Welcome to Vietnam

I'm tempted to think it would have been cooler if my entrance into Vietnam were along the lines of dropping from a Chinook helicopter with my M-16 at the ready while an Army Seargent was screaming, "Charlie! Charlie! They're everywhere!" Actually, that would have sucked if it were for real, so forget I said it. Fortunately, the exact opposite happened; I calmly walked off a very comfortable Boeing 737 into a modern airport and was greeted by a pleasant customs agent who spoke English. Welcome to Vietnam, 21st century style...

The Vietnam experience began in Saigon, a city of six million people and four million mopeds screaming by en masse. (People apparently call it Ho Chi Minh City only if the government's looking over their shoulder.) It's much like the other major cities in Southeast Asia that I've visited: frenetic, cramped, and noisy. And for some reason, the electric lines are out of control. How can this situation be good for anyone? But I have to, begrudgingly, hand it to the communists: they run a pretty tight ship here. There's some semblance of order in the chaos that is palpable: people are actually cleaning up the streets; drivers are obeying the helmet law (which is smart, given how fucking crazy people drive); and roads signs are visible at every intersection. But accidents do happen when you drive like fucking madmen, which they all do, and I saw one live and in living color. Beggars - that mainstay of Cambodia - are virtually nonexsitent, and taxis are actually cars with air conditioning. I also liked that the city has some (albeit limited) public green space. A few parks here or there can make all the difference, if just to provide a respite from the insanity that is otherwise omnipresent. The three or four parks I came across in Saigon were just big enough to turn the roar of engines into a barely audbile din and make it seem as though I wasn't in a metropolis bursting at the seams. Well played, Saigon. Well played.

One of the best things about Vietnam: it's wonderfully cheap. Dinner should cost no more than a buck or two. Beer is 50 cents. Decent rooms for a night are under $15. It's easy to do these comparisons because the unofficial currency is the dollar. Which is weird, if you think about it, since you're in Vietnam. But it kind of makes sense given that one dollar equals 19,000 dong. (Yes, "dong" is the Vietnamese currency.) So if you don't use dollars, you have to use a lot of dong in your everyday commerical exchanges, i.e., an expensive item of jewelry might cost 10,000,000 dong. So the dong sometimes can be too large to handle. (That joke was too easy.)

I should confess, though, that I didn't truly experience the whole city. Whether by design or chance, most tourists are packed into a small area that is hidden away from average Saigon life. Once you're there, there's no mistaking it. The percentage of Caucasians walking around goes from less than 1%, as you'd find anywhere else in the city, to about 75%; signs are all in English; and there's a massage parlor every ten feet. This is where I stayed for three nights. I thought I scored a major find when I came across a boutique hotel that had been recently renovated with rooms that looked like they belonged in a Ritz-Carlton. Price: $9 a night. Score! But there's always a catch because life would never let me have a total victory. At 5:30 a.m. on my first night there, I was rudely awakened to learn that my new favorite boutique hotel was run by a nice elderly couple that kept parrots in their bedroom. These parrots squaked like there was no tomorrow. So I'm thinking, how the fuck do you run a hotel when you have parrots waking up guests at 5:30 a.m.? Maybe I'm taking crazy pills, but that seems objectively ridiculous. I inquired about it, and the owner was like, "Oh, you could hear them?" Yeah, buddy, I could hear them. The whole fucking city could hear them. So I shopped around for a better hotel but, amazingly, a lot of other hotels had parrots as well. (They don't tell you in the guidebook that you have to say, "Hello, I'm looking for an a/c room, and by chance do you have parrots?"). So I figured it was inevitable that I was waking up at 5:30 a.m. no matter where I stayed. My only comfort was the thought of having a nice bowl of parrot soup before I left the city...

