Canal Life in Ho Chi Minh City – Who Knew?
W hen this Jade(d) Empress relocated back to Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in 2018, a work colleague advised me to look for a place to rent somewhere along the city's network of canals. But having lived and worked in HCMC as a full-time travel writer (from 2006 to 2010) and spent months here (from 1998 to 2001) as an intrepid backpacker and guidebook researcher, my recollections of city canals were tantamount to the 'stinky black' varieties. (Note, Empresses don’t do, nor live, along stinky black canals.....unless of course, they’re on their last uppers). In fact, writing about the city for guidebooks years ago, I did touch upon the polluted Saigon River and a network of ‘ neglected, stinky black canals,’ which looked a bit like this ...... In fact, when I previously resided around 2008 in Tan Dinh Ward, a buzzy local neighbourhood located in the north-eastern section of the city's District One (the historic central area, with the lion's share of tou