Bui Vien Walking Street

Bùi Viện Street comes fully alive when the sun goes down. It lies in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City, in the part once known as District 1. People use a friendly nickname for the whole area, the Phố Tây, a quarter popular with foreign backpackers.

By day, Bùi Viện looks like many other small streets in Saigon. Shops and stalls crowd side by side, motorbikes hum past, and the smell of coffee rises every morning. When night falls, the street puts on a different face. Colored lights come on and music fills the air. People pour in from all over the world, speaking every language, and they melt into one lively crowd that few places can match.

The street is named for a man of the 19th century. Bùi Viện was an official and a reformer under Emperor Tự Đức. He came from Thái Bình. In an age when the country kept its doors closed, he was one of the first Vietnamese to dare to cross the ocean, all the way to the United States, to look for support for his country. He is also credited with building the port of Hải Phòng and with founding a patrol force at sea. He was a man of the sea and of long journeys. Today his name belongs to one of the liveliest streets for visitors from far away.

The Phố Tây began to take shape in the 1990s, when the first backpacking travelers came to Saigon. They needed a cheap place to sleep, an inexpensive meal, and somewhere to meet others who loved to roam. Little by little, the whole neighborhood around Bùi Viện became a familiar meeting point for budget travelers from all five continents. The area takes in Phạm Ngũ Lão and Đề Thám as well.

In 2017, Bùi Viện officially became the second walking street of the city, after the Nguyễn Huệ walking street. On weekend evenings, cars and motorbikes are kept off the road. The roadway becomes a place for strolling, an open-air stage. People come to hear live music, to taste street food, to watch the crowd, and simply to feel the sleepless rhythm of Saigon.

Bùi Viện is special for its mixing more than its noise. Here an elderly Vietnamese woman who sells goods on the street can chat happily with a Western visitor carrying a backpack. Right beside a lively music spot sits a vendor's stall of bánh tráng trộn, a street snack. Vendors' calls, music and laughter in more languages than anyone could count all rise together, and none of it feels out of place. Together they make a Saigon all its own, open and easygoing, always with arms held out to welcome everyone.

A slow walk between two rows of colored lights, a tune drifting out from somewhere, a taste of an unfamiliar dish, is enough to see why people call this place the sleepless heart of Saigon. A small street carries the name of a man of long ago who went out to open a road to the wide sea, and now the whole world comes to it.