SAIGON. Day 13-14 – Lesson Number One: learn how to cross Saigon’s roads. Some six million motorcycles swarm this intoxicating city like turbocharged mosquitos. My advice: stand curbside, take a deep breath, stare down your two-wheeled assassins, and then foxtrot, tango or whatever it takes to slip between the gaps. Congratulations, Saigon is yours. With two days in the city, historic District I is a logical place to be based. It has endless restaurants and nightclubs, plenty of cultural attractions (such as the modernist Independence Palace, where the war symbolically ended in 1975) and lashings of French colonial architecture – not least my hotel, the adorable Continental Saigon. Dating from 1880, this opulent whitewashed colonial gem is Vietnam’s oldest hotel.
This was my celebratory end-of-trip treat -I would enjoy breakfast in its atrium courtyard of century-old frangipani trees and pay homage to Room 214, where Graham Greene wrote The Ouiet American. To get a handle on Saigon’s nightlife I decided: if you can’t beat them, join them. American Stephen Mueller runs Vietnam Vespa Adventures and his city tours are undertaken riding pillion on vintage motorcycles. He’s restored 79 of them, some dating from the 1950s. “You haven’t seen Saigon,” he told me, “until you’ve experienced the traffic by motorcycle. That’s when you enter the people’s territory.” His After Dark tour reaches places visitors would never find, such as a District 4 food market where divine chilli crawfish preceded plates of snails and frog.
Water snails are a Mekong Delta delicacy (not French) and, although chewy, went well with the fried morning glory; the deep-fried frog was chicken-like, justifying its local nickname, KFF. Thereafter we ate street pancakes, drank custard-apple juice and enjoyed a coffee-lounge performance by a singer who warbled like Edith Piaff. We finished by sipping cocktails (that’s why you ride pillion) at a Vietnamese rock club called Acoustic Emotion Talks. It was a fun denouement to my odyssey, although I suspect some seasoned Indochina travellers might question my choices. Why didn’t I visit the beautiful cities of Luang Prabang or Hoi An? And not a Thai island in sight? Well, my route was a vessel to show what can be enjoyed in two weeks. South-East Asian journeys are as multitudinous as they are exotic. Time to plan your own.
