Category: SAIGON

SAIGON, VIETNAM: STREET COFFEE STANDS, WEEK 1, DAY 2 ~ STORIES THAT NEVER LEFT THE STREETS

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Day 2: Stories That Never Left the Street

Some street coffee stands give you caffeine.
Some give you conversation.
And sometimes, if you sit long enough, they give you history.

Day 2 of the Street Coffee Stands of Saigon series brought me back to another small plastic-stool corner of the city — the kind of place where time slows down and people settle into quiet morning routines. Metal filters drip steadily, ice clinks in glasses, motorbikes hum past, and strangers sit close enough to become temporary neighbors.

That’s where I met Vu.

Seventy-three years old. Calm eyes. Soft voice. The kind of presence that makes you lean in a little closer when he speaks.

Vu told me he had been a tank driver for the South during the war. Not in a dramatic or performative way — just in the steady, matter-of-fact tone of someone describing a life lived a long time ago. War, for him, wasn’t a headline or a history book chapter. It was something he carried quietly, like a memory folded into his daily routine.

Now he lives in the United States, but Saigon still pulls him back.

He returns often enough to sit at street coffee stands like this one, just a short distance from where he grew up and where he once ran a motorbike repair shop. The streets around us weren’t just streets to him — they were chapters of his life. Childhood. Work. War. Survival. Migration. Return.

Vu

We sat there in the early morning light, drinking coffee, and talking in fragments.

What struck me most was how normal it all felt.

A man who once drove tanks in a war now sits on a plastic stool in front of a street coffee stand, talking about his old neighborhood and watching the city move around him. A woman prepares coffee a few feet away. Motorbikes pass.

That’s the quiet power of Saigon’s street coffee culture.

It creates space for stories to surface — not in museums or monuments, but in everyday places where people gather and talk. History sits next to you without announcing itself. You don’t go looking for it. It simply arrives in the seat beside you.

Day 2 wasn’t just about coffee.

It was about memory, return, and the way a city holds onto its people — even when they leave, even when decades pass, even when life takes them across the ocean.

Sometimes, all it takes is a plastic stool, a glass of Vietnamese coffee, and a familiar street corner for those stories to come back home.

22march26

SAIGON, VIETNAM: STREET COFFEE STANDS & SPECIALTY COFFEES, WEEK 1, DAY 1 ~ SMILING EYES & Cà Phê Sữa Đá

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Day 1: Smiling Eyes and Cà Phê Sữa Đá

Sixteen years. That’s how long it had been since my last cà phê sữa đá in Vietnam. And somehow, the first cup back didn’t happen in a trendy café or a polished coffee shop — it happened exactly where it should have: on a plastic stool at a street coffee stand in Saigon. This is the beginning of a weekly series documenting street coffee stands across the city — the small, everyday spaces where Vietnam’s coffee culture actually lives.

Day 1 brought me to a stand set up on the sidewalk in front of Nhà thờ Huyện Sỹ, one of the quiet historic churches tucked into the rhythm of District 1. The kind of place where traffic hums past, locals move in and out without ceremony, and life unfolds in slow, familiar patterns. The stand itself was simple — metal coffee filters, small glasses, red plastic stools, condensed milk, and the steady drip of Vietnamese coffee falling into a glass. But what made it special wasn’t the coffee. It was the feeling.

mama-san

There was a mama-san figure running the space — the quiet authority behind the operation. She watched everything. Directed everything. Made sure everyone was taken care of. At one point, she gestured to the younger server and insisted I be given a small glass of tea on the side, the way locals often receive it.

No shared language.
No translation apps.
No long conversation. Just smiling eyes, hand gestures, and a kind of unspoken hospitality that needed no explanation. Sit. Drink. You are welcome here.

That’s the thing about Saigon’s street coffee stands — they are less about caffeine and more about community. People gather without planning to gather. Strangers sit shoulder to shoulder. Someone pours tea for you because that’s what you do. Someone watches over the space like it’s an extension of their home. And for a moment, you are part of it. The first cà phê sữa đá in Vietnam in sixteen years tasted strong, sweet, and familiar — but more than that, it tasted like return. Not just to a country, but to a rhythm of life that exists at street level: slow drips of coffee, red plastic stools, tea, and kindness communicated through nothing more than a smile.

21march26

SAIGON, VIETNAM: ME CULCAT SAIGON

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Sixteen years ago, the walls in Saigon were clean. Not because nobody had anything to say. Because saying it on a wall in a one-party communist state was not something you did if you wanted to keep your life uncomplicated. The government controlled the visual landscape. Propaganda murals, yes. Political slogans, yes. Uncle Ho’s face on every corner, yes. But unsanctioned paint on a shutter? That was a risk nobody was taking.

Now the city is covered. Tags on every block. Throw-ups on metal gates. Full-color pieces in alleys. Names repeated across districts like someone is trying to claim the whole city one wall at a time. And nobody is scrubbing it off.

