It doesn’t feel so long ago that Saigon went into battle mode against invaders of microscopic scales.
And the fallout wasn’t just visible, it could be heard. For a terrible chunk of the year, the only sounds Saigoneers could hear were the distance wailing of sirens or the jolting sneeze of one thoroughly, clinically poked nose. Deafening silence took on a different meaning, and for the first time, the absence of our neighbors' power–karaokeing caused greater misery than their perpetual presence.
It seemed unimaginable that a year after the beginning of the lockdown, the city would rumble with the most glorious cacophony: blasting kẹo kéo speakers, clinking mugs of 333, and competing vuvuzelas, perhaps not just to celebrate victory over a football rivalry, but the overcoming of something so so much bigger.
Saigon is really back, bitches, and we’ll 1, 2, 3, dzô to that.
Flip the postcard to feel a glimpse of the noises that we love to hate and hate to love:
