Feb 24
Founded by Cantonese settlers on a tributary of the Saigon River, Cholon is the symbolic heartland of the Hoa, the Sino-Vietnamese community. Ethnic Chinese residents know her as Tai-Ngon, named for the embankments that buttress the town. On my final day in Saigon I had come here in search of a personal connection. “No need for Vietnamese,” I was told. “Maybe you can talk to people in Cantonese or Mandarin.”
Feb 20
Saigon is a pleasant enough place to idle in for a few days… It is very agreeable to sit under the awning on the terrace of the Hotel Continental, an electric fan just above your head, and with an innocent drink before you to read in the local paper heated controversies upon the affairs of the Colony and the faits divers of the neighbourhood. Read more
Feb 12
The Boeing 777-300 makes its final descent through the afternoon haze, over rice paddies and a jigsaw of narrow buildings like slices of layer cake. We are just a stone’s throw from the delta of the mighty Mekong, whose brown waters I had seen eight months earlier in Laos. Read more
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