Saigon

There was a fortnight just before Covid when I went nightclubbing in a hot tropical city, drove a Vespa scooter through crazy Vietnamese traffic in the middle of the night, took a speedboat into the Mekong Delta, was enchanted by a beautiful woman in a hot steamy riverside bar, explored a strange village built on stilts over a white sandy beach, delivered a speech to 20 managers at a leading South East Asian hotel, visited a night market in an ancient port along with 100,000 other people and triple that number of lanterns, got drunk in a bar on the 50th floor of a skyscraper, attended two cookery lessons focussing on oriental food, read The Quiet American in one go while aboard a Boeing Dreamliner, and when I eventually - feeling weary - took our dogs for a walk in the cool windblown hills above my home.

It was just a year after I’d had a massive heart valve replacement operation and I spent some time in Saigon, or Ho Chi Min City as its more properly known. Which is a good place to try out a new heart valve. Because Saigon is a hot and frantic place. Busy, doesn’t do it justice. It is frenetic. Crazy. Fabulous. Beguiling. Exciting. Intriguing. All those things and so much more.

Here are few of the street snaps I took while walking around Ho Chi Min City in the incredible sultry heat.

Of course, as is always the case with me and my travels, I headed to the nearest food markets first. Hot, stuffy, sweaty and filled with people who won’t leave tourists alone, I still enjoyed every minute. Ben Than Market is the most popular with tourists, but there are plenty of others to visit. The only frustrating thing about wandering around such places as a keen home-cook is that you want to cook with all the amazing ingredients, and of course you can’t if you are staying in a hotel. Especially not a wonderful upmarket hotel like The Reverie, Saigon.