Sometimes you simply need 800 pages to do a story justice – Andrew Crofts.
This month I spent a week with a client in Saigon , getting a feel for their life and for their city. I’ve not been before so my expectations had been largely shaped by Graham Greene’s The Quiet American , news coverage throughout my younger life and the musical, “Miss Saigon”. It’s called Ho Chi Minh City now of course, but that doesn’t sound nearly as romantic. It is also sprouting tower blocks, making the riverside skyline indistinguishable from other Far Eastern boom towns from Hong Kong and Beijing to Singapore and Bangkok – or even Canary Wharf for that matter. At street level, however, some of the old magic still simmers and steams in the wet heat. You can still sit at a pavement table outside the Continental Palace Hotel or in the roof bars of the Caravelle or the Majestic, and imagine Greene lurking in a corner. A figure as obviously foreign as me will still be offered massages by street girls and shoe shine services by young entrepre...