Traffic

I spent the morning catching up with posting blips as I’d got almost a week behind. After lunch and buying a train ticket, I wanted to go to Cho Lon – a district of the city. I decided to get the local bus. I don’t remember there being an extensive bus network when I lived here. If there was, I definitely didn’t have any information about where they went. Now there’s a bus app with route maps and it tells you when the next bus is due at the bus stop (although that part isn’t very accurate). There was a direct bus from where I was to Cho Lon. Very easy and it didn’t take very long either!

Cho Lon means ‘big market’ and traditionally it’s the Chinese area of the city although the Chinese population is a lot less that before the war. It is a lot more like the Saigon I remember. No glitzy designer shops, just small family run shops piled high with goods in the streets around the market and closely packed stalls in the market. I went into the market, first to the dried food area, then my nose found the dried fish area (a very distinctive smell) and later the household goods area. I think part of the market has been closed as there were fences around some of it and I couldn’t find the fabric market. I wasn’t planning on buying anything so didn’t ask about its location. After the market I was boiling hot so had a Vietnamese iced tea at a street stall. The price in Cho Lon was only double what I used to pay in 1998 instead of anywhere between 5 and 25 times the price in the city centre!

I never explored Cho Lon when I was here before apart from going to buy fabric from the market so I did some exploring. Near the market there’s a small Catholic church. There was a service going on inside so I spent a couple of minutes at the back looking around before leaving again. There are also lots of temples in Cho Lon and I went to a few of them. The first was very ornate and definitely Chinese. I thought it was very pretty and it was peaceful inside – you couldn’t hear the noise of the traffic outside. I got talking to an American woman who was also visiting the temple and we walked together to the next one. She’d only just arrived in Saigon and was finding crossing the road a bit daunting! The second temple was different. It was simpler but much busier. Coming out of that temple I booked the American woman a motorbike taxi using my app and went to find the bus stop. And stumbled across another temple so had a look round that too.


When I got back to district 1, I went for a drink at one of the cafes I used to go to. It’s now a two storey bar but it has tables on the pavement and a good view of the crazy traffic at the junction opposite. I took a lot of photos, most of them not very good as the bikes were moving too fast or someone walked in front of me at the wrong moment. This one sums up how you need to have immense courage to tackle the streets of Saigon. One momentary lapse in concentration could be fatal. Women and men pushed stalls selling fruit through the streets when I lived here (I bought pineapple almost every day from one) and I’m glad that they are still around even if the traffic they have to contend with is much more challenging now. The extra is of the first temple.