Chợ Bến Thành - Ben Thanh Market

Ben Thanh Market
Wikimedia image

I took a walk around Saigon's tourist-oriented covered market today. It's a labyrinth of clothes, food, cloth, handicrafts and cheap souvenirs. If you're not careful, you will find yourself completely lost in the maze. On the outside, the south side of Ben Thanh Market is one of the iconic symbols of the city. The market has a scalloped, pink-ish façade that stretches the length of the whole block. The square clock tower is a fusion of architectural style, with its Eastern pagoda shape and Western ornamentation and detail. The image of the market was one of my first sights of Vietnam.

Ben Thanh is one of the older buildings in Saigon. The market used to be located along the Saigon River. The word bến means wharf, which means the place has always been associated with visitors who went there to shop. But the market is far from the river now. The stalls and shops were all moved to the present building in around 1912. The enormous building takes up the entire block. Under a roof of stadium proportions are row upon row of vendors and prepared food stalls, with a separate section for a small wet market. We tourists squeeze through the aisles. We're assaulted by friendly, insistent sales pitches. We're treated to a visual, aural, and olfactory smorgasborg. It's incredibly crowded, and I've been warned to look to my wallet and phone, for there's a reputation of pickpockets.

Chè - sweet soup

The prepared food is expensive by Saigon standards. Still, you'll get a plate of food and a drink for less than $2. Ordering a meal is a guessing game, because the menu that's offered is not necessarily available. And while you're trying to order, you will be assailed. Elderly beggars shake their gnarled arthritic hands for your change. Competing food stall workers shoo you away from their stalls to open up the space for more interested customers. And you'll find yourself seated on a barstool and squished against a plate barely wider than the ledge it's resting on. Passersby bump into your back as you eat. The food is good enough to eat. When you're done licking your plate clean, you might have room for dessert. So you mosey over to the chè stand, to choose from a chromatic variety of cold sweet soups.

Slicing pork
 

White, grape-sized eggplant
 

Garlic
 

Sharpening knives
 

Crabs

Beyond the prepared food is a specialized section of the larger market called the wet market. These markets, common around Asia, are so named because the floor is perpetually hosed down to wash toward the gutter the scraps of vegetable castings and offal, the drippings of animal blood, and the overrun from bubbling tanks full of live prawns, catfish, and ocean seafood. If you wear flip-flops, consider yourself warned--you will carry some of the floor's soupy wetness out on your toes. These markets are like a magnet that attracts locals in search of the freshest ingredients for their home-cooked dishes. The difference between the wet market in Ben Thahn and the ones in more remote areas is the lack of live birds and mammals that are slaughtered and dressed upon sale. I guess the absence has something to do with avoiding a spectacle for the tourists.

Dried fish, with coffee to the left

There's enough of a spectacle for the tourists back inside the main part of the market. So I walk back in. From a short stool beneath a mountain of woolen bolts, a young bald man with white spectacles offers to sew me a suit in a day. I walk by the dried and fermented foods, with wall-high stockpiles of pickled vegetables and salted fish parts. At the end of the aisle is a coffee vendor, who offers whiffs of black roasted beans. But the scent of dried fish is overwhelming. I imagine it's hard to sell coffee when it carries the briny scent of dried and fermented fish.

Suddenly, I realize in dismay that I've just entered the t-shirt section. This is the worst place to be when you're a foreigner who is neither shopping nor wants to be hassled. You'd have easier time getting past a hundred smarmy salesmen in a used car lot. Vendors, acclimated to the intimate personal space rules of their usual western clients, feel no taboo with grabbing a tourist as he or she floats by. One tenacious clerk snatches me by the elbow, smirks, and will not let go. I smile broadly and pretended not to speak English, but she will not let go. I tug on my arm. She will not let go. I let slip a miserable groan, and she releases her grip, and I skedaddle.

Snake wine

Wood-carved souvenirs

Shell cutlery

I run away from the t-shirts, into the clear, and feel like I can breathe again. Now I'm among hoodie sweatshirts, coats, and jackets. These are for tourists to bring back to cold weather climates, or for the Saigon girls riding around on bikes or scooters in the tan-inducing sun. I pass elaborate bone chopsticks, painted lacquerware, handwoven baskets, horn combs and bracelets, shell cutlery, majong and xiangqi games. I see a large woman pointing excitedly at a pile of coasters, and catch phrases of her Eastern European accent as she engages in intense bargaining. I see a Vietnamese vendor push a teenage boy, probably her nephew, off his footstool and onto the ground, where she sits on him until he squeals for mercy.

I grin, turn a corner, and freeze. I realize, again to my dismay, that I've fallen victim to Ben Thanh Market's greatest trick. I have lost my bearings and backtracked. Worst of all, I've inadvertently returned to the t-shirt section. A guy selling knock-off brands and Vietnam soundbites says, oh, you, again?! Here we go...