A Sunday ride through Saigon on a Honda 67
The Sunday Squeeze
Sundays in Saigon are for a slow pace. Sleep in, ease into the day, water your plants, walk around the neighborhood with a podcast… then take out your Sunday squeeze.
Mine’s a Honda 67, a relic of another time in Saigon. Before reunification, when it was common to see soldiers enjoying an espresso, and an áo dài–fitted beauty riding side-saddle on the back of a Cub. It’s not practical in modern times, but she’s a looker and draws attention.
Now they’re only good for Sunday cruising in low traffic. And that’s what I’m doing today.
Up Hai Bà Trưng
From Bình Thạnh into District 1, then cruising up Hai Bà Trưng to my favorite District 3 café, About Life. The streets are wide and the traffic flows from the Công Trường Mê Linh roundabout, where I stay clear of taxis and buses, merge onto Hai Bà Trưng and follow the flow, and a few head turns, all the way to my coffee.
About Life sits down a narrow hẻm, and parking means squeezing her in between rows of Air Blades and Leads, the modern scooters everyone rides today, and she stands out next to them.
In ’67 she would have blended right in. The SS50, better known in Vietnam as the 67, arrived in the late ’60s and was heavily imported into the ’70s. The fully manual counterpart to the semi-automatic Cub, the four-stroke replaced the two-strokes that ruled the streets before it, the Vespa and Lambretta. American import subsidies made it affordable for daily drivers and the military, and Hondas poured into Saigon. The manual clutch and low weight made it nimble, and even silent for those who knew how to work the clutch. Perfect for secret handoffs, or dropping off your girlfriend past curfew. Hai Bà Trưng would have been full of them. Now she’s the only one in the alley.
Along the Canal
I take the same street up to Tân Định to drop off some film for developing at 47plus Minilab, then make my way to Hoàng Sa, where I hug the Nhiêu Lộc–Thị Nghè canal with Phú Nhuận, then Bình Thạnh, on the other side. This is my favorite drive in the city when there’s no traffic. Endless street cafés, sidewalk phở, Buddhist temples and Christian churches. Winding, swerving, gently moving while hugging the pale sidewalks with the water below.
I’d love to stop at Pasteur Street Brewing for an IPA, but there’s no chance of even one drink on this bike. Not to mention the cảnh sát’s (traffic police) zero-tolerance policy, which I support 100%.
Phở with the Uncles
My squeeze and I turn and glide our way to the end of Hoàng Sa on the Bình Thạnh side and stop at Phở Phượng for out-of-this-world beef noodles. A table street side, the canal across the road, a bowl of broth too hot to rush. This is where the 67 gets gawked at the most, by the uncles hanging out, reminiscing about the time she brings them back to. Saigon Cowboys, off duty, wearing bell-bottoms and a Marlboro Red from their US allies.
Some of it hasn’t changed. Phở on the street at midday, men talking about bikes, a 67 parked at the curb. The view has. In ’67 this canal was murky, and wartime migrants had built stilt houses and shacks over it until they covered much of the water. By the ’70s the smell was part of daily life. The cleanup didn’t begin until the ’90s and moved thousands of families. Now there are pale sidewalks on both banks and a road you’d ride for fun.
Home Before the Heat
As I finish my phở and say bye to the uncles, it’s time to retire the 67, as the midday heat is approaching. I make my way back toward Phú Nhuận, cross the impossibly skinny Trần Khánh Dư bridge and merge onto Trường Sa. I hug the canal from the other side all the way back to my neighborhood of Phú Mỹ Hưng, reminiscing about a time I’ll never know but can imagine through the nostalgia of my Sunday crush.
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