 A colourful flower stall at An Dong, in Cholon |
Even by Vietnamese standards, this place is CROWDED. On either side of the high-rise An Ðông Commercial Centre are high-rise yellow-washed houses, their façades dripping the soot of decades of pollution and neglect. At the foot of the houses, fruit and flower stalls are surrounded by traffic so dense that at peak hours a mechanical shoehorn could be a decided advantage. And I’m still just on the outskirts of Cholon, Saigon’s bustling Chinese quarter. For centuries, Cholon has been a hive of commerce that has acted as a catalyst for the rest of southern Vietnam.
|
