Hidden Saigon: Wandering the Alleyways.

/ carlystarr

Saigon is a capricious city, seducing visitors with a freewheeling spirit, then maddening them with traffic, noise and heat. Transformation is all around and the sound of construction reverberates through the city as forests of shiny sky-scrapers continue to shoot up. The choked streets roar with an evergrowing sea of traffic, while the footpaths are crowded with food vendors, pedestrians and hawkers with makeshift stalls, selling everything from brooms to motorcycle helmets.

This is a city that knows how to have a good time. The bar scene is flourishing with the young and the beautiful rubbing shoulders in venues as hip and unique as anything you’d find in New York or London. If you are searching for something grittier, the wild-lands of Bui Vien St serve up the kind of full-throttle mix of music, booze and special balloons that’ll leave you feeling pretty sure you had a good time only you can’t remember how exactly.

The heat and the crowds and the noise can at times overwhelm and it can all leave some visitors feeling like Saigon isn’t really for them. Too crowded, too busy, too loud, increasingly too commercialised and too bloody hot.

Hiding behind the city’s brash and bold exterior though, lies an eclectic maze of alleyways, weaving their way behind and between the traffic-choked main roads. Here, just footsteps away from modern high-rises and flashy malls, is a whole other side to Saigon where the hustle of city life slows to a saunter and it is in this tangled web of narrow lanes that the real soul of this city can be found.

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If you want to experience Saigon as the locals see it, these alleyways or ‘hems’, are a wonderful place to get lost for a little while. Life is lived out in the open here – children play, while old men spend hours sipping coffee on plastic chairs. The doors of homes are wide open and you’ll see families sitting together on the floor, sharing meals and each others company. Around every corner is another food vendor and there are countless small cafes, quirky bars and other delights that won’t be found in any guidebook.

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Just outside my front door. My favourite place for breakfast.

It is down one of these hems that I have found a place to call home. Even though we are living in one of the most densely populated cities on earth, with a population estimated to be approaching 10 million, life in Saigon’s hems offers a local, small-town vibe, that you don’t often get in a big city.

Recently, my Vietnamese housemate, Tram, asked me –

‘Hey Carly, were you buying a coffee today down near the canal?’

‘Yeah, how’d you know?’

‘I was talking to one of the neighbors, he said he saw you’.

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Our rooftop. The perfect place to chill.

Apart from the people I live with, it’s not often I see another foreigner in the hems near my place. Most westerners tend to gravitate towards District Two, “The Bubble”, or District Seven, so when do I see another foreigner walking around near my house, my first thought is to wonder if they are lost.

I love where I live for it’s sense of community. My neighbors are friendly and warm, quick with a smile and even though we can’t say much to each other, there is a sense that we are all looking out for one another.

One evening, I arrived home and realised I had lost my house keys. I couldn’t understand how. I’d only been to a market and then to dinner so it wasn’t like I’d been drunk, wildly swinging my bag around a dance floor somewhere, but where ever they were and however they had been lost, they were certainly gone.

A couple of days later, after I’d already had new keys cut, Tram said to me,

“Carly, I have your keys.”

“What? Oh my gosh, where were they?”

“Someone found them in the street”.

“Where?”

“I don’t know where, but he brought them over for you.”.

I couldn’t believe it.

“But how did the person that found them know they were mine? How did they know to bring them to our house?”

“He thought they looked like a foreigner’s keys so he asked some neighbors if anyone knew any foreigners. Someone told him that this house has foreigners living in it, so he came around”.

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My very “foreign-looking”, keys.

There is a neighbourly kindness here that I think is becoming increasingly lost in our modern world. One morning, my bike conked out right near home. I turned the key and pressed the start button multiple times, but she was going no-where. An old lady neighbour saw my troubles, grabbed my arm and indicated to me to follow her. We wound our way through the narrow alleys, me pushing my bike until we stopped at a house. The old lady rapped on the door and a young-ish man came out. They chatted in Vietnamese, then he mucked around with my bike for a bit, got it going again. I thanked them both in my smattering of Vietnamese and took off to work.

Saigon’s hems are a people-watchers dream and a constant source of new discovery and delights. If you are visiting this city you’ll find more to nourish your soul along here than at any of the better-known tourist sites. The brilliant website, Vietnam Coracle has an excellent guide to the best hem’s to wander and get a little lost in. Check is out and let me know how you go.

41 thoughts on “Hidden Saigon: Wandering the Alleyways.”

  1. Hi, A nice post. Your place is Hot🙄! just like our place 😄 The noise, the traffic, the street, the street shops, oh almost like my place, From my country a straight line to east direction is your place 😃. And the key incident oh that kindness is becoming extinct in this world. and the place you are having such good people is really nice to know. 👏. Enjoyed reading 👏😊✨ Have a great Week!

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  3. I really love the writing here. It made me feel I was reading something by Graham Greene. It didn’t hurt that what you were describing is in itself so tantalising. Would you be interested in doing a guest post swap?

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  4. I believe is a very interesting city to live in 🙂
    I hope one day I’ll see it 🙂
    That rooftop is gorgeous and having nice neighbors that smile definitely helps 🙂
    “foreign-looking” keys 🙂 great 🙂

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  5. Carly, you’re writing so beautifully, I am so proud of you, I think you should submit this story to a magazine as it is perfect.
    Just edit it to remove the “h” from Vietnam Coracle as no-one will be able to find that website.
    😁 I told you I want to be your editor ! 😂😂

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  8. Hi Carly, A great post. You make me feel as if I am in Saigon(almost:) Thank you for sharing where the locals live, in the alleyways. As you say, areas not talked about in the guidebooks. Great photos! The kindness of strangers always makes my heart feel good:) Erica

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  9. What a fabulous place to live and what a wonderful community to be part of. It’s amazing that your keys found their way back to you, not sure that could happen anywhere else. Great post.

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  11. Love this Carly. Great post. What a fabulous place you found to live, and what wonderful people. I remember during our brief time in Saigon (only a couple of days) finding the hems and feeling as if I’d found the real Saigon.
    Alison

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  13. The best parts of a city can be found in its alley ways. I spent 30 days in North Vietnam but had to cut my trip short missing Saigon. Delightful to experience here on your page. Amazing story about neighborly kindness there.

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  14. Not only have you created a home, but you’ve found a wonderful community. That’s amazing! Love the look of your rooftop heaven.

    I smiled at the expression”they looked like a foreigner’s keys”. How do foreigner keys look different compared to the locals?

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    • Thanks, yeah our rooftop is the best place for an evening beer.

      And I still have no idea how my keys looked foreign! I even showed my Vietnamese friend I thought maybe something on the key ring wasn’t what a Vietnamese person might have and she said they looked like regular keys to her!

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  16. When walking through the alleys in Saigon or Hanoi, I feel like I have x-ray vision. Everything is open, and you can see right into houses and everyone goes about daily life.

    That sense of community is certainly something we lack in our modern world, and it is nice that you have found a slice of it in Saigon. I live in Bangkok in a nice community and see the same people (and cats) every day. It is nice to have so many friends and acquaintances.

    Great post – thanks for sharing.

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  17. Wonderful post. I only passed through Saigon and was terribly unimpressed. But it takes time to get to know a place and feel at home, so maybe I just should have given it a bit longer. Maybe on my next trip.

    By the way, i very much admired your bravery on your motorbike trip to Dalat… I never tried a motorbike in Vietnam – I was well and truly scared off by my experiences in Hangzhou, China. But I love to cycle!!

    Lieve

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