That is not a small thing. In a country where the state still monitors social media, still arrests bloggers, still controls the press, the walls are somehow free. Kids are spraying their names on government-adjacent streets in a country where their parents would not have dared to hang the wrong poster in their living room.

What changed? A few things at once, probably. The economy opened and the internet arrived and a generation grew up watching global street culture on their phones. Hip-hop landed here. Streetwear landed here. The visual language of graffiti came in through YouTube and Instagram the same way it arrived everywhere else. And Vietnam’s youth, the 70% of the population born after the war, have a fundamentally different relationship with authority than their parents do. They are not afraid in the same way. They are not grateful in the same way. They did not survive anything that required silence as a survival strategy.

But I think there is something else happening, too. The government seems to pick its battles. Vietnam in 2026 cares about economic growth, foreign investment, and looking modern on the world stage. A kid tagging a shutter on Bui Thi Xuan Street is not a political threat. He is not organizing. He is not publishing. He is decorating a metal gate that will roll up at 7am and nobody will see his work until the shop closes again. The state tolerates it the way it tolerates a lot of the contradictions in modern Vietnam: by looking the other way, because the cost of enforcement is higher than the cost of the paint.

And yet. The graffiti is still an act of defiance, even if the writers do not think of it that way. Every tag on a wall in this city is someone saying I was here, I exist, this surface belongs to me for the thirty seconds it took to write my name. In a country that spent decades telling individuals they existed only as part of the collective, that is not nothing.

March 2026

SAIGON, VIETNAM: HO CHI MINH THOUGHT

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Vietnam is a one-party socialist republic ruled by the Communist Party of Vietnam (Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam). It has been since reunification in 1975.

The official ideology is Marxism-Leninism combined with Ho Chi Minh Thought, which is Vietnam’s own adaptation. Ho Chi Minh Thought blends communist economics with Vietnamese nationalism, Confucian values of social harmony, and pragmatism. It’s less rigidly ideological than Maoism was in China or Stalinism was in the USSR.

In practice, Vietnam operates what it calls a “socialist-oriented market economy” (kinh tế thị trường định hướng xã hội chủ nghĩa). This means the Communist Party maintains total political control while allowing a largely capitalist economy to function. Private business, foreign investment, property ownership, stock markets, billionaires, Starbucks, Louis Vuitton, all of it exists and thrives. The state controls strategic industries like energy, telecom, and banking through state-owned enterprises, but the street-level economy is almost entirely private.

I’ve been blown away by the existence of 7-Elevens here. It’s such a Japanese “thing” and no one does it quite like Japan. Not even Thailand. Fight me. But, here’s what’s wild:

I read that the first 7-Eleven in Vietnam opened on June 15, 2017, at the Saigon Trade Center on Ton Duc Thang Street in District 1. The one pictured is on Bui Vien in Pham Ngu Lao. Apparently, Vietnamese kids lined up at 6am to take selfies with a convenience store. Think about that. In a country with a street food vendor on every corner selling pho for a dollar, people queued to get into a place that sells microwave sandwiches.

But the real story is how badly it has underperformed. They planned 1,000 stores in the first decade. After nearly nine years, they only have about 120! All in Ho Chi Minh City. They just opened their first Hanoi store in 2025. Meanwhile Circle K, which arrived a decade earlier, has 464 stores and controls 48% of the convenience store market. Go Circle K.

The problem is Vietnam itself. The head of 7-Eleven Vietnam said it plainly: “We are experiencing a transition from mom-and-pop stores to modern trade. This is what Japan went through 40 years ago.” But Vietnam isn’t transitioning as fast as they expected. Why would it? The woman on the corner selling banh mi from a cart at 3am is already a 24-hour convenience store. She just doesn’t have air conditioning or a Slurpee machine. But, my God, does she have the most delicious sandwiches!

And here’s the thing that ties it all together: 7-Eleven is American in name but Japanese-owned. It’s operated in Vietnam by a local franchise company. It sells Slurpees alongside xoi sticky rice, che dessert puddings, and bo la lot. The most American brand on earth had to become Vietnamese to survive here. And it’s still barely surviving.

A communist country with a capitalist economy where a Japanese-owned American convenience store sells Vietnamese street food next to a Korean beauty counter while a local grandma outside does more business from a plastic stool. That’s Vietnam in 2026.

There is no way that graffiti was on walls like this 16, 20 years ago when I lived here. I can only attribute it to the rise of social media. They saw it happening in cities all over the world, and decided to try it here. I haven’t done enough research yet to find out how the government feels about this vandalism. Based on the pics directly above and below, it looks like people are either oblivious or resigned to it. They co-exist neutrally without declaring acceptance.

IYKYK – the women run the city at the street level, allowing the men to sit around, have fat chats, and drink lots of coffee. 🙂 I’m half-joking.

Quintessential Vietnam. Conical Hat. Red Stool. Mobile Kitchen. On a Street Corner.

