OK! Now that I've had some time to settle back in (by which I mean, get back on North America time), here's the exciting stories of my stint in The Nam. This is going to be a massive, massive entry, so I'm dividing it up, and hiding the sections behind spoiler tags to make it a little more manageable.
On The Way
On The Way
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
The koi pond at Changi Airport
The flight out was the longest period of time I've ever been confined to a given area, I think. It only took 13 hours to get to Tokyo/Narita, but it's 21 hours to get from NYC to Singapore (plus 2 more to get from there to Saigon). Fortunately, Singapore Airlines is awesome. They have these elaborate little consoles for each seat that are basically on-demand movies, a few TV shows, and music. The food is pretty decent, considering that it's airline food. Oh, and the stewardesses are selected for physical beauty. That doesn't really hurt either. I'm pretty sure the airline must have single-handedly exhausted the entire country's supply of gorgeous, 6-foot-tall statuesque Asian girls. (And no, they weren't wearing heels--Dwen looked on the way back.) So, that was what I passed my 21 hours doing: watching a few movies, sleeping now and then, and fantasizing about the beautiful women wandering around the cabin.
I spent a couple hours the Singapore airport (Changi, it's called), which is as amazing as the airline it hosts. It's well-kept, stylishly decorated, with plants lining the hallways. It has a full-on shopping center in the terminal, which while not my thing was pretty impressive. They also have a small hotel with hourly rates, a gym and massage parlour, a free movie theater (I didn't get to go, since my layovers were early morning and late night), free internet terminals, and a beautiful koi pond at each end of the main concourse. According to the web site, another terminal has a swimming pool available, too. I ended up spending my wait sitting by one of the koi ponds and just staring at the fish, watching them swim languidly back and forth. It's surprisingly relazing; I can see why keeping them is so popular.
A few hours later, I got to Saigon, around 10 in the morning (which was about midnight in my head). I got a window seat on the last leg of the flight, and had a chance to look down at the Mekong delta as we flew over. If you've never witnessed a river delta from the air, it's worth seeing. It's like the water carves its own little labyrith out of the land; trying to figure out which way the water's flowing is all but impossible without simply knowing beforehand where the sea is. The branches break off and merge back in everywhere, somethimes in such tight hair-pin loops that they end almost at their beginnings.
When we landed, it was already clear that we'd left the First World. The airport for Saigon, the largest city in Vietnam, was a couple of runways chopped out of the jungle. The hangars alongside were the sort composed of simple corrugated metal folded in an arc over a couple places apiece. Inside was a lobby that wouldn't have looked out of place in a run-down apartment building, staffed by diligent Communist, dressed in their olive uniforms with red shoulder-bars and gold stars.
Dwen met me at the arrival terminal, as planned. She was there with her mother, and her cousin, who is a taxi driver and was kind enough to provide transport to us for the week. We tossed my suitcase into the trunk, and we were off into the city.
The koi pond at Changi Airport
The flight out was the longest period of time I've ever been confined to a given area, I think. It only took 13 hours to get to Tokyo/Narita, but it's 21 hours to get from NYC to Singapore (plus 2 more to get from there to Saigon). Fortunately, Singapore Airlines is awesome. They have these elaborate little consoles for each seat that are basically on-demand movies, a few TV shows, and music. The food is pretty decent, considering that it's airline food. Oh, and the stewardesses are selected for physical beauty. That doesn't really hurt either. I'm pretty sure the airline must have single-handedly exhausted the entire country's supply of gorgeous, 6-foot-tall statuesque Asian girls. (And no, they weren't wearing heels--Dwen looked on the way back.) So, that was what I passed my 21 hours doing: watching a few movies, sleeping now and then, and fantasizing about the beautiful women wandering around the cabin.
I spent a couple hours the Singapore airport (Changi, it's called), which is as amazing as the airline it hosts. It's well-kept, stylishly decorated, with plants lining the hallways. It has a full-on shopping center in the terminal, which while not my thing was pretty impressive. They also have a small hotel with hourly rates, a gym and massage parlour, a free movie theater (I didn't get to go, since my layovers were early morning and late night), free internet terminals, and a beautiful koi pond at each end of the main concourse. According to the web site, another terminal has a swimming pool available, too. I ended up spending my wait sitting by one of the koi ponds and just staring at the fish, watching them swim languidly back and forth. It's surprisingly relazing; I can see why keeping them is so popular.
A few hours later, I got to Saigon, around 10 in the morning (which was about midnight in my head). I got a window seat on the last leg of the flight, and had a chance to look down at the Mekong delta as we flew over. If you've never witnessed a river delta from the air, it's worth seeing. It's like the water carves its own little labyrith out of the land; trying to figure out which way the water's flowing is all but impossible without simply knowing beforehand where the sea is. The branches break off and merge back in everywhere, somethimes in such tight hair-pin loops that they end almost at their beginnings.
