry fee too but I only encountered temples in Hanoi with an entrance fee]

I also love the café I’m sitting in to write this, Cafe Slow. Although I could easily stop at a lot of coffee shops that I pass by, in a way it’s been great heading for particular ones. I’d never have been through this charming warren of pathways or had friendly encounters with locals, which happened while trying to find both of today’s coffee stops.

I’ve been thinking a lot about solo travel. Quite a few locals I’ve sort of spoken to in shops and cafes have asked if I’m alone (it took a while to hear “alone”, it sounds different in Vietnamese English). When I say that, yes, I’m alone, there is a sense of wow/admiration. To me, it’s something I’ve done many times, travelling and holidaying on my own. But I suppose as I get older, while technology makes it significantly easier, I maybe find it more of a challenge. No, that’s inaccurate. Maybe it’s that I’m more conscious of having to make myself go out. No, that’s not accurate. I think I’ve always had to make myself go out; it’s a lot easier to just stay in your hotel room and not face an unfamiliar world outside. I’m pretty sure that every single time I’ve got myself outside while travelling somewhere unfamiliar, it’s been a good thing. So that’s not really changed. I suppose there are some people who want to, and find it easy to, chat to people, fellow tourists as well as locals. Did I ever want or do that? Hmm, not really. But I think I’d have been more inclined to go out in an evening with strangers when I was younger. Haha, I may actually be rose tinting my younger self! Did I ever actually do that on my own? I’m not doing a good job of explaining how it feels different travelling in my 40s compared to 20s and 30s. On a positive, I feel much more confident about dealing with issues nowadays. It’s also good to have more financial back-up. Maybe in part it’s the universal thing that people are more attracted to young people (and I don’t just mean in a chemistry/romantic way). More of the population are older (is older?) than, say, a 21-year-old, so more people feel a sense of duty or need to keep an eye on younger people, responsibility. But that said, most of the locals who have spoken to me have been younger than me. I’m not doing very well backing up my wild, sweeping claims.

I’ve still not got to the bottom of it all. Maybe it’s just my being older, more cautious, more risk averse. But I don’t think I haven’t done anything my younger self would have done. I suppose technology making a lot of things significantly easier has balanced out my age-related anxieties.

I’m an only child and my mum (in a positive, supportive marriage with my dad until his death 25 years ago) has always been independent and gone off on her own. I imagine those facts have made me not think twice about trips away on my own.

I think if I’d been here with someone else, I would have been more adventurous with food. I suppose it boosts your confidence if you’re with someone else and it’s easier to laugh at yourself and the situation when you have someone with you.

It’s not the being on my own thing that unsettles me because I happily spend chunks of time on my own living in the middle of nowhere in Scotland.

Anyway. I’d just packed up to leave this café, still pondering the solo travel thing, when I heard thunder and now it’s chucking it down again. I’ll wait this downpour out. Google Maps tells me I’m a 12-minute walk from my apartment, which isn’t far but is definitely far enough to get me drenched if I go out in rain this heavy.

The place I’m staying in is called Cubicity Hidden House and the link is booking.com, where I booked it. It’s located down a cute, dead-end alleyway off Thạch Thị Thanh, just a few minutes’ walk from the pink church (I haven’t mentioned the pink church as often as I have because it’s a must-see building, it just identifies a really lovely neighbourhood which happens to have a large, pink church, worth seeing if you are interested in large pink churches). I’ve just looked on Google and Cubicity accommodation has 4.5/5 stars but, maybe crucially, a mere 17 reviews. The photos are massively misleading. It looks white, beige and clean. I’ve already had a “please give us a 5* review” message from them. It said “we are also facing many difficulties to maintain our current business.” Of course I want to help, but I won’t leave a review, which is the only kindness I can offer. My two-bed apartment doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned in ages. The shower room doubles as the toilet, which for five-person accommodation makes it even worse. There are hairs, dust and uncleanliness everywhere. On the positive side, the bed is comfy, the air conditioning is good and it’s spacious (though, again, so it should be for five people). There’s even a lift, and I appreciate that, being on the fifth floor and with the stairwell being very hot, humid and dirty. And it is a lovely location. I’ve only seen one member of staff (there appear to be five rooms on each of floors 1 (ground) to 5. I asked her about the laundry. She Google-translated a message – see, technology can be great – and collected a bag of my laundry this morning and said there was no charge.