March 2026

HO CHI MINH CITY / SAIGON, VIETNAM 🇻🇳: ME AND MY BROKEN SUITCASE

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The taxi showed up at least half an hour early. Of course I was already standing at the door with bags packed. Kindred spirits, me and that driver. Two people who believe in being early for everything, saying nothing about it, and getting on with it.


Suvarnabhumi at 2am is one of my favorite versions of any airport. Empty enough to chill, but alive enough to watch. I had no phone, no book, no music. Just a seat on the floor and a few hours before the 4:30 check-in opened. That is exactly how I like it. There’s a specific kind of calm that comes from knowing you are where you need to be, with nothing to do but sit in it.


At the check-in counter I met two women from Perth. One of those instant connections where nobody has to try. We checked in and ended up in the lounge together. Champagne, Thai coffee, coconut pancakes. A proper goodbye to Thailand with strangers who didn’t feel like strangers. Then we said farewell the way airport friends do, knowing we’d probably never see each other again, and that was fine. That is its own kind of beautiful.

GO2 – still heavily imbedded in the ‘scene.’

I took the train to my gate and waited out a mildly delayed flight. No drama. Just the quiet transition between one country and the next, which for me is always more mental than physical. Thailand was already behind me. Saigon was about to start.


And Saigon started exactly the way Saigon starts.


At the airport, a woman at the taxi stand promised they would use the meter. I got in the car. The man behind the wheel immediately said 355,000, no meter. I said let me out. You have to hardline it every single time. You give an inch here and you have lost the entire negotiation, the entire dynamic, and possibly the entire trip. He stopped. 300,000 ok? Then he got out of the car and another driver got in. Just like that. No explanation. No introduction. The new guy had no idea where I was going. For the third time, I gave my hotel address.


He was not friendly. I tried. I asked questions. I smiled. I got nothing back. But as we pushed through the traffic, which was relentless from the airport to District 1, bumper to bumper the entire way, I started to soften. I started to remember what driving in this city actually feels like, how it grinds people down, how every fare is a fight with the road.


Then he pulled out his phone and used the translator. The message said something about gas prices going up because of the war in the Middle East. He was not complaining. He was explaining. And something shifted in me.

Vietnamese Pride 🇻🇳

I have history here. Four years of history. And not all of it was gracious. Way too many times, I lost my mind in screaming matches with various Vietnamese over whatever injustice I felt was happening in the moment. Taxi drivers, landlords, shopkeepers. They can feel so transactional, so indifferent to whether you exist beyond the money you represent. It is a huge departure from the peace and sincerity I had just left behind in Thailand, where people go out of their way to make you feel welcome even when they do not have to.


But I decided, sitting in that traffic, watching the motorbikes weave around us like water around rocks, that I was going to start this trip differently. Good karma. No screaming matches. No losing my mind. Just acceptance that this is how Saigon operates, and I am the one who chose to come back.


At the hotel, I gave him 350,000. More than his second offer. Less than his first. Because I did appreciate the ride, and because I was trying to be the version of myself I had just decided to be.
Then he helped me get my suitcase out of his trunk and completely destroyed it. The wheel flew off. Just snapped clean away. I looked at it. I looked at him. I said no worries. I meant it. I knew the suitcase was on its last trip anyway.
So there I was. Bottom of the hotel steps. Broken suitcase tilted on three wheels. Him, happy with his 350,000, already pulling away into traffic. We will never see each other again. He was the first person to welcome me back to this city, and he did it by overcharging me, refusing to communicate, and breaking my luggage.


But he also drove me through streets that are now aggressively lined with hammer and sickle banners and Vietnamese flags, block after block after block, just in case I forgot what ideology I was returning to. Saigon does not let you arrive gently. It does not ease you in. It hands you your broken suitcase and says figure it out.
Twenty years since my first arrival. Four years of living here. And now, standing on those steps with one wheel in my hand, I am back.

20march26

SAIGON, VIETNAM: “VIETNAMESE FOOTBALL FRENZY”

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In December 2008, I was staying on Dong Khoi, the premier street in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Looking out my window, I could gaze upon the historic Hotel Continental, a favorite haunt of author Graham Greene, and the Opera House. One night, I got to witness the streets of Saigon go crazy in celebration for beating Thailand in the Suzuki Football Cup: the first time-ever for the Vietnamese to be champions in Southeast Asia. Below are some photos depicting their insane pride.

 

DEC 2008, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

SAIGON, VIETNAM: NEIGHBOR

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SAIGON

This woman was a neighbor of ours in District 3. Often she would sit with another elderly woman and place a conical hat in front of her face and gossip about the other neighbors. This day, she was on her own. Saigon, Vietnam. 09. (Sony Camera & Lens)

HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM: CAMERA SHY…not

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VIETNAM, 3

We used to sit outside our house every morning before going to work and have cafe sua da. This woman would walk by us almost every day, never saying anything, usually collecting plastic bottles and cans. She wasn’t camera shy. Saigon. AUG09. (Sony Camera & Lens)