When we landed, it was already clear that we'd left the First World. The airport for Saigon, the largest city in Vietnam, was a couple of runways chopped out of the jungle. The hangars alongside were the sort composed of simple corrugated metal folded in an arc over a couple places apiece. Inside was a lobby that wouldn't have looked out of place in a run-down apartment building, staffed by diligent Communist, dressed in their olive uniforms with red shoulder-bars and gold stars.
Dwen met me at the arrival terminal, as planned. She was there with her mother, and her cousin, who is a taxi driver and was kind enough to provide transport to us for the week. We tossed my suitcase into the trunk, and we were off into the city.
Saturday - Initial impressions
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
It's one of the world's last Communist states, and like most of them, Communism is only a symbology these days.
My first impression of the city was simply to be overwhelmed. When I went to Tokyo (my constant basis of comparison, by virtue of being the only other place in Asia I've visited), there was at least a veneer of similarity to America. Things were different, but mostly in the details: the basic ideas were all the same. Saigon is completely different, and what familiar elements it posesses are from such disparate places as to seem all the more alien. The best I can do to describe it is to say it kind of evokes New Orleans. It has the same sort of nice-parts-in-a-sea-of-poverty as New Orleans (well, I guess that's not necessarily the case now that the poor areas got flooded out), and also a lot of the same French architecture: the same three- and four-story buildings with the balconies that line the streets of the French Quarter comprise the mid-level parts of the city (between the nicer central area with its high-rises, and the outer regions' shanty-towns). Then, add something like the traffic of New York City, only replace every car with about 8 motorcycles, motorbikes, or just plain bicycles.
Speaking of traffic, whenever I talk about it, it's important for you to keep in mind that there are no rules. Or rather, there are probably rules, but no one follows them. I don't mean that like "oh, everyone speeds" like in the US. Stoplights are barely noticed. The lines on the road are a source of bemusement where acknowledged at all. People drive on the wrong side of the road to the point where speaking of a "right" or "wrong" side of the road is meaningless anyway. "Doesn't that lead to chaos?" you might as. OH HELL YES. It's a sort of controlled chaos, though. I think it's persisted in that state long enough that people have adjusted, and the fact that everyone's on small, maneuverable bikes helps too. If, for example, you want to cross the street, you just sort of slowly inch out from the curb. People will swerve towards the middle of the street to avoid you, but you inch out a little further until there's a bike-width worth of room behind you, and then some people start going that way, making a little more room to move forward, and you gradually progress until everyone is going behind you and you're at the other side. It's like trying to move in a macroscopic liquid. A little scary at first, but you get the hang of it.
Now, I pretty much spent the first day sleeping. I think in my brain, it was about 3am when I arrived. Dwen took me to the hotel where I was staying, and came up with me to help me get settled. It was a pretty ok sort of place. The room was small, and pretty sparse, but anyone who's been to my apartment knows that "pretty sparse" is an acceptable state for me. The only thing that struck me was a very dated feel to the furnishings and decorations, which was a recurring impression over the week. Also, the signs all had Russian translations, a tribute to the country's old Cold War ally. I unpacked, sort of (I just live out of a suitcase while on vacation anyway, but I put the suitcase in a drawer, at least) and took a shower, which after about 30 hours of travel, was the better than sex. The bathroom was interesting in that instead of a ventilation system, it was open to the outside air (in contrast to the climate-controlled main room) via slots in the wall. Also, there was no shower stall. There was a showerhead, yes, but it just stuck out of the wall, and the entirety of the room was the shower. It sort of reminded me of Japan, where showers are their own separate rooms, only with the rest of the bathroom there too for space-efficiency.
After that, I fell asleep for about an hour. I'd been talking to Dwen, so I have no idea what she was doing, but she was there when I woke up a few hours later. At that point, we were both hungry, so we went out to get something for lunch. Of course, she was afraid to cross the street (and I still kind of was too, at that point), so we didn't wander to far, but around the block we found a small market area with a few cafes. Like everything else I name, though, "cafe" is sort of a best-approximation word. What they really have is an open-fronted room (virtually everything except the most modern buildings was open air) and an area that was claimed via setting out chairs. They're not the cleanest places, and it's expected that you'll just toss aside used napkins and other refuse. There wasn't much of a kitchen, since the cuisine is pretty simple, and most of the street places don't have menus, they just have one meal that they serve. I forget what the name of our first meal was (I forget most of the words Dwen tried to teach me, actually), but it was a mix of roast pork and ham in a spicy sauce with greens on the side. Not bad. Tiny by American standards, but for $1.00 per person (jasmine tea included), not bad. Shortly after lunch, we ran out of area to explore without braving the traffic, and went back. I believe Dwen went back to her grandmother's house, and eventually out to dinner, but I fell back asleep until the next morning.