Now that I’m avoiding full black and full white outfits, it’s even more imperative this wash gets done. Oh, another anxiety: train-outfit anxiety for a 24-hour train journey. I’m sort of going with my flight outfit, but that’s on the basis of fully-functioning air conditioning and not getting too hot because it’s a pair of trousers (but they’re needlecord, which is heavier than I’d otherwise wear in this kind of heat, though they are very baggy and loose) and a top with two components (a loose, white, cotton vest top with a huge Barbie pink, shorter, three-quarter-length sleeved top made from a fabric that most definitely does not grow on plants or deal well with sweat flow). I like the vest element because it’s long and avoids strips of bare skin being revealed while fidgeting on planes or trains. I suppose I should go out for coffee and breakfast ahead of my train, then change, check out and probably sit somewhere cool before catching a taxi to the station. Train outfit anxiety. I’m sure that’s a new one for me.

It’s now 19:01 and I’m back in my room for my last night in Sài Gòn. I’m going to go off on one about the name of this city. I know it’s Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh/Ho Chi Minh/Ho Chi Minh City/HCMC officially, because of the revered Nguyễn Sinh Cung, who changed his name to Hồ Chí Minh. “Uncle Ho” was president from 1945 until his death in 1969 and led Vietnam to independence from the French from the end of WWII until 1954. At that time the north was Communist, led by Hồ Chí Minh, and the south was non-Communist. He wanted to reunite north and south Vietnam as one Communist-led country. Once the Vietcong, North-Vietnamese-backed, started attacking the government in the south by the early 1960s, the US stepped in to try to halt the spread of Communism. Then, of course, followed the unforgivable, brutal Vietnam War. Hồ Chí Minh died before Communists took over the south and reunited Vietnam under a Communist regime, but in 1975 Saigon was renamed in honour of Hồ Chí Minh. Most people in Sài Gòn/Hồ Chí Minh City still refer to it as Sài Gòn, though that is by no means any reflection of people’s thoughts on Hồ Chí Minh the person, whose pictures and name is ubiquitous.

Back to the subject of food. I had another vegetarian meal. I kept smelling porky meaty broth today. I don’t eat pork usually (though that doesn’t include salami or bacon) so the overload on Monday/Tuesday was more pork than I probably eat in the average year, not including bacon and the odd Asian dumpling with “filling unknown that probably incorporates pork”. I had another delicious vegetarian meal. I chose a palm heart salad with a vast selection of vegetables and herbs and plant goodness, four fabulous spring rolls, freshly cooked with a delicious crispy outside and soft delicious insides (some mushroom, but the rest; not sure, though obviously no pork). I also had an unsweetened freshly-made carrot juice. Enjoyable meal. I quadrupled my calorie intake by buying and eating a fancy 52k vnd mocha cake from a cake shop afterwards though.

I walked back along the busy roads, thankfully no significant roads to cross, and thought how nice it is to be in a normal, living, working city. It was good to see people just going about their business, not particularly touristy. I walked across from Le Van Tam Park. People were jogging, walking and using the outdoor gym equipment. It seems like a comfortable place to live, but I know it is what we would once have termed a third world country. I suppose I’ve been to India so much in the past few years that that’s my benchmark. It’s very different here. For one, it’s a very different kind of Asia. I appreciate not being pestered, for money, for transport, for “help” (ie do I want help, but in a kind of self-motivated, money, kind of way). I love India though. It’s just that everyday India is harder work and poverty is a lot more in your face and it’s significantly more apparent that there’s a massive chasm between extremely poor and extremely rich, which I find uncomfortable. It’s harder to cross roads here though, but there is less tooting and driver aggression in Vietnam.

