Ho Chi Minh’s leisure and food outlets are perhaps as tightly polarised as its income gap, itself.

Cheap often leads to not entirely palatable sights of squalid roadside stalls with no running water, small makeshift unlicensed stands often with cold food in the window and boiling soup in the corner.

Skipping the nonexistent middle portion of the chain will bring you to hotels and fancier restaurants, which, while definitely several steps up from the previous scenario, is often several more steps up, pricewise, at 30 USD a bowl of pho, or the like.

Apparently, the McDonald’s licence was awarded some years ago, but the fast food joint has never seen light of day in Ho Chi Minh because they can’t figure out a way to use ‘good’ beef and still keep the price low enough. And you know, if you’ve eaten at McDonald’s, it doesn’t seem very difficult to achieve that minimum standard.

The shops are the same. Cheap means you get accosted at the day markets, which turn into unventilated greenhouses in the midday sun. And nicer malls charge an arm and a leg for appearing like a one in Singapore ten years ago.

You know how Singaporeans sometimes have these rare “Singapore is better” attacks? Yeah. You never want to have one of those whilst on holiday (work trips are naturally painful, so feel as sorry for yourself as you want).

Funny thing is, I blogged slightly more favourably about the city almost exactly two years ago. I just found the entry again, and reading back, I don’t recall feeling as depressed then as I do now.

But this visit, I got a chance to have a chat with a friend living there about the state of the people in the city. The 30 USD bowl of pho exists for the Lamborghini owners (scratch that, it’s probably not good enough for them, either…) and the 50 cent roadside food is for the waiter who makes 150 USD a month.

And that rift inbetween is as distinct and jarring as the experience of stepping out of a nice hotel and seeing broken pavements as far as the eye will travel.