It's one of the world's last Communist states, and like most of them, Communism is only a symbology these days.
My first impression of the city was simply to be overwhelmed. When I went to Tokyo (my constant basis of comparison, by virtue of being the only other place in Asia I've visited), there was at least a veneer of similarity to America. Things were different, but mostly in the details: the basic ideas were all the same. Saigon is completely different, and what familiar elements it posesses are from such disparate places as to seem all the more alien. The best I can do to describe it is to say it kind of evokes New Orleans. It has the same sort of nice-parts-in-a-sea-of-poverty as New Orleans (well, I guess that's not necessarily the case now that the poor areas got flooded out), and also a lot of the same French architecture: the same three- and four-story buildings with the balconies that line the streets of the French Quarter comprise the mid-level parts of the city (between the nicer central area with its high-rises, and the outer regions' shanty-towns). Then, add something like the traffic of New York City, only replace every car with about 8 motorcycles, motorbikes, or just plain bicycles.
Speaking of traffic, whenever I talk about it, it's important for you to keep in mind that there are no rules. Or rather, there are probably rules, but no one follows them. I don't mean that like "oh, everyone speeds" like in the US. Stoplights are barely noticed. The lines on the road are a source of bemusement where acknowledged at all. People drive on the wrong side of the road to the point where speaking of a "right" or "wrong" side of the road is meaningless anyway. "Doesn't that lead to chaos?" you might as. OH HELL YES. It's a sort of controlled chaos, though. I think it's persisted in that state long enough that people have adjusted, and the fact that everyone's on small, maneuverable bikes helps too. If, for example, you want to cross the street, you just sort of slowly inch out from the curb. People will swerve towards the middle of the street to avoid you, but you inch out a little further until there's a bike-width worth of room behind you, and then some people start going that way, making a little more room to move forward, and you gradually progress until everyone is going behind you and you're at the other side. It's like trying to move in a macroscopic liquid. A little scary at first, but you get the hang of it.
Now, I pretty much spent the first day sleeping. I think in my brain, it was about 3am when I arrived. Dwen took me to the hotel where I was staying, and came up with me to help me get settled. It was a pretty ok sort of place. The room was small, and pretty sparse, but anyone who's been to my apartment knows that "pretty sparse" is an acceptable state for me. The only thing that struck me was a very dated feel to the furnishings and decorations, which was a recurring impression over the week. Also, the signs all had Russian translations, a tribute to the country's old Cold War ally. I unpacked, sort of (I just live out of a suitcase while on vacation anyway, but I put the suitcase in a drawer, at least) and took a shower, which after about 30 hours of travel, was the better than sex. The bathroom was interesting in that instead of a ventilation system, it was open to the outside air (in contrast to the climate-controlled main room) via slots in the wall. Also, there was no shower stall. There was a showerhead, yes, but it just stuck out of the wall, and the entirety of the room was the shower. It sort of reminded me of Japan, where showers are their own separate rooms, only with the rest of the bathroom there too for space-efficiency.
After that, I fell asleep for about an hour. I'd been talking to Dwen, so I have no idea what she was doing, but she was there when I woke up a few hours later. At that point, we were both hungry, so we went out to get something for lunch. Of course, she was afraid to cross the street (and I still kind of was too, at that point), so we didn't wander to far, but around the block we found a small market area with a few cafes. Like everything else I name, though, "cafe" is sort of a best-approximation word. What they really have is an open-fronted room (virtually everything except the most modern buildings was open air) and an area that was claimed via setting out chairs. They're not the cleanest places, and it's expected that you'll just toss aside used napkins and other refuse. There wasn't much of a kitchen, since the cuisine is pretty simple, and most of the street places don't have menus, they just have one meal that they serve. I forget what the name of our first meal was (I forget most of the words Dwen tried to teach me, actually), but it was a mix of roast pork and ham in a spicy sauce with greens on the side. Not bad. Tiny by American standards, but for $1.00 per person (jasmine tea included), not bad. Shortly after lunch, we ran out of area to explore without braving the traffic, and went back. I believe Dwen went back to her grandmother's house, and eventually out to dinner, but I fell back asleep until the next morning.