I’m having ongoing thoughts about being on my own. In 2018, I went to Australia to stay with good friends. As I was there for about three weeks and wanted to give them a break from having a guest, I booked a mini holiday in the middle of my stay for five days to Fiji on my own. Incidentally, it was pretty much this time of year, end of May/early June. I booked my first two nights before arrival and arranged a (knackered, old) hire car. I didn’t want to just stay in the same place, lovely though it was. So I drove up the coast once I’d checked out of my fancy Sofitel hotel, finding accommodation in places that I liked the look of. So, yeah, that was quite adventurous. I also didn’t have a SIM or use my phone (except with WiFi).

I decided, before coming here, to bring a different mobile. I don’t have WhatsApp and I’ve been off Facebook and Instagram for a few months. But I do have a dual SIM phone with my UK SIM card for emergencies. But I’m not really checking my email much, so I suppose I’m more isolated from friends and family than I have been since, I think, those few days in Fiji. I don’t remember what I thought then, though I have a very strong recollection of lying on an idyllic beach, possibly in a hammock (really!), though in the shade, looking across the sea at some small islands and thinking (A) how far I was from home, even how far from Australia (from memory, it was five to six hours flying across the sea to get from Melbourne – I thought it should only be about two hours) and (B) how long it would take to get home in an emergency. It felt sort of uncomfortable to be and, probably more pertinently, feel so far from home.

I don’t feel that sense of distance here, even though the flying time via Qatar is roughly 17 hours, but everything about being here makes me feel a long way from familiar things, places, smells and, of course, people. By people, I mean friends and family. It’s good, I think, to have some distance sometimes. I used to get/do that a lot. In the run-up to Covid, in one two-and-a-half-year chunk, I spent a year abroad (I know this from doing a “365 days of travel” Instagram thing). When we were first all grounded with the pandemic and had to/needed to stay at home, I was happy to be at home. After close to a year, I felt a need to resume my previous work-and-pleasure travels, but it hasn’t really happened – long story. When I think about what I miss and why I want to go away more, it’s in part for a sense of pause from my everyday stresses and worries. I think it’s healthy and productive to be able to step away from your stresses. I also think I’m often more the person I like to think I am when I’m away. I think that’s because of being able to prioritise my new surroundings over my worries.

I have a photo from the end of a two-week holiday where my friend James and I drove around Iceland. It was taken at the airport with a film camera on self-timer. We’re sitting on some massive rocks in the airport carpark. It’s the photo of me where I feel like I look carefree for possibly the last time! That sounds melodramatic and like I’m gloomy about that timeframe. I’m not. It’s reality. I think. It’s not even aspirational to be carefree past a point in, ideally, your twenties. I must have been … maybe 27 in that photo. Perhaps to an extent, since then I’ve associated travel with a sense of carefreeness. Or maybe it’s just that with travelling I’m reminded of that blissful carefreeness. And maybe that’s enough in my care-heavy over-twenties.

For this trip, I’m currently feeling less stressed about the things I have been dwelling on at home. But I can’t quite work out why I feel sort of unsettled.

I’ve written too much. My hands hurt. I had also wanted to finish and leave behind the book I’m reading and not particularly enjoying, in spite of the title, Really Good, Actually, by Monica Heisey. I bought some bestsellers from charity shops before I came here, to read for research purposes, ie why are they best sellers. This one piqued my interest because someone compared it to Heartburn by Nora Ephron. Nora was amazing and her writing never fails to make me smile. This book isn’t a Nora substitute. I also find the narrator thoroughly annoying and I don’t like her. Anyway, I’m on a mission to finish it and happily leave it here.