My uncertainty arose from the fact that SARS was ‘raging’ through Asia at the time. And yet joining me on the flight from SARS-free Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City were about 40 travel-hardened Japanese. In an attempt to appease both fate and the gods by traveling at this time, we had all brought the soft white masks popularised by SARS. But we had also all placed them next to us on the seat.

It was as though we were aware that while the masks were largely useless unless we refused to drink or eat throughout the flight, it was somehow better to have one than not. Indeed not one of us buckled under the pressure, although heads did turn sharply every time someone wheezed or hacked. In the end, our pride (stubbornness?) carried us through, and upon our arrival we found ourselves surrounded by similarly unmasked people.

Anyway, after a hard day spent getting measured at various tailors, lounging at the pool, and enduring a somewhat sadistic massage, we decided to head for Cholon.

Just as dusk was setting, we jumped in one of the many taxis neatly lined up outside the hotel and arrived only slightly shaken from the Vietnamese traffic experience. My first impression of Cholon is that it is not for the hygenically fainthearted.

Humans and animals coexist affably in various stages of life and death here and it is only the outsider that remarks the cats chasing the rats that are trying to get at the dead chickens.Other than that, it is a fairly average market; the Ben Thanh market is probably more conducive for souvenir shopping. And if you are interested in buying some of the famous Vietnamese coffee, the Ben Thanh market has the infamous weasel coffee.

(The delicious flavour stems from the fact that raw coffee beans are fed to weasels. After the weasels have digested and eliminated the beans the beans are then collected and roasted.) As it was already dark, things were starting to wind down in Cholon, so we decided to head back to Dong Khoi.

Just as dusk was setting, we jumped in one of the many taxis neatly lined up outside the hotel and arrived only slightly shaken from the Vietnamese traffic experience. My first impression of Cholon is that it is not for the hygenically fainthearted.

Humans and animals coexist affably in various stages of life and death here, and it is only the outsider that remarks the cats chasing the rats that are trying to get at the dead chickens.Other than that, it is a fairly average market; the Ben Thanh market is probably more conducive for souvenir shopping.

And if you are interested in buying some of the famous Vietnamese coffee, the Ben Thanh market has the infamous weasel coffee.  (The delicious flavour stems from the fact that raw coffee beans are fed to weasels. After the weasels have digested and eliminated the beans, the beans are then collected and roasted.)

As it was already dark, things were starting to wind down in Cholon, so we decided to head back to Dong Khoi.  Of course, there were no taxis neatly lined up anywhere (as there is no real curb for them to do so at), so we started walking. It was the aimless, bumbling walk that I like to think of as the classic tourist strut: mouths slightly agape, heads swiveling and our bodies moving in such a way as to block all pedestrians behind us.

There were now two cyclos following us, and against all the paranoid good sense that has been drummed into me about making friendly overtures to people following you, my friend turned around, hailed the cyclos and negotiated a deal back to Dong Khoi. I settled into the seat and girded myself for the inevitable collision I would have with another cyclo, bicycle or car. In the other cyclo, my friend began a thorough probe into Vietnamese family and culture, food and drink. And I found myself listening to the driver’s story as traffic turned out to be far less terrifying when observed from a cyclo than from a car. Traffic in Viet Nam more swirls and flows than stops and goes.

It’s the cars that disrupt the rhythm of the bikes and pedestrians, not the other way round. The ride was in fact quite pleasant.  But just as I was getting comfortable, we came to a stop. My driver assured us that the cafe we had stopped in front of had excellent local beer (bia hoi).

Moonshine would perhaps have been a more accurate description. I am still not sure if it was the beer itself, or the glasses which the waiter brought out filled with ice, that brought on the strange feeling. My friend gasped at the thought of beer on the rocks. I gasped at the thought of ICE in my glass.

The waiter dumped the ice out at our request, but at no time during that trip was SARS further from my mind than when faced with unfiltered water. SARS seemed too commercialized and almost glamorous compared to the banal reality of hepatitis. And yet, for whatever incomprehensible reason, I drank the beer.

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