Entry the Sixth: A New Era Dawns

For my last hostel breakfast I went for the Chicken Phở; partly to have something Vietnamese again, partly because unlike the eggs, it comes with a tall fruit smoothie, which is just what you need after emerging from an air-conditioned room into the heat of the day. I wasn't sightseeing this morning though. No, I was packing (the few things that had escaped my suitcase anyway) because I was off to Tom’s apartment, where I would be crashing for a couple of weeks until I got on my feet.

I took a taxi out to the mysterious destination known as “Era Town” somewhere out in District 7, a place of wide, American-style roads, towering apartment complex and expensive shopping malls (like the Lotte Mart I had visited with Tom yesterday) and a world away from the narrow alleyways of the city centre. Tom gave me an address somewhere on a nearby street, as apparently the apartment complex was new enough not to have a proper address that Google Maps and the average downtown taxi driver would recognise.

Welcome to Era Town! The happiest place on Earth!

The place was even further than the ‘main’ part of District 7, past the malls and along a stretch of almost-motorway through a patchy almost-countryside, although it was clear the remaining scrub land was marked out and divided into lots for future development; much of the route was already peppered with half-filled strips of shops. The overwhelming impression was of the rapidly sprawling outskirts of a city on the grow.

I approached Era Town along a huge unfinished entryway, still covered with gravel. The taxi slowed right down and crawled through the complex, apartment blocks towering from either side. Once I was dropped off, I gave Tom a call so he could come and find me and direct me to the right place: the 32^nd Floor of one of the blocks.

The view from the apartment, if you go out on the balcony and lean unreasonably dangerously over the edge, that is. Mostly, the view is of that other tower.

Era Town is an intriguing place. It reflects the development of New Saigon, throwing itself skywards before it can even catch up with itself. The towers are there and the apartments furnished and comfortable, but the cracks are already starting to show. The paint is peeling and pavement tiles are missing, but they haven’t even paved the entryway or finished installing the car park barriers.

The base of each tower is filled with everything a small community might need: corner shops, bakeries, small cafés and restaurants, even gyms, hairdressers, furniture shops and a school, but half the units are still empty, and some open to cavernous interior spaces with unfinished concrete stairwells. The entire block opposite Tom’s is completely uninhabited. The whole place is lit with neon strips at night, proudly proclaiming the name of the corporation behind the development.

The fountains and neon look nice, but the "Era Center" is a completely empty frontage.

I threw my bag into Tom’s spare room and picked his brains for a few hours about everything I could think of at the time. He had a busy afternoon planned – the full time teacher has to plan his weekends meticulously – so a few hours later it was back in a taxi to the centre of town.

I picked up where I had left off exploring the city. I had my first proper Phở for lunch at Phở Quynh, a restaurant Tom had recommended just off Phạm Ngũ Lão and a stone’s throw from my old hostel. Unlike the tasty but straight-out-of-a-packet breakfast Phở I’d been eating over the weekend, this stuff was undoubtedly richer, a larger portion and served with an assortment of raw salad vegetables to plunge into the soup at your leisure and wedges of lime to squeeze over the top. I can’t recall the exact price but it was still only around 40 000 to 60 000 ₫ (between £1 and £2).

It's Phở Quynh, the undisputed Queen of Phở!

After lunch, I walked to Tao Dan Park, the centre’s largest city park, a verdant space in the heart of District 1. I relaxed for a while and read a little of my book (a battered paperback of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two which I had picked up in Slovenia back in June) but unfortunately, I couldn't sit still for long without being accosted by a beggar. As someone completely new to Vietnam, I'm still wary of pickpockets or anyone else who might want to take advantage of my naivety. Even in Vienna I’d almost been the victim of a pickpocket as recently as March.

Shortly afterwards however, I had an altogether more pleasant encounter with a girl called Nguyet (No, I couldn't pronounce it either), a student at the university who just fancied practising her English with someone who looked like they could speak it. We chatted for a while until it started raining once again.

Tao Dan Park, a verdant space in the heart of the city.

We parted ways and I tried to look for somewhere new to go but my phone had run out of battery. Using the mobile data might be great for Google Mapping your way around town while messaging people, but with regular usage, my phone doesn't seem to last more than about 5 or 6 hours.

I felt pretty lost, to be honest, with no way of double checking my maps to find the address of Tom’s apartment or getting in contact at all! With the rain still coming down, I ducked into a hotel just to get off the streets and had a couple of beers in the bar. I asked the waiter if he had any way to charge my phone, and it looked pretty hopeless until another patron lent me his charger so I could send a message and scribble down that address on a piece of paper! So, whoever you were and wherever you are, random guy in that hotel bar, thank you!

Some intriguing dragon topiary in the park.

There is purportedly a type of beer unique to Vietnam known as bia hơi, which is usually translated as something like ‘fresh beer’. Bia is a loanword derived from the French bière, bizarrely making Vietnamese easier to order a beer in than Spanish (although harder to do everything else in!).

Anyway, bia hơi is a weak lager (~3%) which is almost mind-bogglingly cheap; it can be as little as 3000 ₫ (about 9p), so I was very interested in trying to find some to round off my weekend. My Rough Guide to Vietnam suggested the street De Tham was the place to go.

Unless you go somewhere special, the beer choice in your average bar seems limited to local lager Bia Saigon and Singapore import Tiger. The latter is marketed as a little more upmarket, but not by much; they’re equally uninteresting lagers and I was anxious to find something different.

However, this digression into the potential appeals of bia hơi may seem ultimately pointless when I tell you that my search was unsuccessful. Saigon is a constantly changing city, so it’s perfectly possible that a few years ago, De Tham was a bia hơi paradise, but now it just seemed like an extension of the backpacker drinking street Bùi Viện, with the same boring old beers on offer.

I did spy the cheapest drink I’d seen so far, a 330ml bottle of Bia Saigon for 10 000 ₫ (a still ludicrously cheap 30p), so I went to that otherwise unremarkable cut-price café and supplemented my Sunday night beer with a cheap noodle snack which turned up lukewarm and was quickly cold. But at least the beer was cheap, right?

So, no bia hơi but I'll leave you with a dramatic view down this apartment shaft.