Building a Global Pho-nomenon

Originally reported at the Asia Society of New York

Building a Global Pho-nomenon

Having opened 68 restaurants in 6 Asian countries in 5 years, Dr. Ly Qui Trung's Pho24 chain is turning the Vietnamese street dish pho into a major global brand. Speaking at Asia Society's New York City headquarters last week, Trung discussed his success in a wide-ranging talk that touched on entrepreneurship, intellectual property rights, and the growing Vietnamese economy.

Watch the Video on Demand

Saigon in thirteen minutes

A woman named Hang

Meet Hang. I introduced her to you in an earlier post titled 'Saigon, the city that hardly sleeps' and told you then that she was a woman I would never forget. It was a very warm summer Saigon night, and we took a walk outside and decided to go for a bite locally. Dong Du Street is perpendicular to Hai Bai Trung, and has many interesting things to see, albeit quite short. Café Qing sounded like the kind of place we might like, and as the outside seating was not taken, it was almost as if we were being invited to sit down.

But this will not be about the Café, the good food, and the quirky expat who runs it. Hang was our server, and when she learned we were from the US, she beamed. Obviously, she also wanted to practice her English, so after serving us, she actually sat at our table and told us her story.

Hang, like so many young women her age, works two jobs; during the day, she can be found at a beauty shop called the Dong Du Salon. She then works nights at Café Qing, where she makes the equivalent of what it costs to buy one beer, She shares an apartment in the city with 4 other women who follow a similar regimen. Most of the money the women make pay for the rent. She gave me a brochure showing the services offered by the Salon, and I am not one to turn down pampering.
Imagine getting a 70 minute foot massage for US$7? A basic manicure/pedicure for US$3? They also get more sophisticated here in Saigon, and offer acrylic nail tips for US$20 (as a benchmark, about US$50 in New York, and that $7 massage would cost you $70 at my nail salon). Please understand that I am going to tell you as much as I can about this place, because if Hang still works there, you must find her, and tip her generously.




They also do pretty funky nail designs, nothing I've seen around New York or San Francisco; but they are very fond of red, fuchsia and orange, though I thought the combination of those colors was very Hindu and much less Vietnam. Then there were blue toe nails with silver glitter, but that was not as enticing to me as the reflexology part with the feet. We had one of those experiences when we were in Bangkok, and it was incredible.
I would like to also give you the address and phone number of this salon, so that if you are wondering about in the streets of HCMC, you might want to drop in. It's 31 Dong Du Street in District 1, and the telephone # is 82-32-414. From what I can tell, they are open from 9am to 11pm. Their hours could have changed in the meantime, so call ahead to confirm.


I was due to visit her the next morning for manicure, pedicure and massage, and Chuck was debating a massage as well. He would probably have preferred to take his camera and shoot more pictures, as 6,000 was nearly not enough for him. Anyway, on with this special woman.
The next morning, I became violently ill with what was eventually diagnosed as food poisoning which may have resulted from airline food that had been out for too long. (Way to go United!). I will leave the details of this episode for another post, so that you can meet the doctor who made a house call. As I was in positively horrible shape, I called Hang and explained to her that I was too ill to think about my toes, much less anyone massaging me. She volunteered to come to the hotel, and bring a friend with her, in case we both needed services.

By the time Hang arrived, half the staff of the Indochine Hotel was in my room, trying to help but communication was a bitch. There's no other way to put it. But Hang spoke English. And she told me about the 'foreign hospital' which was too expensive for the locals, but that they might agree to see me. Hang made the phone call, and explained to whomever it was what was happening. Since it was impossible for me to leave the room for reasons that you can only imagine, it was arranged that I would have a doctor make a house call later that afternoon.

I didn't know how to thank her, but we did not make use of her services that day. Things were too dismal. But we did give her some money, and I had brought souvenirs from New York for children, and knowing she had them, I did give her a couple of coloring markers and other goodies from my suitcase. She was so grateful, and yet I owed her everything for what she had done for me.


And in the event you don't like orange/fuschia polish, here are some other flowery things they do at the Salon.

Lunch at the Pho Binh Café

There are way too many things to see in Saigon, and heaven knows if I'll ever get to see them all. This particular pho shop was in my guidebook, and the two or three sentences that followed the name had me completely smitten.  This was just a place we had to see. Chuck as usual, was all atwitter about what kind of place is this, and who goes there, and what not. 

We took a cab there, since I had no clue where it was, and since it wasn't within District One, I didn't want to waste time getting there. And so this is what we saw when we arrived at destination. 

Motorbikes are always parked either on the sidewalk, or inside the shops. Actually, at the Indochine Hotel, they had 3 of them parked in the reception area. It was not very crowded inside, but the entire area around the restaurant was bustling. Chuck was definitely antsy, but I got a bit closer to check the noodle stand outside the premises. After our second trip to Vietnam, it was a foregone conclusion that you cannot have a bad bowl of pho, no matter where you eat it. 

Now doesn't that look yummy? If you don't know it, pho noodles are rice based, therefore much lighter than wheat based noodles and very easily digested. Vietnamese have pho any time of the day, including breakfast. We did go inside, and I wanted to insure that we had found the right place.

The man who owned this pho shop played host to both American soldiers and Viet Cong during the American War, and his son has amassed quite a collection of pictures and citations in the name of his father. As we were the only Westerners in the shop, a tall man came toward us and for lack of understanding each other, I showed him the guide book, and he immediately understood what I meant. He showed us to a table, and returned with many albums. 

