Saigon, soul city

No problem") because with cyclos you inevitably end up paying more than you bargained for. And besides, the centre of Saigon is best seen on foot. The greater city is a chaotic sprawl but District 1 is surprisingly compact and intimate.

The French took control of Saigon in 1859 and quickly embarked on a building program that included wide tree-lined boulevards and architecture that would not look out of place in Paris, and much of it survives today in Saigon's inner city districts. It may not be as concentrated as it is in Hanoi's old quarter but some of the best examples of French colonial building are to be found in Saigon - the grand central post office, the glorious wedding cake of a town hall (now the headquarters of the People's Committee), Notre Dame Cathedral, the Opera House, the Majestic Hotel, the main court house, and the many shops that line Le Loi and Nguyen Hue streets and the city's other main thoroughfares.

It is easy to see why the French called it the Pearl of the Orient.

Indeed, the French architectural legacy is everywhere in the city, not just the centre. You just have to look out for the elegant villas and public buildings that are often hidden behind a sometimes dishevelled modern veneer.

Built in 1914, the Ben Thanh market occupies an entire block and is a lively jamboree of smiling, beckoning vendors offering everything in Vietnam that seems to have been grown, woven, sewn, cooked and enthusiastically manufactured to infringe international copyright. Outside I watch an old woman having her chin shaved of unwanted hair with an ancient electric razor. Inside, the dazzling daylight is filtered through the central dome and it's a refreshing respite from the heat. I stop and breathe it all in as the business of life echoes around this bustling playground of energetic buying, selling and haggling.

I have been to similar markets in Cambodia and Laos but none matches this for variety of goods being sold or the warmth and ebullience of those doing the selling. Despite the recent troubles they have had to endure, the Vietnamese are a warm and fun-loving people, always ready to celebrate something. This is particularly true in the south, where the year-long sunshine and the considerable distance from the cold fingers of central government in Hanoi have given the people a distinctive feisty independence and joie de vivre.

It is this spirit that makes Saigon the heart and soul of the country."

Sir, sir, you buy T-shirt, sir.

Calvin Klein, one hundred per cent. Polo shirt, very beautiful.

From America," a young woman shouts to me.

That's America, the one just on the outskirts of Saigon. The little polo player on the breast of the shirt looks like he's about to tumble off his horse but I buy the shirt anyway. I'd always fancied myself in canary yellow and for $5 you can't go wrong.

I squeeze, breath held and stomach in, through the tight rows of tailor's cloth, woven baskets, blue-patterned pottery, glittering jewellery and criminally cheap sunglasses.

There are enough shoes here to shod most of South-East Asia. I stop at the fruit stalls, where the women sit cross-legged on the tiled floor, or elevated on wicker platforms, like Buddhas in a temple, and buy a dragonfruit.

With its devil-red skin and hornlike spurs, it looks prehistoric but tastes post-modern. As a Westerner I pay more than I should but there are so many dong to the dollar that it's not worth worrying about. I have seen visitors angrily haggling with a coconut seller over what amounts to a few cents and wondered whether bargaining can be taken too far.

I cannot resist the entreaties of the food vendors and take a seat on a child-size plastic chair and have a bowl of beef noodle soup, or pho bo, as it is called locally. Effectively the country's national dish, pho is a fragrant bowl of broth with beef or chicken, noodles, spring onions, bean shoots and a garnish of fresh herbs. As well as a great way to start the day it is a lifesaving hangover remedy. I remind myself to pay a visit to my favourite pho shop, Pho Hoa, in District 3.

I bypass the butchers' section, where the women cheerily slit the throats of a variety of anxious looking fowl, and skin frogs as they would peel off a rubber glove by the kitchen sink. I wave and smile my way past the flower sellers and out into Le Thanh Ton Street. I move along, constantly gazing upwards to admire the graceful colonial French architecture that crowns the functional shops below, like tiaras on care-worn faces. Weaving along the footpath, between shoppers, beggars and street stalls, I reach my tailor of choice, Mr Dung.

The Melbourne comedian Hung Le tells this joke about his fellow countrymen: How do you know if you have been burgled by a Vietnamese? Answer: He has done your homework and stolen your sewing machine. And it's true, if you want to have clothes made, Vietnam is the place to do it. At any time of the day, anywhere in the country, someone is sewing something worth wearing. Mr Dung (pronounced Yoong) greets me with a warm smile of reaquaintance and memories of many suits past, and I order a handful of shirts, which we agree I can collect in five days. Experience tells me I should go back in six or seven. Needless to say, the cost is a fraction of the amount it would be in Australia and the result is far superior to anything you can buy off the rack there.

