I met Chí for the first time over a year ago. I was sitting outside of a Warning Zone in Đa Kao with Aidan, enjoying a relatively quiet evening when a man, smoking a cigarette outside of a bar called The Tailor, waved at us before going back inside. He promptly returned with shots, walking over with a grin as he gave us one each and introduced himself. We ended up at The Tailor once we finished up at Warning Zone, spent a night chatting to Chí and though our time there ended up as something of a blur, it kickstarted a relationship of chance meetings. I’d always bump into Chí every now and again, often in the most unexpected places. That was what happened again around the start of July. Getting off a Grab bike to do a profile of Lựu at A Priori, I spotted Chí, nursing a coffee and cigarette on one of the seats outside. Just like how our chance meeting outside of Warning Zone led to an evening of chatting at The Tailor, bumping into Chí outside of A Priori resulted in this profile. It’s funny as from the evening we met I always had the impression Chí had a few stories to tell, maybe a lesson here and there, and once District 0 started he was someone on the back of my mind to reach out to. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. He was put on the path.
We’re all inextricably tied to the choices of our family and the people that came before us. This is no different with Chí, which is why it’s fitting to begin his story before he was born, with the Fall of Saigon in 1975. This momentous event in Vietnam’s history resulted in Chí’s father meeting his ‘uncle’ (not by blood) for the first time. The circumstances of their meeting were stark, given that Chí’s father served as a guard at one of the reeducation camps in the country, whereas his uncle had been sent there for reeducation. Despite this, as occasionally happens when individuals on opposite sides of the fence meet, they formed a bond unlike any other. Seeing as his uncle played a key role during Chí’s formative years, it was impossible not to include how he came to enter Chí’s life. Fast forward seven years, Chí’s father left for Saigon while his uncle was finally released and left for the States. Chí was born after that in Nghệ An, where Ho Chi Minh came from.
Chí’s childhood was, for the most part, normal. As a kid he was a good student at school, and he was raised with something of an expectation to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a police officer. Despite this, he was never personally set on this route, which meant that despite taking the entrance exam twice (passing the first time and failing the second), he ultimately opted to do his own thing by enrolling in college to study accounting. Even then, accounting was never really much of a passion. What he really enjoyed was being out and about, meeting and talking to people, learning about where they came from and the stories they might have to share. He’d had this type of personality ever since he was in his early teens, when he’d spend weekends at a popular music bar his uncle—who’d returned to Vietnam—used to manage on the corner of Đồng Khởi and Lý Tự Trọng (it’s now a Katinat). It was his uncle who put Chí on the path he continues to walk today, when, after noticing how much Chí enjoyed being at the bar, suggested he start working there once he graduated from high school. Needless to say, he loved the work. It was infinitely funner than being cooped up in a classroom—His classroom was the bar itself, where expats and Viet Kieu alike gathered, telling tales about work, home, travel, love, friendship, everything, really. To Chí, in his late-teens, it was much more interesting than studying letters, numbers, and formulas.
After a couple years working at the music bar, Chí went on a trip to Hanoi. He loved travelling, had some money saved up, but the issue was that up until then, Chí had a bad case of motion sickness every time he travelled by car or bus. This issue had been something of a thorn in his side all his life, owing to the fact that though he had aspirations of seeing more of the world, he always felt hindered by his inability to access two of the most convenient and common modes of transportation. That was all about to change. Flying wasn’t an issue, so he hopped on a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. Once there, he took a bus into town and immediately felt like throwing up. However, for some reason, he didn’t stop. Over the span of a week he took more cars and buses than he ever had in his life so that by the end of it, his motion sickness had disappeared. For Chí, this was revelatory. It had such an impact that he decided to stop studying accounting and switched to tourism, in hopes that these studies would put him in positions where he could experience that world that had always evaded him due to his life-long battle with motion sickness. As it turned out, he was going to get more than he bargained for. Nine months later he’d decided that if he really wanted to learn, he had to learn by doing: once again, the classroom wasn’t suited for him, what he wanted was the world. In 2009, Chí got just that. After a long interview process and months waiting, he landed a job aboard a cruise ship that would sail around the Mediterranean. He set off, with all the excitement and confidence befitting of someone in their early twenties. Little did he know what life aboard a cruise ship really entailed.
Looking back, it was easy for Chí to laugh about everything that had happened. Of course, going through it was an entirely different matter. He recalled how the first two months out of his nine month contract were the most gruelling, both mentally and physically. Essentially, working on a cruise ship means you have no hours off, though official work starts from as early as six in the morning. He started as a busboy which meant running around carrying mountains of dishes (there were four thousand guests on the ship). By the time he finished his day’s work it’d be late, and collapsing onto bed he’d only have several hours before he had to wake up and do it all again. There came a point during these first two months where Chí considered quitting. Sure, he was meeting people from all walks of life but he was also working like a maniac and barely able to experience any of the countries they docked at (if he wanted to visit, it meant going during the hour or two breaks he had). On top of this, other crew members found enjoyment in the suffering of newcomers and often made this enjoyment known by betting on who would be the first to leave. Stuck in this pressure-cooker of a situation, Chí, out of sheer conviction and a general f-you to the other crew members, made a daily effort to pull through. Then, one fateful day, a storm hit.
