Phriends and Pho

I arrived in Vietnam at last, after a long night in the airport.  It's immediately obvious that Vietnam isn't as wealthy as Japan, but it's also ten times cheaper and bursting with life.  The streets are cheek to jowl with motorbikes and cars and trucks and buses--like the proverbial jar filled with big stones, then pebbles, then sand, until every bit is filled up--every vehicle shakes itself into the street and pushes itself along on a tide of honking, while fruit stands with tiny yellow bananas and bright red lychees and tea line the way.  Pho houses (soup) packed with people appear here and there, and there are motorbikes parked all over the place--on the sidewalks, in garages, and so on.  Crossing the street takes a great deal of faith--the traffic never really stops--so you step out into a flood of bikes and cars moving fairly fast, and walk slowly, and let them go around you.  It's a harrowing experience, even after you realize it works.

One upside of Vietnam is that it's cheap.  My fifteen minute taxi ride was two dollars, and my hotel-hostel, which has a bed with sheets, towels, a small tv, a shower, a sink and a toilet (albeing all lumped very close together) includes dinner and breakfast and is $10 a night.  Sweet.  I'll be able to make budget here.

Crab on the beach, with a bottle of sparkling wine

I was tired and a little lonely.  Traveling alone is hard--I understand now why my friend Jillian painted a face on a coconut and made it her friend when she went to Colombia alone.  You meet people, surely, and that is fun, but being in a new place, always exerting effort to get somewhere and always being careful is exhausting.  My good buddy Barry, who I went to Thailand with a couple months ago, gets in tonight, but yesterday I was all alone.  I was going to try to make it to a night market, but I guess it was closed--at least, that's what a man on the street told me. His english was good and he wanted to take me to a massage parlor because I said I was tired--sketchy--but he seemed nice, said it was $10 for an hour, and though that was probably a relative rip-off I was tired so we started walking.  I was worried the whole time I would be accosted and lose my wallet and watch and life, especially when we turned down an alley that smelled rather like urine, but the place was clean and the price was $10 for an hour for a full body massage--not that I was given options.

I'm sure my guide got a kickback, but no biggie, I was within budget for the day and I was ready to relax.  Hmmm, my lady started well, with pressure points on my face, but then she moved down to my chest, and everytime she massaged me she stuck her cleavage in my face...her hands got pretty, um, close a couple times, but thankfully nothing happened--I think it would have if I had been more enthusiastic and had I wanted to pay more.  It was pretty awkward though, and I was happy to go.

In the airport I had bought a book of the Dali Lama's teachings and I tried to be compassionate and at peace during the massage but it didn't work out so hot.  I wasn't sure what the Dali Lama would have done.

One thing that's tough in Vietnam is that you feel like you are being constantly ripped off.  You don't really tip, I think, but she told me her boss pays her nothing...I gave her a buck but was peeved that she was exhorting me after what was already super expensive by Vietnam standards.  Or today I negotiated for a motorbike ride to cost 13,000 duong and the guy demanded 30,000 duong when we got there.  It's a dollar difference, but it leaves you wary.

This morning I headed to Reunification Palace, which used to be the French colonial governor's place, then it got bombed and became the South Vietnamese president's palace (Independence Palace) and then when the north won the war, it became Reunification Palace.  They've preserved all of the furniture from the sixties and seventies, when the north won, and though the palace is sometimes used for official functions, because the capital of Vietnam is Hanoi, it's mainly a museum.  Between the palace and the war museum a block away, I got lots of information about how the noble resistance drove out American lackeys that were propping up a puppet government in the south...not too subtle, I think the message would be more subversive it were more sophisticated.  Then again, I also think Hoi Chi Mihn looks like the KFC man, especially because he is depicted on posters in white against a red background.

All my cab drivers think America is #1, or that's what they tell me, but then half of them also rip me off.

The food here is GREAT.  For lunch I had a big bowl of Pho with sprouts and herbs and chilis and limes and beef and hoison sauce, and then a bowl of rice noodles topped with pork and a fried spring roll--and it was all fresh and it all struck the perfect balance between spicy, salty, and sweet.  It made me very happy, especailly because two entrees and a beer came to $4 at a nice place.  I can't wait to see what a fancy place looks like...the beer, by the way, that I had was Saigon Special and it tasted as good as a Heiniken.  I've also tried Saion export and it's like a light Sam Adams...I think it all tastes good because it's eighty degrees out and humid.