I consider a visit to a War Remnants Museum (previously known rather indelicately as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes), to remind myself of the years of hardship suffered by Vietnamese people during what they call the American War but decide against it. While the city has many beautiful pagodas and temples and fascinating, if slightly tired, museums worth visiting, Saigon for me is about walking the streets, where with every step you are almost guaranteed to see something you have never seen before. It is about breathing, smelling, tasting, absorbing as much as you can. Tourism by osmosis.

So I decide on a cheerier course of action with a walk down to the river. This requires crossing the road at what I call the Russian Roulette Roundabout just outside the Ben Thanh market. Here, four main arteries converge into a raging white water of smoke-belching buses, trucks, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and previously unknown mutations thereof. As Sinatra should have sang, "if you can cross the street here, you can cross it anywhere". I take the plunge and miraculously the traffic parts and flows around me. The secret of survival when crossing a busy Saigon street is do not stop. You will just get everybody confused and tears, or multiple internal injuries, are inevitable.

Safely across, I admire the schoolgirls cycling by, straight backed and effortlessly elegant in their white ao dais. A man, his face weather-beaten to old brown parchment, splutters though the chaos with what seems like 50 limp and weary ducks strapped to his motorbike. I hand a few dong to a beggar I recognise; her face was dissolved by napalm when she was a child.

I head down Le Loi Street and what I notice is a growing number of upmarket shops selling beautifully crafted clothes and linen and turn into Nguyen Hue Street and down to Ton Duc Thang Street. I look out for one of the many touts selling boat rides along the Saigon River. I bargain him down to 200,000 dong (they always ask for too much) for a two-hour tour in an elongated wooden motor boat. Every time I am in Saigon I take this trip, which should be mandatory for any visitor.

The Saigon River is a working port, busy with the din of life and commerce. (From here, you can also catch the hydrofoil to Vung Tau, the former French seaside resort of Cap St Jacques. But then, you'd be disappointed as the beaches there are not worth the journey. Indeed, Vietnam is not a place to come for a beach holiday at all).

My captain and crew is a bright-eyed middle-aged woman who doesn't speak English but has smiling, nodding and pointing down to a fine art. We putter off across the river, dodging other small craft and thick floating islands of bright-green vegetation, then under the large neon signs advertising Mercedes-Benz and Sky TV, and into another world.

I glance back at the Saigon skyline, which seems to stretch upwards with every visit, and towards the ramshackle wooden and corrugated-iron shanties lining the tributary that ushers us into the heart of the still mostly rural District 4. As we glide further into the rice fields and reed beds, it's hard to believe that we are only a few minutes away from the frenetic city centre, where pavement cobblers hammer at strips of leather and unwary tourists stand dumbfounded as speedy motorcycle thieves disappear into the distance with their cameras and handbags. We wave at women toiling in the rice paddies, at bare-chested men in boats groaning under the weight of freshly-cut reeds. I sit back with the sun in my face and listen to the silence, punctuated only by the throaty cough of our engine.

An hour later we emerge into the Saigon River like time-travellers and begin putt-putting our way back to the city, past jam-packed ferries, giant container ships, huge wooden rice boats bloated like pregnant whales, and all manner of smaller vessels transporting and selling everything imaginable. Down here, families live on their boats, river police sleep on their floating stations and tend their flowerpots, and the villagers on the riverbanks go about their lives on foot, motorbike and bicycle.

I can feel the dusk in the shadows being cast across Dong Khoi Street (which Graham Greene made famous as Rue Catinat in The Quiet American) as I stroll back to my friend's house near Notre Dame, where I am staying. Past the Majestic, and the Continental Hotel, the Cafe Givral, the antique, art and silk shops, and the new designer clothing and homewares stores.

There is so much history here, so much that evokes the past, particularly that which we associate with the war. But I see that things are changing. New and taller hotels are opening . There are not so many tacky tourist shops selling fake dog-tags and reproduction opium pipes. The ranks of the beggars are thinning. There are more cars and fewer cyclos. The street's rough edges are disappearing and I can feel the smooth skin of prosperity. But still, it retains much of the character that makes it what it is. There is no place like this.

Outside the central post office, my favourite French building in Saigon, I am surrounded by young girls selling postcards, stamp albums and bound collections of old Vietnamese currency.

"Hey you, you buy from me?" they yelp. "I no lucky today. I no sell nothing."

I take a seat on one of the varnished wooden benches inside and study the vintage maps of Indochine painted on the walls. I nod to a large canvas of Uncle Ho, the man who beat the French and set the stage for the defeat of American military might. What would he think of Saigon today? Did he know that half the population is under 25 and has no memory of the war? That many of his countrymen who fled in 1975 were now returning to do business and invest in the resurgent economy? Or that elegant French cafes are sprouting up by the park in Le Duan Street, where not so long ago the only things for sale were cheap greeting cards and five-dollar hookers?

