Our destination that morning was Ben Tranh market. When you think of Asian markets, you think of Ben Tranh. Fish getting their heads cut off, clucking poultry running beneath your feet, exotic fruit, alluring and unidentifiable cooked foods. And that's just the first row of stalls. Getting there by 7, we were able to watch the vendors set up in a bit of relative calm before things really got going.
Inside the center of the market were a few food stalls with pho, bun, banh mi, and the other usual South Vietnamese staples. We sat down at one of them and ate an unbelievably tasty bowl of bun while the vendor predictably swooned over our baby. She kept handing us increasingly exotic food items for Mimi to try, and her obviously good intentions were hard to resist. At this point, it would be physiologically impossible for Mimi to have even a single food allergy.
We spent the next hour or two wandering the streets of old Saigon. Morning rush hour in that city is essentially one near death experience after another. Or at least it seems that way. In reality, there is an unwritten set of laws governing the traffic flow. Motorbikes weave through a sea of oncoming traffic, busses thread the needle between a few inch gap of taxis, and bicycles zig zag through it all. It really is amazing.
The advice we were given to cross the street was "keep walking, and don't change direction." And as crazy as the traffic flow is, that seems to work. Everyone is keenly paying attention to the road, and makes way for smaller traffic like a school of fish parting around some seaweed. Our mantra for walking the streets was "don't look, keep walking, keep walking, keep walking." If you do, you cross the street. If you don't, the traffic monster senses weakness and traps you in the middle of the street, or worse.
By this point, we had been up for 5 hours, and the city was starting to get quite warm.
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| We get it, man. |
We made a slight detour to visit the US Consulate. It had previously been the US Embassy in South Vietnam, and was the main evacuation site in the frantic final days of the war. Aimee and I had watched a couple of great documentaries before we left, and wanted to see the location in person. But it's still a working consulate with high fences and armed guards who don't take kindly to loitering or photography. So instead of me inserting a photo here, I'll make a film recommendation. Watch Last Days in Vietnam. It's on Netflix, and more than worth your time. The film is a relatively apolitical documentary that chronicles the chaos of the days leading up to the fall of Saigon. It's as thrilling as any fiction movie.
By 10am, we were exhausted and needed a nap. Like most of our naps these days, two hours felt like two days, and we again had to force ourselves to go outside. Our new mantra was "It's 1pm, it's 1pm, it's 1pm." to manually override our very confused circadian rhythms. We dragged ourselves to another coffee shop, and again hopped in the pool to keep ourselves awake. And just like the night before, I grabbed some $0.80 takeout that rivaled any five star restaurant in the States. I think we're going to make it.
