Making HCMC my city

Building community, one pizza joke at a time

Where’s my pizza? I tease and Chico bursts out laughing. For a year now I’ve been hounding him for the Hainanese Chicken pizza he once had as a special at his eponymous pizzeria. Apparently it was amazing. But I never got to eat it, which is why each time we’ve crossed paths this year, I’ve asked for my pizza to his great amusement. If Chico’s annoyed by my insistent requests, he does an Oscar-worthy job of hiding it.

I’m about to get back to work, but as Chico hasn’t walked away I decide to pick his brain on questions about staffing in Vietnam that have been on my mind. For the next ten minutes we commiserate over the trials and tribulations of hiring excellent staff in HCMC. Then move on to gushing about our favourite restaurants with great staff on top of good food. Suddenly, I have an idea.

“Do you like Thai food?” I ask.

“I love Thai food. Do you have a recommendation?”

“Indeed,” I smile and pause for effect, “Have you been to Cái Cối?”

“No! Where is it?”

I explain where it is and recognition dawns on Chico’s face.

“The place with the pestle and mortar on the sign!”

“Exactly. It’s excellent. The best Thai food in the city. When I’m home in Thailand, I miss their food.”

“Wow. That’s quite a recommendation.”

“The chef is Thai and knows exactly what he’s doing. The owner Miquel is absolutely lovely. If you see him, tell him Val sent you. I’m trying to get him to buy me a house in Spain in return for all the custom I’m bringing.”

“Seems reasonable,” Chico grins.

I make Chico promise to let me know how he finds the food at Cái Cối, wish him a good rest of the day, and turn back to my laptop where the day’s work awaits.

What’s your city?

When I visited Seoul last October, I joined a walking tour that had been recommended to me buy a colleague who previously went and loved it. I had an amazing half day, and afterwards stayed in touch with Q, the architect of the tour, via Instagram.

One day, not too long ago, Q reached out to ask where I was in the world. Still in HCMC, I told him. Hope to be here a few more years.

I see, he replied, then explained that over the years he had taken over a thousand people from all over the world on his Seoul tour, and he wanted to know where exactly we were from. You’re from Thailand I remember. Is your city Bangkok or HCMC?

Good question, I wrote. I didn’t spend that much time in Bangkok and I’ve been in HCMC the past couple of years, so I guess you can put HCMC down as my city. We chatted a while longer about the various cities we’d called home throughout our lives, then I wished him good luck with his tour and signed off.

My city is HCMC, I repeated to myself, letting this new idea sink in. Then Chico walked in, I asked for my pizza, and you know the rest.

Building my community

Mid-conversation with Chico was when I realised why HCMC feels like my city the way Bangkok or London or Paris—all places I’ve called home—never did. It’s the community I’ve built here—Chico and Miquel and other owners of establishments I love, May the waitress who just asked me why I looked so stressed and whether work wasn’t going well, my bank manager who has the answer to every question and takes me out to delicious BBQ lunches, my lawyer who drove across town through rush hour traffic to bring me documents to sign then profusely apologised for being five minutes late, my one friend at the gym who makes standing around waiting for a class to start something to look forward to.

I feel embedded in HCMC the way I never felt in Bangkok or London or Paris. I have dear friends in all of these places, but friends I carry with me wherever I go—they’re not location-specific. Whereas Chico and Miquel and my Vietnamese accountant whom I simply can’t live without are.

For the past three years, I’ve been building my HCMC community one initiated conversation at a time. A pizza joke exchanged, a “how are you?” genuinely answered, a tag in an Instagram story that turns into a string of DMs. Without being the least bit aware that this habit I’d gotten into was building me my very first, my very own community.

It was only as I was asking Chico to try Miquel’s Thai food (and thinking I should ask Miquel to try Chico’s Italian pizzas) that it hit me: I know people here. I can make introductions, deepen connections, help businesses flourish. I have a community here of the kind I’ve never had anywhere else.

And it feels amazing.

What do you think?

You can probably guess what I’m going to ask:

What’s your city?

Where is your community? Where do you feel rooted? Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this with someone who loves community as much as I’ve just realised I do.

Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,

Val

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Photo by Tron Le on Unsplash