The best things in Vietnam are found on the street. Old men idling away the morning with a cup of coffee, detached from the city’s noise in their silence. Slabs of perfectly marinated pork chops, cooked over charcoal while a fan blows the fragrant smoke straight from your nose to your stomach. Ladies whose smiles peek out from underneath their nón lá. They serve all kinds of ice-cold drinks for cheap and really, they’re the ones who keep the city running, making sure everyone stays hydrated while the sun boils once more. You can find everything you need on the streets of Vietnam. Stores spill out onto the sidewalk advertising their goods: food, drinks, motorbikes, air conditioners, refrigerators, religious statues, paintings, flags of Vietnam, flags for this country we all so dearly love. You can find everything on the streets of Vietnam, and if you look hard enough, you’ll find a place like Chòi Chòi.
Chòi Chòi’s a street bar on Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm in District 1. It’s only been open for several months now, but it’s already garnered a reputation as a place where you can go for a more relaxed night-out. Its charm lies in its simplicity. Green plastic chairs are grouped around retractable tables, all placed along the sidewalk so you get a close-up view of Saigon’s evening show: the cars, motorbikes, and occasional bus passing by on the road. There’s a haphazard order to it all. A chaos that begins to resemble some semblance of form once you stop and stare at it for long enough.
The centerpiece of Chòi Chòi is the bar. Three glow-up posters depicting the brand in different art-pop styles lean against the base. Up top, it’s a barebones operation: a tight bar space stocked with a random arrangement of liquors, shakers, glasses, as well as an array of other tools and ingredients. It’s from here that Pisul, Chòi Chòi’s owner and bartender, mixes up a range of cocktails. The spirit and energy of Saigon’s smaller business operations are often rooted in the character and personality of their owner, and that is no different at Chòi Chòi. Everytime I see Pisul he’s got a smile on his face and that joy and conviviality rubs off. He’ll give you a warm welcome, ask what you want to drink, and if you’re unsure or simply not in the mood to decide, no worries, Pisul’s got you covered.
With nine years of experience, Pisul’s developed his bartending skills to where he’s no longer just making drinks from recipes he’s memorised. He has the ability to concoct cocktails based on your preferences. Take one part of the menu which is aptly titled, Freestyle Cocktail. Essentially, you get to choose your base (whisky, vodka, gin?), flavour (floral, herbal, fruity?), and taste (sweet, sour, spicy?). Pisul will do the rest. It’s a level of mixology that you might expect in a fancy speakeasy, and yet, at Chòi Chòi you take a seat on a plastic stool—Vietnam’s favourite piece of furniture—and after a while you realise you’ve been sitting on the sidewalk with a comfort and carelessness as if you were in your living room. This is when you realise that what Chòi Chòi lacks in extravagance, it makes up ten-fold in heart.
Evenings at Chòi Chòi tend to be quite laid back. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the bar attracts a certain demographic of customers. Namely, younger locals and expats who might be a little tired of the clubbing scene’s noise and energy. What they want is a place where they can lounge for a few hours, have an affordable, tasty drink while talking about whatever’s going on in their lives. And once they run out of things to talk about in their lives, they seem fine enough just to sit there, play a boardgame, have a smoke, head-bobbing to the equally groovy, relaxed music on Chòi Chòi’s speakers. There’s an ease about them. A sense that they’ve got nowhere they’d rather be. They might have a lot going on in their lives. They might have their stresses and problems, their worries about their future, but when they’re at Chòi Chòi they look like they’re able to forget it all.
Most evenings at Chòi Chòi are laid back, but my favourite memory of the place was one Friday in January earlier this year. Chòi Chòi was hosting a goodbye pop-up party for Kiet, founder of Tin Tin Project. What a scene it was: Kiet was serving up his famous tacos, Lucky Vodka sponsoring the event, and Tommy Sarng manning the turntables alongside Ferrari Frank. I arrived with some friends and the place was thumping. Familiar faces were around, as were strangers who we quickly got to chatting with once we were seated beside them. The new year was still fresh on everyone’s mind and even better was the fact that we still had Tết around the corner. Whether you’re a local or expat, there’s a special excitement in Vietnam during this period. While the rest of the world might be waking up from the dream of that holiday spirit, Vietnam remains optimistic and hopeful of the fortune the year might bring. Incidentally, on that same night Vietnam’s U-23 football team played South Korea in a match to decide who would take third place at the AFC U-23 Asian Cup. Being unaware of the stakes at hand, I was caught completely off guard when some time after midnight, people began to đi bão (go storming) on the streets to celebrate their nation’s victory. Wave after wave of supporters whizzed past on motorbikes and cars. Some carried Vietnamese flags, others tooted on vuvuzelas like impassioned trumpeters. Everyone had their phones out to take a video or to brandish its flashlight like they were at a pop concert. As they came, those of us who’d been sitting at Chòi Chòi couldn’t help but get drawn into the festivity. People high-fived and hugged, the joy of the moment bringing strangers to welcome one another like long-lost friends. The đi bão lasted for ages. At one point I was convinced some people were just going round and round in circles, performing something of a celebratory merry-go-round on Saigon’s streets. All the while, the irony wasn’t lost on me. Vietnam hadn’t won the tournament. They came third. And yet a win is, no matter how you spin it, still a win. The Vietnamese understand this more than most people, and there at Chòi Chòi that evening, I once more recalled why I loved the country so much.