After the museums I took a motorbike taxi (fun, but harrowing) to the American Market, which was supposed to sell war-era antiques, but I think the guy took me to the wrong place because mainly I saw rice cookers for sale.  Now I'm off for a nap then another market...more adventures soon!

------

I wrote all that my first night, and now, writing from Tel Aviv, two days out from the week I spent in Vietnam already the memories have taken on a particular self-contained quality of time and space--as if they existed in a separate world--a world of friends and sun and beaches and laughter.  I was lucky to meet a Sweede named Adam who had lived in Vietnam for two years and who spoke Vietnamese well.  He, Barry, and I became good friends, spending the next couple days living in Saigon like locals--meeting Adam's many friends both local and expat in coffee shops for leisurely afternoons, walking through parks to vendors with the best kind of a particular food, going for pho at five in the morning in the middle of nowhere with a Vietnamese friend who managed the bar we were drinking at, buying fresh fruit, drinking sugarcane and passionfruit juice, and getting (more benign) massages.

Barry and I did set off on our own one day--well, with a tour company--to see the Cao Dai temples and Cuchi tunnels.  Cao Dai is a mix of the major religions; the temple looks like something from Disneyland.  The cuchi tunnels--networks of tunnels the vietcong used to hide from american bombing were fascinating--climbing far below the ground in tiny tunnels it seemed like an impossibly miserable existence.  We got to hear all about killing Americans--there were lots of grusome booby traps, and a couple tanks that had been blown up too.  Barry and my consensus by the end of the day, though, was that a tour was not the way to go.  It didn't help that our tourguide, Mihn (as in Ho Chi), was prone to diatribes about what will make us happy in life--given in bad english on a booming mike.  Also, I was hungover from a night of drinking games with Irish and Israeli friends, so the ride was especially unenjoyable.

But it was also a gift--Barry and I were decidedly done with tours and so with our friend Adam (the Sweede), we called up one of Adam's friends who is a tourguide, but who had the day off, and a driver, and we got a car for the day.  We drove to the outskirts of town and had the best pho of my life--dark brown and heaped with fresh herbs.  Then we drove to the coast, stopping to buy two bags of fresh crab--cooked to order with tamarind and chili, or steamed.  We also picked up some sea snails with lime, salt, and pepper.  We got to the beach, rolled up our pants, and shared crab on the beach with a bottle of cheap Vietnamese sparkling wine (made with Russian technology) we had brought.  We were five friends together on a beautiful day with some of the best crab of my life.  Some locals were playing volleyball so we joined them, and then we drove to the top of a mountain where there is a lighthouse.  We were able to climb to the top of this lighthouse, constructed in 1911, and see all around us the South China Sea.  You'll never be able to do this if you go in a year--and even now you have to speak Vietnamese and be friends with the lighthouse keepers.  Then we were down the hill in the tropical twilight, eating the local specialty of shrimp cooked in rice pancakes with sugarcane juice, and then we were eating ice cream, watching Vietnam lose to Japan in the Asia cup.

We got back and went to Lush--a great club Adam remembered.  When we were there we met some very cute french girls and I invited them to dinner the next day.

Prepping for the day required getting Barry a shirt.  We went to a local market (not the one in tour books but one that Adam's girlfriend, who is Candian but lives in Vietnam, knows) and barry bought a silk shirt with a dragon on it...then a leisurely coffee and a pizza (I need one, it had been a couple weeks)...then another coffee with a German friend of Adam's and a walk to the post office (from French times, very regal), we went to a local street for real shopping.  I got two really beautiful shirts that would have cost me $100 each in the U.S. for $8--not knockoffs, just good local brands.  Then we got massages, then we went to The Refinery--the french restaraunt where we were meeting our friends...a beautiful place--I had a rocket salad with perfect wedges of goat cheese and a filet perfectly cooked (rare with a wine sauce), and we all had a nice Bordeaux...it was ritzy by Vietnam standards but a steal by U.S. standards and delicious.  We got a drink at a rooftop bar and said bye to our French friends--too bad, it would have been nice to date one of them--but we were off for adventures.

So this is how it was--jumping accross saigon, eating our hearts out, laughing all the time.  For example, Barry hates Nucmom (fish sauce)--the staple ingredient in Vietnamese cooking.  Or take the time when we got ripped of by our cyclo driver (like a bike-cab)--when we saw him the next night we stole his cyclo and rode it around for a while ourselves...it was a magical, tremendous time--of easy company and weather, fun memories and relaxation.  I came to love Saigon as a local might--and hope to visit my friends there again soon.