hcmc’s heatwave of chaos: a digital nomad’s 4am notes

okay so i woke up that morning thinking this travel thing wasn’t a mistake. then i realized the bucket list app i was using had swapped my ho chi minh city entry with a Tuscan vineyard tutorial. classic app fail. but here’s the thing-hovering over yellow maps pins in the dead of night made me feel like a hacker, not a tourist.

so i’m standing now in what feels like a soup bowl of humidity. 23.77 degrees isn’t freezing but if the ‘feels like’ is 24.29, that means someone left a heat lamp on the sidewalk. i’m half-convinced the ‘air’ is doing yoga poses just to taunt me. i just checked and it’s that sticky 24-something celsius thing right now, hope you don’t mind that kind of sweat. brought a fan but it’s doing nothing. classic.

let’s talk about the neighbors. if you get bored, da lat is just a few hours down south. no lie, the coffee there could power a small nation. but don’t ask me to explain why i took a wrong turn for three blocks trying to find a convenience store. turns out my maps app was storyboarding a scene for a disaster movie. don’t ask.

random review thing here-someone told me that street food here comes with a side of ‘do you really want this hmm.’ culinary connoisseur or just a local exaggeration? i’m not sure. another drunk at a canteen insisted the best way to avoid scams is to pay with obligatory gratitude. it’s working for me so far. i heard that somewhere. definitely repeat it to yourself twice before handing over cash.

weather in hcmc is like a bad ex-you can’t escape it. i tried to blend into a cafe and got lost in a conversation about whether dragon fruit or rambutans are the true national fruit. locals debated it for 20 minutes while i froze next to a guy sipping black coffee like it was a bet. weird, right?

here’s the trap: every photo op here feels staged. i took a picture of a waterfall in one of those glass models labeled ‘artificial attractions’. turned out it’s true. the signs around my hostel say things like ‘be careful of electric carts’ and i’m like… what? the city’s a riddle. but hey, the locals aren’t messing around. they’ll stare at you for 10 seconds before you realize they’re assessing whether you’re worth buying from. don’t take it personally.

someone claimed the avenue ventista has hidden jazz clubs that only play when it rains. i didn’t ask them to prove it. just took their word for it. meanwhile, i overheard a tourist group arguing if pho is better in the morning or evening. answer: never. always. also, the taxi drivers here are like chess players. they’ll swerve to a random street when you’re not looking, then pretend they’re taking you straight to your hotel when you’re actually in a construction zone. enjoy that free GPS lesson.

images:

and finally-someone warned me about the ghost market in district 1. they said it’s where lost souls bid on antiques. i didn’t believe them until i saw a vendor sell a clock that stopped exactly at 3:07 am. i:fluttered. but i took a photo of it. here it is.

i posted this on tripsadvisor italy and someone commented with a nonsense link about vietnamese coffee shops. ignored it. i posted on yelp hcmc and got a reply from a cat that probably typed this with paw. weird.

don’t let the heat fool you. hcmc is a city that punches its own way. like a bad dating app match that keeps sending you directions to the wrong address. but by 4am, i was lying to my laptop saying i’d write a planner next. we all do. right?

p.s. if you want to join me, hit up digital nomad forums. i’ll just say i’m ‘studying the war on happiness at a 24-hour noodle stand’ and see who responds.

tags: travel, hcmc, digitalnomad, messy, culturalvibes

hcmc’s heatwave of chaos: a digital nomad’s 4am notes

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About the author: Amelie Rose

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