Sundown in Saigon, and the streets are steaming. The air vibrates with the whir of nine million motorbikes and the chatter of eleven million people, all spilling into alleys, balconies, and roadside noodle stalls. Everywhere I look, the doors are flung open. Old-timers chew the fat over ice-cooled beers, aunties in silken pajamas fan charcoal grills heavy with skewers of lemongrassy chicken and caramelized pork. Pocket parks double as public gyms, Vietnamese pop thrums from tinny speakers. It’s dizzying, so fantastically alive. So very Vietnam.
The best way to make sense of it all is to dive straight in, which is why I’m clinging to the backseat of a clattering Vespa driven by my guide, Bui Quan Khanh, a young Saigonese fresh out of tourism school. We swerve through a snaking mass of red and white taillights, past the coffee shops and neon-lit bars of the hip Binh Thanh district and the gleaming new towers of Thu Duc City, which have mushroomed in recent years. As we zip through narrow alleys and working-class neighborhoods, Khanh fills me in on the city’s transformations, the new metro network and last July’s launch of a mega-city masterplan, in a bid to become Southeast Asia’s next economic powerhouse.
The excitement in the air is palpable, but so is the fresh cilantro and nước mắm fish sauce that still perfume these streets. We stop to snack on tiny, stir-fried snails we pry out of their shells with toothpicks, and sip tamarind lemonade at a cafe overlooking the Mong Bridge, built by architect Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel) during Saigon’s French-colonial era. From a fluorescent-lit open kitchen, women work flaming skillets of bánh xèo, shrimp-studded savory pancakes, which we stuff into spring rolls piled with Thai basil, lettuce and wasabi leaf.
This after-dark Vespa tour is part of a new immersive itinerary created by Condé Nast Traveler in partnership with the legendary travel company Abercrombie & Kent, designed to trace Ho Chi Minh City’s shape-shifting spirit and the lush riverlands that lie beyond. The collaboration, Curated Escapes, also includes trips to Japan, Sonoma, Uganda, Peru, and India.
From my base at the plush Park Hyatt Saigon, the following days play out in a blur of color and motion: we pick through kaleidoscopic heaps of produce at street markets, slip into the incense-thick air of Chinatown’s temples, and sample the city’s next-gen restaurants, like Vietnamese-American chef Peter Cuong Franklin’s perennially packed Anan, where I pair pho-flavoured G&Ts with foie gras spring rolls and beefy bánh xèo tacos.
Kaleidoscopic heaps of produce at a local market in Ho Chi Minh City
Chris Schalkx
Women at work in the rice fields near the Hau River, one of two main parts of the Mekong River
Chris Schalkx
And then, all is still. Once the last of Ho Chi Minh City’s suburban towers have vanished from view, the Mekong Delta opens into a glimmering patchwork of rice paddies and orchards, all stitched together by a sinewy maze of rivers and man-made canals. The Mekong’s great tributaries writhe through it, their waters feeding fields so fertile they supply more than half of Vietnam’s produce.
