It takes our taxi driver a few passes up and down 3 Thang 2 Street in Cholon, the Chinese district, weaving around buzzing motor scooters, until he gets his bearings and eventually turns – or rather, careens – left onto Le Dai Hanh Street, where the Phu Tho Race Track, Viet Nam’s only horse racing track, is situated. He pulls up to the fading jade-coloured gates and we step out from the cool air-conditioned interior of the Camry and into the humid, hot buzz of the street. Immediately we are approached by a vendor waiving a racing program at us. But we’re not here to bet on the ponies. Rather, it’s the punters we’ve heard about that have piqued our curiosity.
The Phu Tho track has been a fixture of Saigon gambling culture since 1930. In 1975, after the communists rolled their tanks through the gates of the South Vietnam Presidential Palace, the city was re-named Ho Chi Minh and the race track was closed down (along with other gambling establishments). In 1989, the government relaxed its moral position on gambling as it began to focus on economic development.
Nowadays the ponies, ridden by tiny teenage jockeys in rubber boots and exchangeable bibs, draw a crowd of several thousand on weekend afternoons.
Moving barely past a trot, the ponies and their riders are more of a spectacle than a sport – but try telling that to the dedicated punters who show up weekly, their emotions displayed operatically as their chosen pony wins, places or loses.
Oblivious to anything but the possibility of a big win, the punters at Phu Tho ebb and flow from track to betting window until all the ponies have run their races.