Diary Day 9: It’s Too Soon

By Christyna Fong

Photographs by Christyna Fong

It’s unbelievable how nine days zoom past you. In a blink of an eye, we’re packing up and leaving Saigon tomorrow! I woke up with a rather heavy heart, but decided that I can’t spend my last day in Saigon moping and pulling a long face. So I dragged myself out of bed and went out for a nice English breakfast in the shop next door. Yes, English breakfast in post-French colonial Vietnam. The delicious irony!

After that I followed Thanh and Thang together with Andrea, Mumbi and John for lunch at a quaint little restaurant that sells authentic French food cooked by a French chef! But as luck would have it the restaurant was closed on Sundays.

Exploring the streets of Saigon one last time.

So we went to Din Ky instead! Apparently it’s a famous Chinese restaurant in the area, evident by the patrons that are spilling out to the sidewalk.  The breakfast was still sloshing in my stomach so I opted for a coconut instead of food. As I sipped on my drink lazily listening to the chatter in the background, it struck me how easily we all took to each other. It feels like everybody truly and thoroughly enjoys each other’s company, and each of us has a place in the family we have come together to be in the last nine days. This is where I got teary eyed and distracted myself by struggling with the coconut flesh!

  

Waiting for the rest of the food to arrive!

After that we trounced the sidewalks, looking at stalls and making last minute purchases to bring home. The stalls on the sidewalk are actually very reasonable, with a decent variety (although not as much as at Ben Than Market) and comparable prices! So if you find yourself on the last day of your trip with a few souvenirs short, hit the streets and see what treasures you can uncover.

One of the street vendors in Saigon

By the time I had spent the last of my dongs, we were running late for the practice for cultural night! So we rushed back home to the sight of everybody sitting in the park. We proceeded to put on a show for the locals and tourists as we practiced our dikir barat for the group performance tonight. Our audience seemed to enjoy it, judging from the laughter directed at our very loud group! Usually we take a bit of the country we visited back home with us but I’m glad today we were able to leave something of ours behind, even if they are just memories. 

Practicing dikir barat in the great outdoors!

After dikir barat was bhangra practice! Apparently our stomping could be heard all the way down. That’s how hard we were practicing! We really worked up a sweat before getting ready for Cultural Night.

I believe it’ll be an emotionally exhausting evening, but in a good way. Water works will fly, believe you me, if not from anyone else but I! Getting ready for Cultural Night now. This promises to be a fun filled night!

Christyna Fong, 21, is taking her Degree in Arts with a suicidal Writing and Communication major. She can be a bit floozy and start using words like floozy. I also suspect she might be bipolar (bear!).