Work on a cruise ship doesn’t stop, even during a storm. It was a horrific day, dealing with motion sickness like never before while still having to serve passengers and help with duties like tying down doors and cleaning up. Again, he collapsed onto bed at the end of it all, only this time, rather than fatigue and hopelessness, Chí felt a weight lift. He realised that he had it in him. He could take things on the chin and keep moving forward. No matter what obstacle lay ahead, he’d be able to handle it—As he put it, since that storm, whenever there’s trouble he wants it to come straight at him as he knows he’ll fight until the bitter end. The rest of his time aboard the cruise, though tough, was much better. Out of everything that happened in the seven months until he returned to Vietnam, he recalls one day fondly. The cruise had docked in Greece and he had a break so he decided to go into town. While walking, he bumped into his Filipino friend who also worked on the cruise. The guy was always happy, a real positive, take-life-as-it-comes kind of individual. That day was no different. He was playing guitar and smiling away, and Chí, finally letting his curiosity get the better of him, went up and asked why he was always so happy. Without missing a beat his friend told him that every place he goes, he chooses to walk a different path so that every day he gets to experience something new. The idea was simple but it stuck. Chí realised that he’d always been travelling by motorbike, plane, and once he could handle it, cars and buses. Though these modes of transport got you places quicker, you also missed a lot of things on the way. He promised himself that once he made it back to Vietnam, he was going to walk. And that’s just what he did.
Chí had a vision to walk the length of Vietnam. The vision boiled down to what he’d learned from his Filipino friend and his own realisation that by walking, he would actually get a chance to see the country he’d been born and raised in, and yet had seen so little of. By walking, if he wanted to stop and look at something, he could. He started in Saigon with the aim of getting to Phan Thiết first. Along the way, he came across a tree and found himself engrossed. When he spotted the tree from afar it looked a certain way but the closer he got the tree began to look different. While the tree remained the same, because of the point from which he looked at the tree, it appeared different—This was analogous to life. All things, at their core, remain what they are. It’s only how you perceive them that ends up changing their meaning. So he walked. It was summertime and the heat could be blazing so he mainly walked in the afternoon until the evening. Nights were black as oil and when he didn’t have anyone to talk to, Chí had conversations with himself. These talks ranged from questions of life, of love, of the meaning behind it all and though he never had an answer, talking contained its own kind of release. Some nights—when he was lucky—he even had a place to stay thanks to a stranger’s kindness. His bed went from the streets to a bed with a mattress, a change that was akin to going from sleeping on concrete to a cloud. He made it to Phan Thiết and from there, headed to Quảng Ngãi. Once there, he decided to stop—He’d bitten off more than he could chew. He was exhausted and going a little crazy. Home beckoned. Saigon.
Back in the swing of the city, Chí needed to get back to work. Settling into life on land was harder than he’d imagined, given that life aboard a cruise ship was pretty much laid out from dusk till dawn. He’d been like a robot, without worry about food or accommodation, his only objective to fulfill his various duties. Despite the wealth of experience he’d gained from the role, finding a job was harder than expected. He ended up applying for a position as a waiter in an Italian restaurant called Lucca which was well known at the time. It wasn’t long before Andy, the Austrian German chef running the place, took notice of Chí’s hustle and promoted him to supervisor. That quickly turned into a further promotion to manager. Despite the rocky beginning, Chí had found his place in the city. Unfortunately, things would start falling apart once Andy left to open a restaurant called Vesper and Chí, with equal parts self-belief and recklessness, decided to open a wine bar called Wine Not. The name, in many ways, was indicative of Chí’s mentality at the time, with a why-not attitude giving him the belief that opening an F&B restaurant wouldn't be so hard. Eight months later, Wine Not closed. He was in debt and needed a job. A friend knew of an opening at a cookware franchise called Matfer Bourgeat and once again, Chí figured why not?
His new job gave Chí a different insight into the F&B and service industries. He travelled a lot around Southeast Asia meeting many hotel and resort owners, providing him with a wealth of knowledge and expertise into how such large-scale operations were managed. Despite this, the path wasn’t the one for him. After several years in the business, he reunited with Andy. Vesper was struggling and Andy, already aware of how well Chí worked in a restaurant, asked if he would come onboard to help. This kickstarted a period of non-stop work, starting with his day job at Matfer Bourgeat and ending with Vesper in the evening. Ultimately, this culminated in Chí leaving his day job and taking over as a manager at Vesper. With his help, Vesper went from a business bar that would empty before midnight into the talk of the town, where nights lasted until three or four in the morning. However, something’s gotta give. Managing such a hot spot meant a lifestyle of non-stop partying, waking up hungover, and partying again. He needed a change. He needed a walk.
Returning to Quảng Ngãi, Chí started walking from where he’d last left off. He felt different this time. Felt like he knew a little bit more about himself and why he was walking, as if there was a purpose to his walking. While the first leg from Saigon to Quảng Ngãi took forty-five days, getting to Hanoi took fifty-five. Still, he enjoyed the walk. It was meditative, it gave him a chance to slow down and look at the country from the vantage point of his own two feet, and so he walked, feeling more invincible with each step until he made it to his destination.
I guess I wasn’t wrong then. Chí did have a few stories to tell. Writing this piece, it was funny because even though I was basing the words off of our conversation, there were portions where I wasn’t sure myself where the story would lead. It twisted, turned, hopped on a few planes, travelled around the Mediterranean on a cruise ship, traversed the length of Vietnam, but where did it go at the end of it all? Nowadays, Chí’s running The Tailor from a new location in District 1. Things have calmed down a little for him, life isn’t as fast as it once used to be. I suppose that’s the way he wants it. He’s walking through the days now, taking everything as it comes. One step at a time.
- Follow The Tailor