There was obviously tremendous pride in what Ngo Toai had done during the war, and his pho shop rose to prominence, but he absolutely refused to give his tables and chairs and any of his war memorabilia to the War Museum. The restaurant floors beg for a good scrubbing, but it is with reverence that one enters the premises.

these tables and chairs are witnesses to the men who fought

during the war and came here for a bowl of pho

Here we are below, completely captivated with reading and looking and pictures, while enjoying the best bowl of pho ever, and I squeezed as much lime as I could find into it. 

If you look at the picture on the right, above are two framed certificates. I was able to capture on camera a close up of the larger one, and the other one has a photo of Ngo Toai with American soldiers eating in his soup kitchen. Many wrote him letters after they went back home. The newspaper clippings are stained and in some disrepair, but they are a greater source of pride as they are written in English.

  There are certificates on the wall bearing the red communist star; medals are photographed but now shown.  When the war ended, Ngo Toai returned to his beloved noodle shop and continued to serve his magical brew. It seems the menu has not changed much since that day. Heartwarming are the photos of U.S. veterans who returned to this shop, and have their arms around the old man. 

 

how priceless is this? 

The Reuters article above provocatively begins this way: “ In the early years of the Viet Nam war, Ngo Toai lived a double life: seller of noodles to U.S. personnel and surreptitious revolutionary”. And of course, you read on. Apparently, a few days following the Tet offensive, a South Vietnamese tried to kill Ngo Toai, but somehow he escaped death only to find life imprisonment and torture instead.

 

the circled area of the page talks about the liberation of Toai

As you can read, Toai was captured and tortured; our guide to the Mekong Delta would later inform us that many people were sent for "re-education". I leave it to your imagination to figure this out.

The shop served as a front for the undercover command post from which the plan for the Tet offensive was devised. After the war, foreign tourists would pay up to $13/night to put their heads on a pillow in the very area that served as a gathering place for the Viet Cong. I regret that we didn't decide to do likewise, but we had quite an itinerary on this first trip, which had been set back somewhat due to an unexpected food poisoning episode.

All things aside, this café does serve a wicked pho. They also have "bia", which is the Vietnamese word for "beer" , which actually came from the French word "bière". 

the view from inside the restaurant

you can see the parked motorbikes inside

The Rex Hotel

We did not stay at the Rex Hotel, however, it's impossible to come to Saigon and not visit this place, if only because it served as a base for US journalists during the war. This was the place of intrigue and espionage, where the military would come to take respite and perhaps find solace.

The hotel was built by the French originally as a garage for Renault in the 1950's. In the 1990's , it underwent a massive renovation and today, though it might be considered a luxury hotel, it has a bit of gaudiness to it. The façade is quite regal (aptly as the name implies), but as we circled around the building, and looked at some of its walls, it was strange to notice a full length ad for a Beatles-like concert, with an admission of US$35pp.

The Rex is minutes away from the City's People Committee Office, an extraordinary building with its own history, as well as the Opera House, posh Dong Khoi Street where you can shop till you turn blue, and overlooking Ho Chi Minh City Park, a stretch of green with lovely flowers with Uncle Ho's statue at one of the park's ends. It's right in the city center, along with other major hotels, so you are really in District 1 where you want to be.

One of the hotel's claims to fame is its rooftop bar, which we didn't see, but it is heavily advertised within the hotel itself, and of course, I picked up a postcard/brochure, below.

The photo was in bright colors but I decided to modify into sepia tone, as it fit the image of a refuge during war times. This is the place where the memories still remain, of the famous “Five O’clock Follies” where the international correspondents were covering the Vietnam war. What was that? The "Five O’clock Follies” was the name given to Saigon press briefings during the war, and as one blogger said it: "It became famous because of lines like, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

On the bright side of things, Newsweek called this the best rooftop bar in Southeast Asia. (1996). There are several other restaurants and bars in the hotel, notably the Hoa Mai Restaurant which serves Vietnamese and French Cuisine, the Cung Dinh Restaurant that offers 3 different types of regional Vietnamese Cuisine, a shushi bar, and coffee lounge and the Rose Garden, which is geared toward large capacity events.

As we made our way through the entrance, I began to understand the word "kitsch". This seating area is quite lovely, but I am not sure it is enhanced by these enormous ivory tusks, which say nothing about Vietnamese culture. Right next to this was a huge aquarium with some of the most exotic fish I had ever seen. At one time in my life, I had 5 of these in an apartment, so you can imagine that I know something about fish. You can actually stare at them for hours and never tire.

This one looks more like a flower or some sort of painted marigold than a fish. The other one has characteristics of an angel fish, but with more rounded fins, and of course, color!!!

One of the other pieces of publicity I picked up in my ramblings around the hotel was about the Mimosa Club, which is located on the 6th floor. You need membership, but it looks like it has things that dreams are made of. A sauna (not the wet kind, the dry kind with wonderful wood panels), a swimming pool which someone had mentioned was too small, a gym, a jacuzzi which is my favorite and a tennis court. I may be overruled here, but I can't see myself playing tennis in this kind of heat. There is also a beauty salon and massage...the stuff of aahhhhhh's. Preview below.

Now you know as much as about the Rex as I do. If you click on the link above, you'll be taken to their website where you can view accommodations, pricing, etc..However, one can usually get much better pricing going through an agency.