Vietnam/Cambodia 2005: Travels of a former business journalist : Final days

May 17, 2005

Final days

(photo: Hanoi street scene)

May 17, 2005

A week away from leaving Vietnam, after nearly three months in the country. I left the quietness of Hanoi to spend my last days in Saigon. It is a good reminder of how different north and south are. One Sunday I checked out of the sprawling, austere Army Guesthouse in Hanoi, where I was woken up at 6:30 every morning for the last month to the sound of a military bugle call. Yesterday, I checked into the Liberty Hotel in Saigon, and fell asleep to the thumping room-shaking vibration of the hotel’s first floor disco.

It’s late May, and both cities feel like saunas. Saigon is more oppressive because it doesn’t have Hanoi’s lakes. And Hanoi hasn't yet developed the urban stress of Saigon. I’d often heard people call Hanoi a village -- both derisively and affectionately -- but didn’t quite know what they meant. But on my last night in Hanoi, I was out on the street as the sky turned dark, and suddenly, on the pavement, crowds of super-low stools and tables appeared and people filled the pavement for streetside dinner -- noodles, fried tofu, beer, cigarettes. Completely ignoring the urban life around them, they took over the sidewalk as if there were an alley in a village. Peasant vendors -- elderly woman wearing black trousers, that iconic wide cone hat, teeth blackened from chewing betel nut – padded down the pavement, their shoulders weighed down by heavy balances piled with pineapples or vegetables or some other goods (they look like they’d just come in from the real countryside.) Hanoi is fun in the way that so much life takes place out on the streets, and people seems obilvious to the fact that activities that in others take place behind closed doors are in plain view of passersby. On Hanoi's main streets I’ve seen: streetside barbers clipping away, a circular mound of black hair piling up at the bottom of the single chair; women relaxing across the entranceway of the open shop as another woman gives her a pedicure; families eating dinner, moms spooning food into their standing kids' mouths.

Saigon has more of a shyster feel to it. It’s faster and busier, there’s more a of that big city whooshing traffic sound.

Shop displays look more Hong Kong, slicker and more modern with pop music blasting out (into my unhappy ears). LOTS more Taiwanese and Korean businessman. It’s a more pragmatic place, business wise. People are more direct. It’s here that I found the most savvy and innovative publisher I’ve met so far in Vietnam. She told me other journalists scoff at her publication, and criticize the content as unintellectual, simplistically written. They laugh at the short sentences and the short articles that fill her colorful Cosmo-type women’s magazine. SHE says she doesn’t want high-falutin, convoluted and wordy prose of traditional Vietnamese journalism. She says she wants a magazine that's easy for consumers to digest.

Aside from the North South divide -- the FOOD says alot about the changes in Vietnam, in hanoi AND Ho Chi Minh City.

That Starbucks-style coffee chain (branches in both cities) I wrote about in an earlier post seems to be getting more and more crowded every day. I went to Highlands Coffee (it even has a circular logo) with friends the other day and we had to drive around and around looking for a branch that had a seat. It’s not only foreigners now, but mostly Vuppies (Vietnamese yuppies) sipping lattes, eating sandwiches, looking very up-and-coming. (CAVEAT: even though I complained about the processed cheese, Highlands has a much bigger menu of Western and Vietnamese cuisine and inarguably has much better food than Starbucks.)

Today I ate lunch in one of Vietnam‘s first fast food chains. PHO24 is a modern take on the country’s most famous food, the rice noodle soup called pho, normally found in grungy one-off shops (still tasty) or dished out by streetside vendors and eaten squatting on the streetside. A few years ago, a savvy businessman (an overseas Vietnamese, I’m told), figured if he offered a reasonably tasty bowl of pho, in a clean environment (paper placemats), with modern service, he could charge more. He was right. The basic pho at PHÕ is a pricier 24,000 VND, which is about $1.75. His shops are regularly packed -- with rich foreigners afraid to eat on the street, tourists, Vuppies, and the increasingly number of ordinary Vietnamese who have extra cash and want to go upscale. Had a hard time finding a seat there today as well. It started in Ho Chi Minh City, recently opened up in a branch in Hanoi.

I will miss not just PHO, but all the other varieties of rice noodle, each with a different name depending on the kind of meat or the broth; the cha ca la vong (fish served to you in a pan of hot bubbling oil spiced with turmeric (??) I think and other seasoning, with plates of fresh dill parsley and other fresh herbs which you pile into the hot pan and stir around); banana flower salad; even the Western food is done wonderfully -- thin crust pizza; fresh baguettes. I'll stop here I'm getting hungry.

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