When running away from life’s many grievances, I often find myself at the convenience store.
As my mental state tilts further out of balance, my visits there grow more frequent. The timing is erratic. Sometimes it starts first thing in the morning, when I’ve barely opened my eyes and I’m already shuffling out to buy soy milk to wake myself up. Other times, it’s in the thick of a blazing noon, when I duck inside for some cup noodles, before going back to battling it out with a looming deadline. But most often, it’s on those late nights when my lackluster career and romance knot my thoughts up in tangles, and I just need somewhere, anywhere, to get away from it all.
Out of all the late-night haunts in Saigon, why, oh why, do I always choose this cold, fluorescent coffer as my refuge?
The truth is, for me, cafés charge way too much for simply sitting, and the crowds make it impossible to slump into yourself without drawing stares. But the convenience store grants permission to unravel in freedom and obscurity. Every so often, when I’m standing in a quiet, empty aisle, it feels like I'm standing in a liminal space, where time seems to stretch. What comfort there is in perusing the instant noodles shelf for 10 minutes, fussing over packets without a glance or murmur from anyone.
Above all, I'm drawn by the reliability. By late evening, the phở broth at vendors has thickened beyond reason, but here, nearly everything arrives prepped, machined, and portioned to a fixed recipe. It is certainly not made with love, but it also rarely disappoints. I always know exactly how the food will turn out, this time just like every other time.
America birthed the blueprint for the modern convenience store, but it was the Japanese who perfected it, fitting their dense urban weave where a single spot can reach crowds on end. It matches the needs of the busy single-person households swelling through the population, many of them bent on practical, speedy eating.
Vietnam caught on in the 2010s. I was in middle school then, and the idea of a clean, air-conditioned store where you could sit and eat rice balls or microwave noodles felt almost futuristic. My friends and I treated it like an event. We’d try unfamiliar drinks in strange packaging, hang out in plastic chairs pretending we were somewhere cooler than we were.
A decade later, they’re everywhere. I can walk a few hundred meters in any direction from my apartment and pass three or four without even trying. And that's not a coincidence. Vietnam is modernizing fast, and in many ways treading the same path Japan once took. Our economy is stronger and our lives more streamlined. But with that comes the bad. In a city like Saigon, people are clocking out later, commuting further, and feeling lonelier than ever.
Which is what makes it so strange that these antiseptic “boxes,” designed to serve a fractured, hurried way of living, have become the places where I most often feel human. I’ve crossed every stratum of society in those murky hours. I’ve shared space with fratty kids fresh from the club, arms full of beer and noise. I’ve stood beside quiet students hunched over textbooks and aging calculators. I’ve seen the same kind of existential blues that I carry myself in strangers.
I've also met so many of the quiet cogs that keep the city running: janitors, delivery drivers, security guards, stopping in for a bottle of water, stealing five minutes of rest before heading back into the night. And the clerks, of course. The ones who work the graveyard shifts. I must thank you for your endless patience with all the Karens the world throws at you, and for staying gracious even when I decline your meal deal for the fifth time. I don’t think I could be that kind if I worked nine-to-five, let alone 11pm to 7am.
In the back of my mind, I fondly call us the midnight runners. I rarely speak to them, and they hardly pay me any attention. In the end, we all carry a private life that the others will never see. Yet sometimes, in that cramped little seating area, our orbits cross. I may not be a habitual listener, but I am willing to sit with the bolero drifting out of the worker’s phone at the next table. When I find myself next to someone ordering the same thing, our eyes meet for a moment, as if we were quietly acknowledging each other’s taste. Once, an older man glanced at the boxed rice in my hand and asked, “Miss, is that any good?” and I heard myself answer, “Why don’t I get one for you?”
Their faces blur now, but those slivers of encounter make the city feel enchanted. Push and shove as life may, humanity will always find a way to link up in the unlikeliest voids.
Tonight, I’ll likely wander out again. And who knows, maybe we’ll claim adjacent stools in some convenience store’s corner?
