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Speedy Saigon

Last Updated 14 February 2015, 16:35 IST

Ho Chi Minh City, the largest in Vietnam, bustles with modernity. And its youngsters are masters in the art of balancing outdoor merriment and cultural practices, writes Chitra Ramaswamy

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly named Saigon, makes its presence instantly felt upon our arrival in the city. It is early evening when we check into a five-star hotel boasting French and Vietnamese architecture, close to some of the city’s tourist spots. We then leave with our cameras on a walking tour to absorb our surroundings. Motorbikes in droves zip through the busy city with a frenetic pace capable of making a first-time visitor hypertensive.

No amount of homework we have done prepares us for the chaotic traffic we witness. We decide to keep back our heartbeats from racing by keeping to the pavements. A bare 10 minutes of walk and we are rudely jolted into realising that we are on no safe turf.

Our Vietnamese odyssey begins with a bang! A chain-snatching attempt by a motorbike rider has me tumble off the pavement. The incident rattles us, but just enough to make us stash away our valuables at the hotel’s safety vault and continue our Saigon sojourn. For most of its inhabitants, the city’s changed name has not really caught on, though the man after whom it was renamed is held in veneration.

The city is an explosion of colours with extraordinary nightlife and food, particularly on its streets. It is the weekend and Saigon is in the chay rong rong mode – a post-war ritual that has the city’s young population on motorcycles zip through its streets and ‘party hard and long’. We begin our guided tour in typical Saigon style: a unique restaurant-hopping tour of HCMC on a Vespa. As we voice our safety concerns, our guides for the evening tell us that pet owners are as much in danger of having their canines kidnapped as human beings risk being relieved of valuables on Vietnamese roads. For, great foodies as the Vietnamese are, they relish dog meat with gusto.

My perch on a two-wheeler is after two decades. My hands clasp hard my jellied knees as motorbikes fly in all directions and in their midst, Thien, on whose bike I am pillion-riding, zigzags through a sea of headlamps and taillights. In all honesty, I cannot deny that I thoroughly enjoy the racy ride, with the flirtatious evening breeze romancing my hair.

It is evident that the Vietnamese enjoy their food as much in street corners and on pavements as they do in formal home environs. As we speed through the city streets, we notice the locals in pairs and groups, hunched on low stools in circles in front of shops, slurping pho — a vegetable-and-meat noodle soup, Vietnam’s signature dish. We have the veggie version of pho — garnished with greens, lime and lemongrass. Contrary to this informal partaking of food on streets, meal time is a formal affair in Vietnamese homes, says Thien. Respect for elders, an integral aspect of Vietnamese culture, requires youngsters to begin their lunch or supper when elders have more or less finished theirs. While the local cuisine is aromatic with the liberal use of fresh herbs, French influence on Vietnamese food habits is seen in the wines, café au lait and baguettes, popular in cafes and restaurants.

When the French captured Saigon in 1859, they turned a languorous port with a single wooden Vietnamese fort and a thatched-roof Chinese merchant settlement (trading for rice) into a bustling metropolis of ornate buildings and broad boulevards. The French have left their indelible imprints in other facets of Vietnamese life. This is palpable in the magnificent edifices — the peach-pink Central Post Office building, the Notre Dame Cathedral close to it, and the splendidly lit Hotel de Ville, now the People’s Committee Building. Thien regales us with an interesting anecdote associated with the statue of the Virgin Mary in the cathedral lawns. She caused quite a flutter and a massive traffic jam when she “shed tears” in 2005. Veritably a tall tale like our own Ganesha in Chennai city guzzling milk offered to him, sometime in the early 2000s.

A Cambodian city until the Vietnamese annexed it in the 17th century, Saigon was renamed in 1975 after Ho Chi Minh, the venerated father of Vietnamese Communism.
Saigon is a young city pulsating with life and culture, displaying a strange mélange of old colonial buildings and crumbling brick structures alongside shopping malls and office towers of glass and concrete. It is evident from branded merchandise and international designer shops that the Vietnamese are entrepreneurial and are determined to progress at a head-spinning pace.

If vestiges of French imperial rule are visible in the boulevards and the Notre Dame Cathedral, the American influence, remnant from the Vietnamese War, is clearly seen in the city’s road network, bridges, the USA-built embassy and expanded airport complex. That Saigon’s historical cityscape recedes and is replaced by steel-and-glass structures is all too blatant.

The lush sprawling gardens of The Reunification Palace is inviting. Also called Independence Palace, it was once the residence of the South Vietnamese president and saw the end of the Vietnam War on April 30, 1975. It is now a tourist attraction with a segment of its basement portraying a grim time capsule of war history. Being history buffs, we proceed to the War Remnants Museum for a fascinating, if disturbing, display of photographs and other war memorabilia.

We take the cyclos, the three-wheeled pedicab of Vietnam, to China Town or Cholan, which is at one end of Le Loi, Saigon’s main street dotted with restaurants, bars and cafes. We enjoy an amble along the street where little and large shops sell handmade paintings on silk, rice paper, silver filigree items, genuine tortoise-shell combs, lacquer ware inlaid with Mother of Pearl and an array of handicrafts, many of them made by challenged individuals. The place is perfect for us to pick up souvenirs to wind up our Saigon sojourn.

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(Published 14 February 2015, 16:35 IST)

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