Where all the time ends

Once upon a sleepy afternoon in Cu Chi

"- 5 kg of cherries

- 5 kg of oranges

- 3 bags of chips..."

Wearily, I jotted down the endless list of items to be packed for my trip to Saigon at the beginning of July. What was supposed to be a 1-hour trip to Walmart to buy all the items requested by my family turned out to last for 3 hours, with hopping on and off the 405 to get to the countless grocery stores and farmers' markets around the city. Sitting under the shade of a sweetgum tree, with a cup of bubble tea, I waited for the bus to get to the next farmers' market. It was a dazzlingly sunny day, with no sight of clouds in the deep blue sky overlooking the glistening skyscrapers. As I arrived at the market, the fragrant scent of the apple piles at the entrance calmed me down after hours of navigating the crazed crowds of shoppers at Walmart diving for summer discounts. Still, I was more than glad to arrive home, hands aching from carrying too many packs of strawberries. By 5 PM, to prevent myself from turning into a glob, I plunged into the neighborhood's swimming pool - a splash, and all was well again...

Two days later, at the ungodly hour of 5:45 AM, the alarm rang on my phone, signaling a long day ahead: my 23-hour flight to Saigon. After getting through the byzantine checkin and customs, I was safely ensconced on an Alaskan Air's airplane, with the ceiling only a few centimeters shy of touching my head. Through the telecom, I could hear the pilot's warm voice pointing out the majestic landscapes we were passing by. Before long, the plane was soaring up the pillowy clouds scattered across a vast sky. On our right, emerald specks of islands scattered across the Georgia Strait. On our left stood the majestic snow-capped Mount Baker, now even more mighty as we approached the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. As I didn't even have time to nap before the flight landed in just 45 minutes, I couldn't properly see the flight information board. After checking whether my gate existed, I navigated through the airport's oddly complex shuttle train systems, taking three trains just to reach the nearest Starbucks. Thankfully, the skills learned from taking countless trains to UBC helped me survive the chaos and manage to squeeze in some time resting before the long haul ahead. 

Tis you found out that every terminal except yours had a Starbucks. Fun little story: my sister and I were debating in Vietnamese whether we should get off the next stop while the train was resting. Suddenly, a petite woman dressed in an airport staff uniform swiftly slid onto the train and confirmed to us in fluent Vietnamese (?!) that our intended station was indeed the next stop and went back to the platform in about 5 seconds. That's really something to make up for the shuttle system.

Then, some 10 hours and 3 Disney movies later, Narita International Airport welcomed me with the blazing heat outside the terminal, waking me up better than any cup of coffee. The shiny terminal was crowded with passengers carrying heaps of shopping bags, a real sight to behold due to the yen's decreasing value at the moment. As tired as I was, I was excited to join the festivity by heading to the food court, where I had the most sublime curry udon ever. Around 10:45 PM, we landed in Saigon. The crowds of people waiting for the passengers at the arrival gate thus ended my airport shenanigans and began my time, a time of basking in the glorious humidity and indulging in the wonders of cheap street food for the next two months. What’s better than celebrating your return to homeland with a steaming bowl of phở at 12 AM, when the streets are still noisy with motorcycles honking just like five hours ago?

O curry udon, the saver of flights

Sure enough, I woke up at 7 AM the next morning not only by the noise volume outside my house but also by the sound of my mom’s pestle and motor banging through the floor, the clinic’s buzzing drills, and my dog Nest’s bark. It was a boiling hot yet cloudy day, perfect for a creamy tofu breakfast followed by a half-liter cup of milk tea top with diabetic-inducing golden egg foam and white pearl jelly, sitting below the mist maker at the neighborhood’s garden café. Although I had just spent 22 hours returning to Saigon, jetlag never hit, which I attributed to my Vietnamese circadian rhythm being the default one in my body. I spent the first few days lulling around the house, petting Nest’s fluffy head, or pretending to be busy with budget planning, work applications and the like. On the weekend, my family drove to our summer house in Củ Chi, around 1.5 hours away from downtown Saigon. As soon as the wheels rolled on the dirt road, I was met by a herd of cows grazing nonchalantly alongside the paddy rice field-surrounded canal – a scene straight from from my grandmother’s house in rural Central Vietnam. After helping around with sweeping fallen breadfruit leaves on the yard, I rested on the bench under the broad shade of the breadfruit tree, where its big thorny fruits hung right above my forehead. The sound of the sparrows and swallows coming home after a day hunting all across the Indochina Peninsula (as Cambodia was just around 20km away!), interspersed with the rustling leaves when the riparian breeze blew by, created the most harmonious melody ever, ready to lull any tired traveller into a slumber.

Meet Nest, my 8-month-old pug. He loves chewing on all things within a 2-meter radius, so much that he decided to prefer a spoon as his primary target over his kingdom of rubber toys...

...or fallen breadfruit in the yard. Who's a good boy?

When not stealing another slice of fried breadfruit in Củ Chi, I immersed myself in the ever-familiar bustling pace of Saigon. Like a religious ritual, I watched the musical Ngày Xửa Ngày Xưa (Once Upon a Time), a children's musical that has been running since 2000 with tickets sold out every year. In this age, where YouTube videos dominate as the panacea for children's entertainment, this musical series remains one of the few theater pieces that transcend generations. This year's musical was about the adventure of Sinbad, a character from Arabian Nights, who was tasked to save the Egyptian civilization from disaster when their national treasure, The Holy Eye, was stolen by a dark force. Despite the absence of Thanh Loc, the cast's most popular actor, the theatre was buzzing with excitement as soon as the velvet curtains opened. Suddenly, I transformed into my two-year-old self marvelling at the elaborate costumes and enchanting melodies transporting me into mythical lands, where scorpions could sing, talking birds deliver royal messages, and all the daily worries disappear into a pink cloud.  

Meeting my childhood superstar, Đình Toàn. He played the main character Sinbad and directed the whole play! This selfie was taken by my lovely little sister, who is too shy to appear here but was the contrary when greeting her stars

On a midweek afternoon, I met with some old middle school friends at a café in District 5, the heart of the city’s Chinatown – the world’s largest of its kind in area. Amid traditional Chinese herbal medicine shops with heaps of fragrant cinnamon and jujube and ancient paint-streaked stores selling elaborate phoenix theatre headwear, cozily tucked a small café. Over iced chocolate and coffee, surrounded by elegant blue porcelain decorations, the once star-eyed sixth-graders now turned second-year university students studying vastly different areas chatted endlessly as if eight years ago was yesterday. It was so heartwarming to see their smiles and internally impeccable sense of humor joking about all things that exist on Earth. Later, we braved the rush-hour traffic on one of my friend’s old motorcycle to have some pizza at a place called Dodo, where despite its Russian origin (surprise!), treated me to the most heavenly teriyaki pizza ever. The feeling of mayo-marinated salmon and salty seaweed was unforgettable, but even better was their 50% discount. After all, something must make up for the cost of coffee in downtown Saigon 😊

Sorry my Italian buddies, but teriyaki pizza has my heart now

A cozy coffee in District 3, where a tall cup of coffee with milk froth costs only 25,000 VND (around 1.37 CAD). This is probably how I could survive from the sleep deprivation from all the noises here