The standard "tourist day" in Saigon largely revolves around the Vietnam War. First, there is Reunification (sometimes called Independence) Palace. It's the former home of the South Vietnamese government, when there was such a thing, until Viet Cong tanks rolled in on April 30, 1975 and the country was 'reunited' under communist rule. They have preserved the place just as it was found in 1975, which makes it interesting not just for its historical significance but also for its (admittedly less important) insight in to 1970's interior design. Yellow shag carpets? Really, people? Someone thought that was a good idea? Yikes. I seriously wonder how my parents' generation ever survived. Anyway, the place is also entertaining and informative for the government's take on the war. Obviously propaganda at times, with the message being understandably anti-American, it was nevertheless eye-opening to learn about how they viewed the war and what their goal was in "reunifiying" the country. They also put a lot of blame on the French for being the first "imperialists" to try to divide the country. Despite the fact that I sometimes openly laughed at how ridiculous some of the statements were about America, it was a worthwhile experience.

More profound than the visit to Reunification Palace was my visit to the War Museum. Perhaps even more propagandist, it documented many atrocious acts committed by the U.S. while omitting any reference to those committed by Vietnam. Despite this glaring ommission (and many others), the museum nevertheless serves as a terrible reminder of things that occurred that are outside the realm of blatant propoganda. Particularly chilling are the stories and photographs of innocent people, especially children, who fell victim to napalm and dioxin, and the damage it did to subsequent generations. I'll admit that the Vietnam War is, to me, history books, pop culture, and stories from those who lived through it, so I may be out of place to question what happened. But one can't help looking at those pictures and asking, what were we thinking? On the flip side, every time I read about Vietnamese "heroes" who were commended for killing lots of American soldiers, I felt a rising tide of angry patriotism swell deep inside me and I wanted to blurt out to no one in particular, "Maybe we should have bombed you back into the stone age!" I'd catch myself before I did or said anything foolish, remembering that I was in 'enemy' territory and outnumbered 86 million to one, so I kept my mouth shut.

There's a lot more in and around Saigon to see (the standard littany of temples, shrines, etc.), and after eight hours of walking, my feet had had enough and I decided to let someone else do the work. So the following day I took a day tour of the Mekong Delta. It's a few hours drive from Saigon (the duration of which could be cut by 75% if the roads were paved) but a world away. I actually met some people who live on the river and basically never go beyond it. Most are fisherman who catch anything that moves in the water (including pythons. This one is a "baby" at eight feet in length. It was nice to hold for few seconds. The it started to squeeze, and squeeze some more, and then it started to hurt. A lot. It took the help of another guy to finally pry it off me...) The tour also included a visit to a well-known Buddha statue in Vietnam; it's supposedly the largest "fat" Buddha in the country. When I found out the tour included a visit to a Buddha statue, I thought, "Oh crap, not another one." Seriously, I've seen like 20 of these things in less than four weeks. But this one was, indeed, the fatest - and happiest - Buddha I've seen so far.

Another major attraction around Saigon is the Cu Chi tunnels - tunnels that the VC used to avoid and attack American soldiers. You can actually crawl through the tunnels if you're small enough to do so, but the real tunnels were too small for me, so I had to crawl through an "expanded" tunnel for "tourists" (i.e., Caucasians). It's dark, wet, and hot as hell. After just 20 meters of crawling through the tunnels, I came out of the tunnel drenched in what felt like three layers of sweat. (The three layers of sweat are distinct enough that they could be described as follows: The first layer is the "holy crap this is hot" sweat - it has a pungent b.o. aroma with a hint of "I need a shower asap"; the second layer is the "European" sweat - it hits the palate much harder with the impression of not bathing for days and has a bitter, crip after-smell; the third layer is the "fuck me I'm about to die" sweat - a full-bodied odor with strong notes of mildew and decay.) After my near-death experience in the tunnel, I was re-energized when I learned that part of the tour included the opportunity to fire off a few rounds of a vintage AK-47 that the VC used during the war. So I plopped down a few bucks to shoot 10 rounds of the AK. I gotta say, it was a good day.

After three days in Saigon, it was time to move on. I'm a travelling man, heading up the 2700 km coast by bus all the way to Hanoi. So for now, it's been lovely, but I gotta get a move on....