Motorcycles whizz by in all directions. Street vendors ply their wares at every turn. To the untrained eye, and especially the recently arrived tourist, it seems as if chaos abounds.
This is Ho Chi Minh City, the commercial heart of a resurgent Vietnam. It’s a city that is in thrall to constant change. And yet, beneath it all, there lies a deep love and respect for tradition and the past. You just need to know where to look.
As the journalist and author Graham Greene once said, “You come to Vietnam, you understand a lot in a few minutes. But the rest has got to be lived.”
Greene knew better than most. His classic “The Quiet American” remains a bestseller here, available from seemingly every souvenir shop you pass. Greene made four trips to the country as a foreign correspondent between 1952 and 1955 and saw up close its transition from a French colony to an independent state, making him well placed to understand the American War, as it’s often called there, that soon followed.This sense of feeling the past in the present is felt immediately on arrival. It may be Ho Chi Minh City. But to many locals, it’s still Saigon, its name prior to the victory of the city’s eponymous hero in the 1970s.
“It is, it is!” says our guide Po when asked whether it’s still OK to use the famous former name.
“Lots of things (are) still being called Saigon,” he says. “We have a Saigon River, we have Saigon beer as well.”
Nomenclature concerns allayed, Po is readying us to embrace the crazy. As the CEO of a local tour operator, he knows his way around the city. And there’s no better way to get around than by motorbike.