Sunday - Cu Chi Tunnels
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Dwen fires an AK-47 at the "National Liberation Sports Area"
The second day, or my first real day, we headed out into the country to Cu Chi, a historical area where the Viet Cong tunnels are largely preserved as a sort of living museum. Cu Chi is north-west of Saigon, almost at the border with Cambodia, and it was about two hours' drive from the city. The trip through the countryside was interesting. There's very little in the way of infrastructure. The roads are only about two lanes wide, sometimes closer to one and a half. (We'd hoped to get to Hanoi, but apparently this lack of roads makes it about a 4-day trip one way. For reference, Saigon to Hanoi is approximately equal to DC to Maine in distance.) However, we did see a highway under construction in the distance at one point, so they're working on it. Dwen says that they have some trouble, though, because the peasants in the areas around the construction will pilfer the rock for their own uses, to the point of chiselling it off of already-buily supports. I can see why, though: most of the houses we passed on the way out were just shacks. Some were lean-tos made from corrugated metal, and others were traditional coconut-leaf huts.
When we got to Cu Chi, it was pretty much the worst place I could imagine to fight. With the exception of the paths the tour guides had cleared and the open field where they built the reception center, the jungle is thick, and the air is oppressive with humidity (and we were there during one of the cooler months). It's fairly easy to lose anything in the undergrowth, and the tunnel entrances were all but invisible. There was one entrance left open near the reception center, and just to demonstrate, the tour guide closed it and spent 10 seconds kicking leaves over it. It may as well never have existed. Even already knowing it was there, I couldn't pick it out visually.
After that intro, we headed to a pavillion to watch a short video on the tunnels. Apparently they started building them during the war for independence from the French, and the miles-long sprawl took 20 years to accumulate. There are bunkers, barracks, staff rooms, and multiple escape routes, some of which come out underwater at the Mekong River. Of course, there was also a healthy dose of propaganda, although a little more transparent than I'm used to: there were only a couple minutes between the part where they said how the terrible Americans would even shoot young girls, and the part where the lauded "a girl, barely 13 years old, who with her family's rifle earned for herself the title 'American Killer.'" New Orleans' D-Day museum was pretty shallow, but at least it bothered to be internally consistent. On the other hand, though, they did refer to the South Vietnamese government as "the American lackeys," so at least I got to tick off a Communist Sterotype box.
Aside from the video, the tour was pretty straightforward. They'd built more accessible entrances to most of the rooms, so that tourists could get down there.
(section continues)
Dwen fires an AK-47 at the "National Liberation Sports Area"
The second day, or my first real day, we headed out into the country to Cu Chi, a historical area where the Viet Cong tunnels are largely preserved as a sort of living museum. Cu Chi is north-west of Saigon, almost at the border with Cambodia, and it was about two hours' drive from the city. The trip through the countryside was interesting. There's very little in the way of infrastructure. The roads are only about two lanes wide, sometimes closer to one and a half. (We'd hoped to get to Hanoi, but apparently this lack of roads makes it about a 4-day trip one way. For reference, Saigon to Hanoi is approximately equal to DC to Maine in distance.) However, we did see a highway under construction in the distance at one point, so they're working on it. Dwen says that they have some trouble, though, because the peasants in the areas around the construction will pilfer the rock for their own uses, to the point of chiselling it off of already-buily supports. I can see why, though: most of the houses we passed on the way out were just shacks. Some were lean-tos made from corrugated metal, and others were traditional coconut-leaf huts.
When we got to Cu Chi, it was pretty much the worst place I could imagine to fight. With the exception of the paths the tour guides had cleared and the open field where they built the reception center, the jungle is thick, and the air is oppressive with humidity (and we were there during one of the cooler months). It's fairly easy to lose anything in the undergrowth, and the tunnel entrances were all but invisible. There was one entrance left open near the reception center, and just to demonstrate, the tour guide closed it and spent 10 seconds kicking leaves over it. It may as well never have existed. Even already knowing it was there, I couldn't pick it out visually.
After that intro, we headed to a pavillion to watch a short video on the tunnels. Apparently they started building them during the war for independence from the French, and the miles-long sprawl took 20 years to accumulate. There are bunkers, barracks, staff rooms, and multiple escape routes, some of which come out underwater at the Mekong River. Of course, there was also a healthy dose of propaganda, although a little more transparent than I'm used to: there were only a couple minutes between the part where they said how the terrible Americans would even shoot young girls, and the part where the lauded "a girl, barely 13 years old, who with her family's rifle earned for herself the title 'American Killer.'" New Orleans' D-Day museum was pretty shallow, but at least it bothered to be internally consistent. On the other hand, though, they did refer to the South Vietnamese government as "the American lackeys," so at least I got to tick off a Communist Sterotype box.
Aside from the video, the tour was pretty straightforward. They'd built more accessible entrances to most of the rooms, so that tourists could get down there.
(section continues)
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
aaraa:
yeah seriously i really do love cheese way too much, although i had an awesome vegan chocolate cake last night.... sounds like your time in vietnam was awesome too, put some pictures up! (and the pokies are slot machines)
kyra:
Thank you for your comment on my set!