You hear about gangsta rappers banging on about “life on the
streets”. It’s the same ones who cruise around in their flashy cars, eat at
gourmet restaurants and incessantly upgrade their latest home entertainment
systems. Well, in Vietnam people actually live on the streets. Well maybe not
sleep, because they often have a room for that, but still they LIVE, BREATHE,
EAT the labyrinthine STREETS.
Whether it’s little tykes doing PE, tired husbands drinking
at bia hoi’s, haggard old prostitutes flashing their crumbling wares or just
xe-om drivers catching winks, the streets are bustling night and day. District
1 Saigon is never ever quiet. All hours of the day the street noise permeates into
the residences above. Cars reversing to the tune of happy birthday, fruit
sellers squawking in tonal vocalizations, kids kicking weird shuttlecocks all
over the joint; these are just some of the clockwork features of Vietnamese
city life.
Try sleeping in an environment like this. It’s tantamount to
running ones fingers down a chalkboard for an alarm clock. Communist loud
speakers expunging propaganda run through the night, cackling shady street
characters submerge into the dark refines of thin alleys, rabid dogs rummage in
the days litter, the noise never ends.
