Saigon 101

In which intrepid travellers begin their holiday in Vietnam and don’t need motorbike, thanks.

Saigon has plenty of wireless internet. It also has plenty of other fun stuff which kept me from posting blog-stylee while there. Now we’re about to leave Hoi An I can take some time, take a breath of (shoe glue solvent laced-) air and catch up.

In Saigon/Ho Chi Minh city (although everyone seems to refer to it as Saigon) we stayed at the Bi Saigon mini hotel. Yes, they refer to it as a “mini hotel”, although the 10+ flights of stairs to get to our room didn’t have much “mini” about them. The hotel is quite cute - internal awnings to bathroom - if a little creaky and worn. Vietnamese beds so far are incredibly hard, and I was pissed off to be sleeping in 2 single beds pushed together ala grade 10, but with those stairs and hotel next door being around 1m away from our window, fitting the rooms with double beds is obviously out of the question.

The Hotel’s attached Restaurant (Table de Saigon) is incredible! Well, I say “attached”, it’s actually an open kitchen on the other side of the alley. I have no idea how they produce all the dishes from their 100+ item menu in this tiny space, but the food is absolutely superb, and they create everything from Vietnamese staples to Burritos and Guacamole.

So, while I usally would run screaming from a hotel-based restaurant, we ended up eating here 3 nights in a row. Particular favourite is the “Traditional Vietnamese Egg Pancake”, a crispy fried omlette folded over a mix of vegetables, sprouts, pork and shrimp, served with Thai basil and chilli dipping sauce. While munching on this fantastic stuff we were treated to a constant stream of street sellers hawking copied books, sunglasses, cigarettes and “ma-wanna”. There’s something quite funny about eating dinner while a drug deal is made openly on the next table.

The region we were staying is called “Pham Ngu Lau”, and while we ended up at the rather dodgy pub thing “Allez Boo” most nights for a wireless internet fix, we should have spent this time at Le Pub (review is of Hanoi version), which we didn’t discover until our last day. It’s extremely clean, sexy fitout, good menu, cold beer and fast wireless. Much better option than the ‘Boo. Apparently the Hanoi branch is just near our hotel, so we’ll be spending some quality time there.

Non-culinary items of note in Saigon

The shopping is fun, if overwhelming. Based around Le Loi St, we found plenty of camera stores and managed to pick up an Asashi Pentax F1.4 50mm lens for AU$30ish. It’s a little battered, focus towards infinity is stiff and it has a small collection of lens-flora growing inside, but it takes wonderful photos and lets in sooooooooo much light! Sharp photos at night! Gig photos without massive blur! It’s hardly been off the camera since we picked it up.

Walking in another direction from the hotel we found an area we dubbed Hardwareworld! but I think technically it’s the war surplus market. It covers a city block and is filled with tiny stores selling engine parts, war surplus gear, air compressors, multimeters, kitchen gear, airbrushes (picked a nice one up for AU$40ish), ball bearings, switches, computer fans… All covered in dust and stacked in precarious towers and mounts. Great fun! I couldn’t spend too much time in here for fear that Rach’s brain would melt, but if I ever want to start a workshop or fit out some kind of technical studio I will make this place my first stop.

01-12-2006@13:50