02/06/2026
Cho Hai Trăm — The Night Street Nobody Told You About
A night street that sits a short 5 minute walk from our gallery. Almost unmentioned online, a mixture of misleading titles + addresses, read on for the full story!
At number 234 Tôn Đản Street there is an unmarked, typical alley entrance.
As the sun drops, gas burners ignite, plastic stools scrape onto the alley floor and the smell of sizzling bánh xèo drifts out onto the main road.
This is the beginning of 'Hẻm Hai Trăm / Alley 200' (as it is known amongst locals) and it has been feeding this neighbourhood for decades!
Getting here is part of the experience. Hẻm 243 of Tôn Đản Street, tight winding passageways thread through a dense residential neighbourhood — laundry overhead, motorbikes pressed to the walls, home altars glowing through open doorways.
The route is lined with pha lau stalls — the classic Southern Vietnamese street food of slow-braised offal in five-spice broth served in small bowls on low tables. Follow the turns and the alley eventually opens onto the food street itself.
My wife Xiu walked these alleys as a girl with her mother, drawn by the same smells and the same stalls that still exist here today.
The street runs until it meets Xóm Chiếu Street — another well-known local food corridor — and the two overlap briefly before arriving at Giáo Xứ Xóm Chiếu.
Founded as a parish in 1856 and built in its current French-Japanese architectural form in 1925 under Bishop Quinton. It is one of the oldest Catholic communities in Saigon, still preserving its original 14 Stations of the Cross and inauguration-era statues. At night, with food stalls glowing in the alleys at its feet, it feels like the quiet anchor of everything happening around it.
📍 Enter at 234 Tôn Đản Street — 5 minutes walk from The Jack Clayton Art Gallery
'Where generations meet, cultures connect'
