The Jaded Empress Chronicles

  O f course, you’ve already read my Café Culture in Ho Chi Minh City, chronicles Part 1,  here  and Part 2,  here ,  detailing not just Vietnam’s obsession   with cafés and coffee shops….. but er, mine too!  As I’ve mentioned before, there’s not a lot for expats to actually do in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), so, part from eating the sublime street food, the former Saigon’s brilliant and unique batch of cafés and coffee shops have been an absolute Godsend - my ultimate way of frittering away the time here. Not only do they serve inexpensive great coffees, especially my #1 preferred, iced coconut coffee ( cà phê cot dừa , an increasingly popular drink in sweltering Saigon) but make wonderful bolt-holes to escape the monsoonal rains, reflect on life, scroll through messages (if you must) and diffuse from the urban noise and chaos. Even during a global pandemic, life carries on as normal in these café’s and coffee houses.....  all squashed in together and no social distancing here! A mazingl

  I n my  July 2020  chronicle, “Canal Life in Ho Chi Minh City,  Who Knew?”  here   (w hich, if you haven’t already read (huh?) please do, as this chronicle will make a lot more sense), I remarked that there’s a surprising number of pagodas and temples strung along the  Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal, a major urban  regeneration  project running for 10km through central Ho Chi Minh City,  that took two decades to complete. Even in the small section of the Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal that I’m covering, my so-called  ' posh neighbourhood' where I reside – roughly from Le Van Sy Bridge, in District 3, to Dien Bien Phu 2 Bridge, in Binh Thanh District – there seems to be a disproportionate amount of pagodas and temples. Located along Truong Sa and Hoang Sa, the two meandering streets running parallel to the canal, there are literally more than you can shake a bamboo stick at.  And all within strolling distance of my canal-side abode . Not just a posh neighbourhood, also, evidently pretty s