Far from the touts and tourists of Ben Thanh, a market
street exists unlike anything your hotel’s concierge will recommend. Located in
the similarly named Binh Thanh District, just outside the city’s center, Vo Duy
Ninh is a quarter mile arc of unsullied delight. A non-stop blur of vibrant
sights, peculiar sounds, and wonderful aromas running from Ngo Tat To up to the
high rises on Nguyen Huu Canh.
For most
of the day, street vendors pack the narrow lane. Mackerel and football sized
tuna lie on ice next to dazzling green parrotfish taken from nearby reefs.
Snapper splash about in large, circular, half foot deep tin bowls as hoses pump
in oxygen. Shrimp occasionally jump to freedom from the scale only to reach
their ultimate demise at the wheel of an unsympathetic motorbike.
Any
live fish chosen for that night’s meal is grabbed by the vendor, placed on a
cardboard mat, and beaten repeatedly with a foot-long metal rod, aptly named a
Priest—as if the vendor administered the fish’s last rites before the walloping
began. It’s a gruesome, yet fascinating scene to behold.
Between
the dozen or so women offering fish along Vo Duy Ninh, others sell chicken,
cramped on massive plates, chopped or in full, heads and feet and all. Their
live counterparts squabble nearby in small domed cages. There is a duck woman,
six or seven pig vendors displaying any body part imaginable, and two women
selling chopped dog, heads facing out of course.
Durian,
jackfruit, and banana women, all donning different and equally fascinating Ao
Ba Ba’s or Vietnamese pajamas, sit just past the last of the vegetable vendors,
whose bowls of jades, crimsons and ambers in turn puncture the asphalt with
vibrant signs of life.
Any
space that isn’t taken up by a fish, meat, fruit, or vegetable vendor is most
likely a store front selling anything from soy sauce to spices to the small
plastic chairs that the Vietnamese have at some point in time decided to claim
as their own.
At the
southern end of the street, just before it meets Ngo Tat To, along the walls of
an incredibly noisy primary school, carts serve Pho, Com Tam Suon, Bun Bo Hue,
Bahn Mi, and numerous other Vietnamese dishes. They operate from noon until well
past midnight.
Easily reached by cab or Xe Om, Vo Duy Ninh is
a mesmerizing alternative to the tourist riddled, overpriced markets of
District 1. After you’ve walked the street once or twice, choose an alley and
get lost in the maze. The labyrinth of tiny lanes is filled with street foods
and curbside bars. Have some fun and be the only westerner in sight.
