By Tri Dung


The Vietnamese learnt the planting and drinking pleasure of coffee from the French. It’s now , more than a habit, a lifestyle for almost everyone from town to country, from men to women, from a cyclo driver to an entrepreneur. One of the world’s largest coffee exporters, Vietnam is also home to a rather discriminating connoisseur of the bean : the civet cat, a relative of the mongoose that looks like a little fox. The cat chooses the beans through its complete digestive system. Later, after the cat has returned to its traditional forest habitat, human connoisseurs of coffee retrieve the undigested beans at the base of forest trees for recycling into what is said to be amongst the world’s best cups of coffee, ca phe cut chon or fox-dung coffee. One of the recipes is to dry the reclaimed beans in the sun for months. After the outer skin peels off, the beans are mixed with salt, butter, and sugar sometime, and a glug of French red wine. Then the beans are roasted.
Early in the morning, flavor of coffee occupies many kitchens. Urban officers get up and mix themselves cups of hot black coffee before opening the door to pick up morning papers or checking mails on the Internet. Two to three spoons of coffee before drops of boiling water warm up the powder in a single minute. A filterful of boiling water is to make best coffee if one drop after another counts in the cup and in this, there should be no haste. Also counting the drops of coffee but on a pavement is a motorcycle repairer. Sips after sips he takes and feels more and more ready for quick paces of a new day.
Having coffee is not only to be awake from sleeppiness but also and actually an invitation for pleasure. “Let’s go for a cup of coffee”, that sentence reveals friendship and openess. There are many stories and matters that cannot be smoothly spoken about at an office or in a big family environment but out there, in a free wifi internet café or just with a small broken table and two hard plastic stools on a sidewalk, the clients feel eager to get them clearly understood. In that sense people are enjoying the place rather than the drink. They need to wait for somebody, then, “ coffee, please !” or they are buying seats. But, there are other people who are different in taste. They are writers, they are lovers or they are true drinkers of coffee. The shop keeper might not know their names but remember their habits very accurately. They come punctually for an usual seat at a certain corner. Casting their eyes to busy life around they seemingly bury their minds in the level of the black susbstance in the cup. For them, a glass of iced coffee is just a mere and easy drink to fight the thirst, but a failure in tasting coffee. A cà phê ðen nóng ( black hot coffee ) is a must since they believe any mixture with coffee is to give wrong flavor of this black bitter drink . Coffee with milk is a compromise, they say.
Saigon is with not much rain and the heat from the sun can be blown away with the breeze. Of course, a good café on the pavement is not the one where you are to suffer dust, smoke and noise. Come to Han Thuyen street and have coffee there one early afternoon to experience cà phê vỉa hè ( café on the side walk ) in Saigon. Coffee along with breakfast at Givral or Gloria Jean’s ( formerly Brodard ) is really great at the beginning of a day. Having your day started that style there you can imagine la rue de Catinat once upon a time. On the same street many decades ago, on the verandah of Continental hotel, the Saigonese upper class mixed the flavor of the French beans with the pride of being on the nicest road of Pearl of the Orient and Paris of the Far East . Many decades have passed but the Saigonese and the Vietnamese in general are still “loyal” and prefer the patience in waiting for coffee drop by drop made in the cup to instant coffee. “I am not doing business; I am indulging myself in the pleasure of seeing one more inch of my mind opened as one more sip of coffee taken in”, commented many followers of this lifestyle.