asialife HCMC 1 - AsiaLIFE Magazine

New York City
It was a strange sight: a Tiger
Beer bottle perched on the coffee
table in my Brooklyn apartment.
For a moment, I thought I’d
been ambushed, that I was the
target of a sloppy plot to kidnap
and repatriate me to Vietnam.
(Kevin, are you there Dean Trav
John Justin Matt Come out.)
It turns out there was a
simpler explanation: my new
roommate Ben has a taste for
the Southeast Asian suds. I
shouldn’t have been so surprised;
one can procure just
about any gustatory artefact
from the bodegas of the five
boroughs. But to see that
blue-and-gold feline stalking
me more than 9,000 miles from
where I’d last faced him shook
me.
It was just another sign that
my East Coast and Far East
lives were overlapping, more
proof that I’d crossed over into
the Vietnamese version of the
Twilight Zone.
Just two weeks after departing
Tan Son Nhat Airport, I
had my first Saigon reunion.
With my good friend Linh in
Toronto visiting family and
my former Cao Thang housemate
Erin having relocated to
L.A., we joined a crowd that
included San Art co-founders
Dinh Q. Le and Tiffany Chung
at the Museum of Modern Art.
Officially we were there to see
Dinh’s exhibit, The Farmers and
the Helicopters, but we soon
retired to a nearby restaurant,
just as we’d sometimes done
after openings at San Art. We
descended on that unfortunate
Chinese establishment, rowdily
commandeering an expanse of
flattops, and proceeded to do
what Saigonites do best: take
our good old time. Management
was none too pleased.
The following night, Linh,
Erin and I connected with
Maggie and Brendan, the
dynamic duo behind AsiaL-
IFE’s illustrated Wildlife issue
from March 2010. Our meeting
point A seedy karaoke joint in
Chinatown where we belted out
80s classics beneath the glow of
a retro reel of made-for-karaoke
scenes. Toss in a few shots of
Halong Bay and we could have
been at the Saigon Hotel.
These first few weeks I’ve
lived in a sort of limbo between
Saigon and New York. But life
goes on. I’ve begun to do the
hard stuff: adjust to the cold,
stop calling soccer “football”,
and—perhaps hardest of all—
find an East Coast Vietnamese
restaurant that approximates
the tastes and textures of home.
The hunt, thus far, is not going
well. If I get really desperate for
a taste of HCM City though, I’m
pretty sure Tiger Beer tastes the
same here.
Sincerely.
Tom DiChristopher
asialife HCMC 105