Some places have both. They have the relaxed, date-night vibe where you can sit by the canal and watch the traffic pass, forget about the hours passing. They also have the energy, the noise, the thump-thump-thump of bass which is almost like an earthquake in the way it makes the ground wobble, makes people’s bodies bounce and jiggle in one chaotic dance. Bông Kia Sên is a place that has both and it’s this, among other things, that makes it so special.
Let’s say you want a quiet night out. A few drinks with some friends or a spot for a date. Situated right on Trường Sa, it’s hard to beat a place like Bông Kia Sên. You’ve got everything you want for a cosy, lazy evening. There’s outdoor seating on low foldable chairs so you’re sat up close to the people driving home. There’s a second floor with a pool table and sofas for even comfier seating. There’s good music on the speakers, homebrewed beers on the menu, and a group of young staff that are usually lounging on one of the empty chairs or gathered on the couch, seeming to be enjoying their night as much as you are.
Most nights Bông Kia Sên possesses the spirit of that slow, easy-moving Saigon that takes some time getting used to if you’re from another country. Things feel as if they’re moving quicker depending on where you are in the world. Growing up in Tokyo, everyone expects everything to arrive on the dot and that means when you’re there, you tend to live in a state of constant watchfulness. This, after a while, feels suffocating. Saigon’s not like that. Things take time. You see it in the coffee, how it drip-drip-drips from the phin. You see it in the old, dilapidated buildings, the architecture from centuries ago. Economists like to call Vietnam the next “big-thing” but it’s nice to know that no matter how far into the future the country may go, it bears its past as a badge of honour rather than something to cast aside and forget. There’s something weirdly comforting about this appreciation for what once was, for the old, for time’s slow tick, for having to wait. A quiet night at Bông Kia Sên reminds me of this.
You stop by, order a drink at the bar counter, sit on one of the chairs on the sidewalk and whether you’re with your friends or on a date at some point you get the sense as if you’ve got nowhere else to be. Time slows to a standstill. Up front, motorbikes float as if on air and the Saigon River continues on its steady stream through eternity. It’s a river that’s flowed since before any of us were around, one that’ll keep flowing long past when any of us remain. You know on those quiet nights at Bông Kia Sên that perhaps you’ve learned to tap into Saigon’s meandering, easy-moving pace. And into an endless midnight you’ll drift.
On the other hand, let’s say you want a party. Let’s say you want loud, wobbly bass that transports you straight back to university house parties. Tight, stuffy corridors choking with smoke, people squeezed like tinned sardines in rooms that keep getting hotter, hotter, hotter. Bông Kia Sên has that too. I remember one street party they hosted in collaboration with Nine Lives Lucky Vodka. When one of the staff invited me a few days before I wasn't really sure what they meant by ‘street party’. I didn’t exactly have much hope but when I showed up on the night I could hear music thumping from way down on Trường Sa. They hadn’t been lying. A DJ booth had been set up on the sidewalk and a crowd that was a mix of locals and expats jumped, danced, fist-pumped with such a ferocious ball of collective energy the Vietnamese driving by slowed their bikes to gawk at the spectacle of what must’ve looked like a horde of hooligans performing a séance.
Gone was any memory of the languid evening at Bông Kia Sên. Drinks were all but thrown at you by frantic bartenders, giggling with a glee like schoolchildren. Shots of vodka were passed around—one, two, three, more—and the tide would carry you away if you didn’t know how to ride it. On nights like these, it's easy to lose your bearings. Easy to take things a little too far and perhaps wake up tomorrow with a splitting headache, once again asking yourself as if a parent to a child: Why did you do all that? But you know the answer. It’s fun, that’s why you did all that and you know you’ll probably do it again. Why not, after all? You’re in Saigon—where things move slow but then again, so much of it is in your face: the smell, the heat, the noise of bus horns demanding you get out of the way. So much is fast and chaotic and impossible to really understand if you are, like myself, from someplace else.
Saigon then, is a contradiction. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. The Yin and Yang duality that permeates through the city is rooted so far down past millennia that it’s as inevitable as a tree growing, a dog barking—In short, as nature. It’s a city where each drip of coffee from the phin holds the weight of years, of long hours toiling under the sun to harvest a bean, process it, dry it, all the way until it reaches your phin where it drips like oil into a black sea. It’s a city that’s so much more immediate. That grabs a hold of you the moment you leave Tân Sơn Nhất airport and are met at the exit with a wall of Vietnamese faces staring right back. That immediacy never leaves you and so for a while, a quiet alleyway becomes a place of respite, though even among the silence of Saigon’s hẻms, life abounds in the tiniest nooks and crannies. Generations of families have come through struggle and triumph to become, in that moment you see them poke a head out a door or a small window, an image that embeds itself in your mind’s eye like a wax seal held above a candle and pressed down on paper. Just as Saigon is a contradiction then, so is Bông Kia Sên. Whether you’re after a sleepy night or a rowdy street party, you can have both.
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