SONG OF Saigon
Most visitors to Vietnam will arrive here first. Instead of rushing off elsewhere, linger for a few days. It’s enchanting, stimulating and surprisingly affordable.
On the far western fringe
of Saigon’s Tao Dan Park, each day begins with a gathering of songbirds. Warblers, white-eyes, bulbuls and finches – prized, every one of them, for their beautiful voices – hang in collections of bamboo cages, from where their songs spill into the city’s early morning air. Around low plastic tables, time is kept by the slow, steady drip-drip-drip of filtering coffee, while cigarette smoke twirls to the inaudible melody of a tepid morning breeze. The birds arrive at the park on the back of scooters. Their cages are strapped to the bikes or backs of their owners, always men, who come to this cafe to meet with friends, discuss breeding and listen out for the sweetest of voices. Upon arrival the cages are hung onto a metal framework around the open-air cafe. Coffee is ordered, cold green tea is served, cigarettes are lit. And then the cà phê arrives: drip, drip, dripping onto a thick bed of condensed milk. Elsewhere in the park, dawn brings a different gathering. With 8,5-million people living within the city limits (a density of 4 000 people per square kilometre), getting outside is an important way to begin the day. In parks across Saigon groups of people practise tai chi, ballroom dancing, aerobics, martial arts. Badminton is played in available open spaces. Street corners become workout studios and trees become objects against which to languidly stretch hamstrings. They also, as the sun begins to splinter off the city’s skyscrapers, provide shade for the plastic chairs and tables – always cut low to the ground – that spill onto the pavements from wide-open doorways. Here, on streets around the city, residents bend over bowls
of phó, a delicious bone broth served with noodles and a mound of mixed herbs. Always better eaten at a simple restaurant than made at home, locals say, because to be really good, phó should cook slowly for 12 hours. While eateries spill out so obviously onto the streets, Saigon also has a thriving ‘secret cafe’ culture: independent cafes you have to look very hard to find. Built mostly in the first half of the last century, when Vietnam was under French rule, many of Saigon’s old colonial buildings are neglected and crumbling – and it’s usually in these character-filled structures that the cafes have found a home. Some of the secret cafes’ furniture and fittings may – or not – have come from Lê Công Kièu, the ‘antiques street’ where families make a living selling trinkets from Vietnam’s past. Here, rooms are filled with old cameras, light fittings, fans, oriental ceramics, jewellery, paintings – and war memorabilia. Proud collections of aviator sunglasses, helmets, engraved Zippo lighters… although their authenticity is questionable. It’s been more than 40 years since the fall of Saigon, the end of what the Vietnamese call the American War, but it’s virtually impossible to visit the city without in some way acknowledging the country’s brutal past. Trawl through souvenir shops or quirky art stores and you’ll see copies of the bold propaganda posters that have become icons of the war; in central Ben Thành Market there are sections dedicated
'slowly, slowly, families and friends gather on sidewalks. someone turns a radio on. Beers are cracked open...'
to army gear – khaki water bottles, camo clothing, helmets. And along Võ Van Tàn street, firmly placed on almost every visitor’s itinerary, is a stark modern concrete building with gold lettering: the War Remnants Museum. The carefully curated photo exhibitions between these walls are riveting, yet harrowing. Other buildings in the city are less severe. The beautiful red-brick Notre Dame cathedral – a favourite backdrop for pre-wedding photographs – is just over the road from the picturesque Central Post Office, where an octogenarian letter-writer has been plying his trade since the early 1950s. The Saigon Opera House is slowly being dwarfed by rising modern buildings, so it’s fitting that this stately theatre hosts the wildly successful A O Show, a captivating Cirque du Soleil-meets-cultural dance performance depicting Vietnam’s transition through history. These grand colonial buildings seem a world away from Saigon’s intriguing Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas, hidden between ramshackle apartment blocks behind a flower market, and the old Chinese pagoda temple, Chua Ong Bon, where coils of incense drift smoke between red lanterns and then out onto the streets. As daylight fades, life returns to Saigon’s sidewalks. Plastic chairs and tables, often packed away during the day so businesses can use the pavements as storefronts, are set out once again. Through twilight the swirl of motorbikes is navigated by women riding bicycles loaded with shopping; vendors pushing food carts begin to take over street corners. Slowly, slowly, families and friends gather on the sidewalks. Children play games around trees. Someone turns a radio on. Beers are cracked open and as the smoke from street-side barbecues begins to thicken the air, somewhere inside a mechanic’s shop a songbird calls, singing for its supper.