By Tri Dung
Saigon wakes up very early. At 3 am news papers deliverers meet on many sidewalks with the busiest volume on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai st. On motorcycles deliverers quickly send morning to homes. Many roadside cafés are just ready for service of cyclo drivers. Their clients are busy in flower & fruit markets with bundles of goods. At gas stations, cabs parking for fuel while drivers are changing the duty shifts. Hawkers can also be seen and their voice heard, selling sticky rice, cakes and bread.
6:30 am is the last call for those who can leave home for work or school with a wish to avoid traffic jams at traffic lights. On the sidewalk of Tao Dan park and many other public parks, people are enjoying fresh air at the same time with practising morning exercises.
From 7 to before 8 am millions of people pack the streets on their ways to offices, universities, schools. At their places ladies always need some minutes for a quick make-up before they can sit at their desks looking fresh and nice. Male officers on another hand need go to cafes for breakfast and a cup of coffee. Over the cup of coffee they chat about their activities or just the movie they saw the night before.
During morning work hours from 8 to before 12, just do not think the streets are empty. People are working for themselves, ladies do not go to the market once a week but every day, people still have to go to the spots to make sure of the quality of products or work rather than relying on faxing or internet. Those elements still push many people to the streets before every one feel hungry and a need a nap.
Lunch for most working people are not at home. A walk not far from office you can find an eatery where, with 20,000 VND, one can buy a bowl of rice served on a sauce with optionally fish or egg or pork and another bowl of soup and perhaps, a glass of iced tea, too. Lunch for a cyclo driver or xe om , motocycle taxi, is a little bit cheaper. They then have no place to rest the back but a street corner half sleeping half ready for a sudden call by customer. White-collared office workers can leisurely walk back and take a short nap before another cup of coffee or a glass of ca phe da ( iced coffee ) is to be ordered and afternoon work hours begin.
A day’s work in most of the cases ends at 4:30 pm. Traffic lights again see hundreds of drivers, riders winding about waiting for the green signal. Ladies are on such a hurry stopping at their frequented malls, markets for a quick grasp of foods then going back home in time for preparing dinner. Men are much more enjoying after work time browsing lists of new released films or music discs or chatting over a small table of cocktail with friends or in a internet service outlet or a free wifi hot spot.
Dining time is a precious time for family reunion. Parents listen to their children’s stories of the day and give advice. Sociologists say without family dining time family members will not understand each other and happiness of the family will be lessened and damaged. The philosophy of Confucianism exists in many a Vietnamese in which family is the core for the society. Te gia, kien quoc ( manage family work before build up the nation ) is still a modelling motto for present-day parents and after a day’s work when members are scattered for study or work, dining time is what if not warm-up moment of morales and good values in laughters and gastronomy pleasure.. Anyhow, not everyone can have dinner with the family. They leave home for a night duty shift and next early morning when they came back home, other members getting ready for their daily routine.
The city looks more romantic at night. Restaurants, dancing pubs attract well-to-do city dwellers and foreign tourists and in many other places in the city night schools’ neon lamps are on as many more people are striving for a higher social recognition in foreign languages, techniques, finance, accounting training which also promise a better life and a brighter future for themselves. By chance if one find themselves in a poverty-stricken hamlet at Xom Chieu area in District 4 they can hear the loud and unceasing reading of lessons by young children. Seen through dim light of poor destinies’ slums is a burning desire for a tomorrow at less cloudy and more shining skies. With a few questions, you can find behind the carrying pole of the old lady selling bananas she is carrying many more lives in the country hundreds of miles away from Saigon.
To visit Saigon, you can stay in and around hotels’ area and take tours. But to live with the Saigonese, you are expected to intergrate into ways of living here. On the way back to hotel after Cu Chi or Mekong Delta tour you can take a walk and view how people are making their lives. Or after your dinner enjoyment, spend your leisure with a xe om driver, recommended by hotel or tour guide, roaming about local living quarters. And, he himself, after a beer or two at the end of the tour, will reveal his life. In most of the stories, what you find is not lamenting verses but own struggles for survival and children’s future. With that, believe you’ve reached a deep side of life in the largest and busiest city in Vietnam.