He'd be happy with the recent restoration of this post office. It's grand and cavernous and echoes with the sound of people paying their bills, posting letters and making excited telephone calls to their families elsewhere in the country or overseas.

As I sit there, my new pack of postcards in my lap, I plan the evening ahead. Perhaps it's the balmy warmth, the half-hearted street lighting, the drifting smoke from pavement barbecues and the constant buzz and hum of the traffic but Saigon nights have a dreamlike quality about them, and should be savoured at every opportunity.

I decide on a swim in the 14th-floor pool of the Diamond Plaza building; a pre-dinner beer at Saigon Saigon, the delightful, if expensive, rooftop bar at the Caravelle Hotel that has an almost panoramic view of the city; a barbecue dinner at Luong Son restaurant in Ly Tu Trong Street, which is always lively and full with Vietnamese families; then a quick stroll next door to the Blue Gecko bar, which has the most raucous music and best pool table of the multitude of bars in town.

Later, and depending how much I've drunk, I'll take a taxi down to Pham Ngu Lao Street in the heart of the backpacker district where the restaurants and bars stay open later than anywhere else in town. Tomorrow? I might go to the old presidential palace where the North Vietnamese tanks so dramatically burst through the gates in 1975. Then again, I might just wander the streets.

My reverie is shaken by a familiar call.

"Hey you, you want shoeshine? Very cheap. Two dollar."

I turn and there, grinning at me from the steps outside, is the Winklepicker Boy. He's taller but bean-shoot thin, and from where I'm sitting, his shoes still look way too big for his feet. But they are polished to perfection and, if anything, look more dangerous than ever.

Graham Reilly is an Age journalist. Two of his novels, Saigon Tea and Five Oranges, are partly set in Saigon.

FAST FACTS

Getting there: Several airlines fly to Saigon via Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and other cities. I always take the Vietnam Airlines direct flight from Melbourne, and book through Hoa Hop (Central Travel) at 163 Barkly St, Footscray (03) 9689 8989.

Visas: A 30-day tourist visa costs $55, which your travel agent can arrange, or download application from http://www.vietnamembassy.org.au

How much?: A direct Melbourne-Saigon return flight this month would cost $1120 per person which rises to $1750 between December 7 and January 15.

Getting around: In Saigon, walk around District 1 or take taxis, but ask for the meter to be turned on. Avoid cyclos and motorcycle taxis.

Where to stay: There are plenty of hotels to choose from for every budget. My favourites are the Grand and the Majestic, both in Dong Khoi St, and the Caravelle in Lam Son Square.

Where to eat : In D.1: Ben Thanh market, corner of Le Loi St and Phan Boi Chau St; Luong Son restaurant, 31 Ly Tu Trong St; Le Camargue, 16 Cao Ba Quat St. In D.3: Ngoc Suong, 19C Le Quy Don St (fabulous seafood); Pho Hoa, 260C Pasteur St.

Where to drink: Blue Gecko Bar, 31 Ly Tu Trong St; Saigon Saigon at the Caravelle Hotel: Rooftop Bar at the Rex Hotel; Rooftop Bar at the Sheraton; The Underground, 69 Dong Khoi St; Q Bar, Lam Son Square; the many bars on Pham Ngu Lau St.

When to go: The weather is generally fine in Saigon throughout the year, with brief afternoon downpours in the rainy season.

Where to go:
Ben Thanh market: corner of Le Loi and Phan Boi Chau streets.
Dung Tailors: 221 Le Thanh Ton Street.
Central Post Office: corner Dong Khoi and Nguyen streets (opposite Notre Dame Cathedral)
Luong Son restaurant: 31 Ly Tu Trong Street
Blue Gecko bar: next door

River trips: corner Nguyen Hue and Ton Duc Thang streets

Diamond Plaza: 34 Le Duan Street. For a fee you can use the gym and the roof-top pool.

Currency: You get a lot of dong for your dollar - 12,033 at last count.

More information: http://www.vietnamtourism.com

Some optional extras: Take a river trip along the Saigon River from the corner of Nguyen Hue St and Ton Duc Thang St; hire a car and driver, or take a Sinh Cafe bus, and head down to Can Tho and the lush Mekong Delta; make a day-trip to the Vietcong's underground tunnels at Cu Chi; it's only short flight to Nha Trang for freshly caught seafood on the beach or to Phu Quoc Island (book at Traveland in Nguyen Hue St).

Safety: There is no physical threat but watch out for bag snatchers on motorcycles.

Reading: Lonely Planet Vietnam; Fodor's Vietnam.