good morning vietnam! (cafe)

My first morning I Vietnam was fantastic, albeit the fact that it was easily the hottest day of my trip to date. Breakfast was screaming my name so I set off down a little alley next to my hostel towards one of the main streets nearby. At the end of the alley, nearly on the corner of the major street, I stumbled across a clever little café called Good Morning Vietnam Café at which several late-50s ex-pats were lackadaisically taking their coffee and reading their paper, I figured if there was anyone who I should trust regarding a café, it’s the old guys who probably never left after the war.
With empty seats aplenty, I pulled up next to one of the guys I dearly wanted to rap out with only to get a look from him indicating he wasn’t a fan of mine straight away, so I decided to keep to myself. The flamboyant young Vietnamese guy taking orders weaved his way over to me and decided that, instead of just taking my order, he would sit down to discuss what I was going to order. He began asking me all kinds of questions about my trip, where I was from, etc. all leading up to asking what I wanted to order. I was jonesing for a good cup of coffee and attained an affinity for banana pancakes so I went ahead and placed my order. The jaded ex-pat didn’t seem to approve and looked a bit disgruntled by my order, or maybe he wasn’t into the blatantly gay waiter, or maybe he had a flashback, I don’t have any idea, but he grew increasingly annoyed by me; fortunately, I could give a shit what he thinks and certainly wasn’t going to let his bad attitude get in the way of my awesome day.
While the coffee was extremely good, I had to ask for a redo before I was able to actually embark on the experience. They served it in some weird setup where you have to let it sit for like ten minutes after it arrives to let it brew. Unaware of this, I picked it up to take a drink right when it showed up and not only was it not brewed yet, but they drop it off in a way where you have to let it drip from a cup on top into a cup on bottom, and if you pick it up wrong, it will spill out of the bottom all over the place. Needless to say, I spilled it all over the place, much to the disapproval of the guy sitting next to me, but the waiter got a kick out of it and came over when he saw me trying to wipe up a whole cup of coffee with the two sheets of Kleenex they leave on the table as napkins, and helped me out, then brought me a new coffee rig and explained to me how to do it. Sure, I felt stupid, but my gay flirting skills are on point, so he dug me. And boy, were the banana pancakes excellent, and small. I had to order two to tide me over to lunch, but they were good enough to just reorder the same thing rather than try something else out on the menu.
Having spent a lot of time walking around in the heat, I found early on, and only became more and more convinced of the fact that denim shorts are in fact, not, a good option when strolling in heat; to say they aren’t breathable is a vast understatement, and that fact coupled with the adoration I found for motorbikes back on Koh Samui in Thailand, I decided that I was going to try my luck at driving a motorbike through the streets of Saigon, one of the most chaotic and seemingly ruthless cities I’ve ever been to with respect to traffic.
Down the way from Good Morning Vietnam Café there was a little Kodak film developing storefront that boasted a sign indicating they also rented scooters. One thing that amazes me about the entrepreneurship of these countries is the diversification in their businesses. This guy, for instance, excels both at developing film and renting motorbikes, go figure. The cost was pretty steep relative to Thailand at seven dollars for the day. I tried haggling with him, but after a couple half-hearted attempts, I always feel like an asshole arguing over a couple dollars, so I generally just give in. He did require that I leave my passport with him though, which always leaves me generally uneasy.
Unlike Koh Samui, the scooter I rented in Saigon was brand new. This is literally the fastest scooter I’ve ever ridden. The speedometer goes up to 160 kilometers/hours; I have no idea how fast that is in miles, but it felt really, really fast. I didn’t even get it to half of that speed; it’s simply too fast. The one I rented in Thailand was a 125 cc scooter and this one measured in at 250 cc, doubling the engine size and power, and literally able to do wheelies if I popped the clutch from the start. It was so powerful that I would inevitably get a good jerk when I would give it gas, like, there wasn’t enough room on the throttle to ease into new gears, if you gave it more gas, it jumped up to the new speed ever so non-gradually; it took a bit of time to get used to.
The traffic, on the other hand, was legitimately scary at first, but once the initial shock of people not really stopping for you wore off, and I applied the same principles I’d learned about walking to my driving strategy, it all worked out for the best. I can’t think of a better way to have taken on the city, but I wouldn’t recommend the option to the sheepish or the faint-of-heart, because if you hesitate, you will absolutely get hurt; and a helmet wasn’t even an upgradeable option with the rental, so the distance between safety and a Third World hospital is tremendously narrow.
If conquering Saigon via motorbike is possible, than I absolutely made it happen. I made it clear across the city, in and out of areas that I probably shouldn’t have gone but am very glad I did, across the Saigon river that borders the east side of the city where the standard of living seems to drop dramatically and the attitude seems considerably more grim. Having to plead ignorance as to why, I don’t have any insight as to the reason for this, but it was definitely noticeable. Several of the hours I spent riding were hours in which I had no idea where I was or how to find where I was going. All of the sites I saw the night before, on accident, I stumbled across again, on accident, and added a few to the list. The Reunification Palace is a pretty popular tourist spot, but I was far less than impressed and the fine art museum would have been a complete letdown had it not been for the semi-interesting photo exhibit that happened to be there while I was in town. All that negativity aside, Saigon remains one of my favorite cities of all-time. Despite being a massive city with a great deal of urban sprawl, commercial development, and a noticeable influx of tourism, it’s somehow managed to retain a great deal of its culture and its heritage. You can still see middle-aged women walking down the streets in traditional Vietnamese attire with the cone shaped hats on called “non la” carrying a pole over their shoulder with baskets tied to each side filled with an array of rice or miscellaneous vegetables perfectly balancing itself out passing a cell phone store while having their photograph taken by a Midwest college graduate wearing the famed “jesus sandals”, a tank-top, and a fanny pack. My motorbike rental turned a gigantic and potentially daunting city to undertake into a very manageable, well traveled city in one day. However, despite loving this city, I was absolutely sick of cities, the digital signage, the throngs of tourists, and the bouts with ridiculous traffic, so I decided to leave the next day for the north of the country to a Unesco World Heritage Sight called Halong Bay which I had heard is spectacular and while tourism is prevalent, it has done a wonderful job of retaining its charm.