SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳: BEFORE I GOT HERE…

Before I got here, the Cafe Apartment building at 42 Nguyen Hue was at the top of my list. A 1960s apartment block with 50 cafes stacked nine stories high. I’d seen the photos a hundred times. I finally went. Stood outside. Took this photo.
And realized everything I wanted was down there.
The best coffee in this city costs 15,000 dong on a plastic stool from a woman who doesn’t have an Instagram account. The best food is served on a plate you didn’t choose from a menu you can’t read. The best views are at eye level, not from a balcony. Saigon doesn’t get better the higher you go. It gets better the closer you sit to the ground.

Kids skating Dong Khoi today. The same street where French officers took evening walks, where war correspondents filed stories from the Continental, where tanks rolled in on April 30, 1975. Now it’s a skate spot. Vietnam’s youth keep finding ways to claim public space that nobody offered them. Fifty years from revolution to kickflip. Uncle Ho didn’t plan for this but I think the street is better for it.

There are writers getting up high here.

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