21st February: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
After breakfast, I wandered the beautiful alleys around our accommodation. You could stay here photographing for weeks! The café I ended up in also made an amazing oat milk iced latte, which I enjoyed whilst writing and putting together playlists of the latest music releases. I’m lucky to have been given many personal recommendations recently of up-and-coming bands to catch once we’re back in the UK.
Kaja came to join me once she was feeling a little better. It was lovely chilling in the cafe. I really like this city. Eventually, we took a wander through more of the back alleys until finding a good spot for lunch. I had some delicious tofu skin in an umami sauce, and we shared a bowl of wide noodles with a vegetable broth and some tasty veggies.
We didn’t make it far down the street before finding a smoothie place. We perched down on the mini chairs outside next to the cat and sipped on pineapple, jackfruit, and papaya; and avocado and mango deliciousness as the traffic whizzed by under the tall trees lining the avenue. A few things we noticed whilst sitting were that buses have sirens here, there are fewer bikes with multiple occupancy, and almost everyone wears helmets. It turns out that this is a legal requirement, but most of them looked flimsy to tick the box rather than offer proper protection. We knew to expect this but the number of motorbikes here is wild!
Eventually, as the skies darkened with clouds and a few big drops began to fall, we began walking some more alleys to escape the mosquitoes who’d taken the humidity as their cue to emerge. We decided to dive into the room as we were very nearby but never got more than a few drops of heavy rain. The storm built up to the north and our rain shield held once more!
After more lovely chill time, although maybe not so lovely for Kaja who was still in pain, we popped back out to find a final snack for dinner. Saigon truly is the home of street food. No commodification, just people living their lives and happening to eat food from street stalls set up outside of people’s front rooms. I had to get another banh mi as we’re in Vietnam and I’ve waited too long not to have them at every single possible opportunity! It was awesome too with seitan which tasted like tom yum and delicious crunchy and spicy veggies. Less than £1 as well, which seems typical from most of our food and drink in a Vietnam so far. We’re going to eat well here. That wasn’t the end of my day’s escapades though. I’ve been needing a haircut for a while, and we’d passed an alley with a few barbers earlier. After getting the guts together to pop in, I got my final cut for the trip! Nice and tidy and I didn’t lose too many of my sun-bleached blonde highlights!
