Saigon's Street Kids

Around the neighbourhood

Some of the street kids in our neighbourhood are quite appealing.

Yesterday as I was walking along the street behind two "colourful local characters" both of whom were about 2 feet tall.

As they passed the local policemens' watering hole, the police jeep was parked outside. One of the kids gave the other a leg up in a well practised manouvre so that the other could reach into the cab and flick the switch to turn on the red light and the siren.

They shot through like smoke and were well gone by the time the policeman came out and good-naturedly switched off the alarms.

Saigon's miniature Donald Trump

There is another little kid who hangs around the vegie restaurant where we get our meals. He's about 10 or 11 I'd guess and is a bit retarded or simple - but there's nothing silly about him. We call him Donald Trump because of his entrepreneurial spirit!

He's the kind of kid who really needs a shoe-shine box or a paper run - but the kids with those things are all "organised" and that's not a scene the uninitiated or naive should stumble blindly into!

Sometimes he saunters into the restaurant and takes a seat next to some (usually lone) customer and just stares at them until they give him some money or food to bugger off.

Other days he stations himself at the front door with a proprietarial air about him, a couple of menus under his arm. Then he proceeds to hussle people into the restaurant, shows them to their seats, gives them a menu - and then presents himself to the owner for a commission!

I've never seen them give him money but they do give him a bowl of noodles - from which he painstakingly removes the peas before he eats it! This would seem to indicate that he's not as hungry as he looks. We've seen the street kids in Cambodia clean up the scraps from plates and they aren't nearly so picky.

The other morning we saw him walk past with a spring in his step, Pied Piper-like, with a busload of young backpackers in tow, palming them off at local guesthouses along the laneway, for a small commission I assume.

The next day we saw Donald, neat as a pin in a new T-shirt, with a fist of lottery tickets for resale, perhaps an investment in the profits of his backpacker enterprise.

Anyway, we don't encourage Donald. He's a kid who could easily attach himself permanently to your left leg and he has the frown and pout down to an artform which would break the hardest heart.

But he does make me laugh whenever I see him - I tough little kid making his own way on the mean streets of Ho Chi Minh City.

Further References:

• Sozo, non-profit cafe which trains disadvantaged children.








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